I think that you personally have a bit of a difficulty too with my approach of buying on the way down and selling on the way up because sometimes you are suggesting to do the opposite and to pre-empt, and that just is not my style even though a lot of folks engage in attempts to preemptively strike.
I invented buy on the way down and sell on the way up.
I'll take this as a form of humor.
Many intelligent investment circles (or maybe referred to as smart money... just kidding)... refer to this methodology, and warren buffet is known to preach such a technique, including his famous statement about buying when there is "blood in the streets."
and for the most part this is exactly what i have done too.
by adding a health dose of speculation, i've tried to perfect this technique and only start buying / selling toward the end of a trend.
Our overall approach may not be too different, even though our tweaking by learning may end up being applied a little bit differently based on our reading of the market. Of course we are not going to want to buy a whole bunch if we are fairly certain that the price is going to continue to go down in the short term, nor are we going to want to sell a bunch if we are fairly certain that the price is going to go up in the short term. Yet, we also may not want to miss some smaller swings, either... yet these are kind of judgement calls. For example, if the price appears to be moving up quickly and seems to be on a 10% upwards trajectory, I still would likely to sell smaller amounts every 2% or so and then maybe bigger chucks when it reaches close to a 10% adjustment. Trying to play a little bit of both, and each of us is going to come to different conclusions regarding how to approach these kinds of movements, yet I personally am not competing with anyone to make more profits, I am just trying to feel comfortable with myself, even if I leave a bit on the table, here and there, which actually happens from time to time (actually regularly).
a few months ago I fucked up and SOLD a rather large chunk of my stash, preemptively pricing in the seemingly high possibility of a continuous hardfork. what a big fat mistake that turned out to be... oh well...
I remember that sale of yours to be around $420, and yes, that is an example of a preemptive strike, and I find nothing really wrong with making those kinds of preemptive strike decisions, if that makes you feel better under whatever is the then current market conditions that you perceive.
anyway, my current speculation suggests the bull trend will continue for at least 1 more year ( just waiting for LN to be released ).
I think that I am a lot more comfortable with an ongoing analysis of the situation, and trying to predict a year in bitcoinlandia is nearly impossible because we really do not know what cards various actors have up their sleeves, if any.
Take for example the most recent price splurge above $500. Each of us who are watching BTC prices and how things play out kind of had our theories regarding whether prices would go above $500 and how it could possibly play out. For me, it has kind of played out how I was thinking, but at the same time, it is quite a bit different with how I was thinking as well, so I have to adjust my thinking regarding how it actually played out versus what I had previously been thinking.
Previously, I thought that once BTC prices went passed $500, it would kind of shoot up passed $600 and maybe even passed $700 and then likely correct back down below $500... I mean the way that the price performance played out was quite a bit different from what I expected, I went up on lower volume and it took longer to get up, and then the corrections were not as severe (at least not yet), and in the end, even though BTC prices did not reach into the $800s, the way that it played out was much more bullish than I had anticipated... so I needed to adjust some of my thinking.. and sure, it is still possible that the price could correct below $500, but the odds are seeming greater and greater, and the costs (and resistance) in which to achieve such an objective to get prices into the sub- $500s seems to be much higher... I try not to see bitcoin's future prices and the bitcoin world in terms of absolutes (until after something maybe have already happened), but like you, I do try to weigh probabilities and go with trends - even though my conclusions regarding probabilities may not be the same as yours and therefore my actions are going to be affected.
So in respect to the next year, we gotta just see how it plays out and to continue to make our predictions based on how things are playing out, but in a general sense I agree with you that there are a lot of BTC fundamentals in place at the current moment to allow for the likelihood that a bull market could continue to endure for a year or even longer... could be slow or could be fast or could be a combination of ongoing and onward bullish and upwards price pressures that the bears are unable to stop without expending more capital than they want to expend.