Happy 2017 to everyone, I think the next step is the 1050$ if it breaks i don't have any idea what would be the next stop of this rally, maybe some old bitcoiners have an idea
?
I think that we need to look at the current ATH as the next stop and a potential resistance point...
There is considerable potential that the current ATH would not be a resistance point because we are already so close to it, but I think that we still need to see how this price range plays out between $1060 and $1180
Seems to be plausible, i'm very cautious because it's my first time as a bitcoiner as i experience a rally a these prices, so thanks for your thoughts
If you are nervous about retaining value with your BTC holdings, you can sell a little bit on the way up. Usually you do not want to sell too much because you could end up with a bunch of fiat and a lacking in BTC.
Everyone is different regarding how they will do it, but I tend to sell 1% to 2% of my BTC holdings every $100 price rise of BTC in about every $10 to $15 increments (in other words staggered in both directions - up and down), and then I buy back when BTC prices go back down... therefore, on average I end up selling less than 1% for every $100 (and my BTC holdings grow overall with the same amount of investment, more or less).
I started this selling strategy at a bit over $250 (but my selling between $250 and about $400 was an even smaller percentage of my BTC holdings because my BTC portfolio was then in the red) and today, I still have nearly 92% of my BTC holdings in BTC and the other 8% in fiat.
Some kind of a strategy of taking profits (even small amounts) can help you to be less nervous during BTC volatile periods (which are almost inevitable) but I think that even with extensive practice a lot of us get nervous no matter what when the price becomes really volatile (especially when it goes down), so we have to figure out ways to hedge and to safeguard some of our nervousness that are tailored to our own situations.
This is an excellent strategy, imho, because you actually
profit from volatility. IOW, a volatile price rise from A to B will leave you richer than a steady rise from A to B. You (the investor) win, at the expense of the speculators.
It actually seems to play out like that in practice, too, as long as you stick to your guns and continue to stagger your bets in both directions.... It probably works at bringing down some of the overall volatility too, if everyone were to engage in such a practice.
If you assume price = constant + superimposed sinusoidal curve, with the amplitude of the curve big enough to trigger buying and selling, then by your method, you repeatedly buy low, sell high, over and over again. Which means you make money, assuming the spread and transaction costs are less than what you earn from buying low and selling high.
Any curve can be represented as a sum of sinusoidal curves, i.e. a Fourier series. Therefore, it becomes mathematically provable that your method, if properly implemented, will cause you to benefit from volatility.
... I agree that a bot could be programmed with such methodology and overall be profitable ...
A bot would definitely be nice for this kind of thing. When you see volatility, everyone else would be having a heart attack, and you could just sit back, think about your bot making money from the volatility plus the fact that you're making the world a better place by decreasing volatility, and smile
If you assume price = constant + superimposed sinusoidal curve, with the amplitude of the curve big enough to trigger buying and selling, then by your method, you repeatedly buy low, sell high, over and over again. Which means you make money, assuming the spread and transaction costs are less than what you earn from buying low and selling high.
Any curve can be represented as a sum of sinusoidal curves, i.e. a Fourier series. Therefore, it becomes mathematically provable that your method, if properly implemented, will cause you to benefit from volatility.
I'd like to see that proof
A couple of problems I see with it:
1) you are talking about piecewise sinusoids (right? reset at each sudden price change?). That complicates any kind of frequency domain analysis. Lots of noise.
2) After a price change, how do you determine what phase (and amplitude) to start the next piece at?
If you really did mean fourier analysis of the whole price data, then you would see low frequency cycles with a bit of luck (but too many people already found those, so they're tiny). The sudden price moves add way too much noise to be able to detect anything sinusoidal at day trader frequencies.
I've never done the proof formally, but the statement to be proved would be something along these lines:
- assume X% allocation bitcoin, and 100-X % allocation fiat at the beginning
- assume price starts at $A and ends at $B, with arbitrary path from A to B
- assume zero spread and zero fees (makes the math simpler, but you'd have to bear in mind this is an oversimplification of the model)
Strategy 1: no buying and no selling at all
Strategy 2: if your percent allocation of wealth in bitcoin rises above or below X% by some fixed amount D (let's say, +/- 5%) due to bitcoin price fluctuations, then buy or sell as needed to keep the % allocation within X +/- D %.
For example: if you set X at 50% at the beginning and D at 5%, then your bot will buy or sell as needed to keep your percent allocation within the range of 45% to 55%
The proof would basically say that Strategy 2 works better than Strategy 1. I think a few more assumptions are needed though. I'm not sure, but I think Strategy 2 is better if we assume that neither bitcoin nor the fiat becomes worthless. Suppose, for example, that the fiat hyperinflates a la Zimbabwe in 2009 or whenever. In that case, Strategy 2 would definitely be a BAD idea, because by the end you would have sold all your bitcoin and you'd have a zillion Zimbabwean dollars worth nothing. But if we assume the fiat currency stays stable, and bitcoin goes to the moon but does so in a very volatile fashion, then I'm pretty sure Strategy 2 can be proven to be superior.
EDIT:
Actually I might also have to assume that you start and end at the same price. Obviously if the price of bitcoin shoots up to $1M, you're better off if you didn't sell any of it at all during the rise, which means Strategy 1 would be better.