By the way, jbreher.., since I have you "on the line"....
It must have been some damned busy weeks for you since about early to mid March and thereafter keeping up with your buy/sell orders.
Busy? Naaaah.
It takes about 12 seconds to place a contrasting order whenever a standing order is hit. So, should volatility take us five notches in a day, I've spent an entire minute on ladder maintenance.
I don't know if I should believe you, or not. Of course, I believe you in the sense that I believe that you are actually doing it, and that you are making profits, but in terms of the level of your efficiency.. i have my skepticism.
Sure, you might be a robot in terms of your resetting of your orders, and maybe you have various parameters that either you do not need to tweak or that such tweaking is also somewhat systematic (thus requiring little to no thought).
Mostly the latter.
Since retiring, the bulk of my income is derived from Bitcoin volatility. IOW, I am taking my profits in USD. Goes up? Sell N Bitcoin at each rung. Goes down? Buy N Bitcoin at each rung. The rungs are equally-spaced. N=N. So it takes about twelve seconds to enter the corresponding counter order.
So far, I have been taking profits in BTC, or at least, folding all dollars back into BTC purchases, and I am tentatively considering the funding of my lifestyle.. the taking of profits in dollars as a separate endeavor, that will likely start to happen in the coming few years. I suppose maybe by the time I get to the stage of overall withdrawing dollars rather than stacking sats, then I would be also taking profits in dollars, too... but that still should not be changing how much time it would take for me to execute trades (or setting up the buy sell orders).
I suppose maybe part of my seemingly less efficiency in setting up my buy/sell orders is just that I spend some time trying to investigate what had happened while I was away, exactly, and then making sure that I am doing exactly what I want to do, even though I do have somewhat set buy/sell increments that keep getting triggered. Mine are not at exactly the same intervals, but they are definitely systematic.
I am not sure if I spend more time than you contemplating what I am doing, but I did quickly look at my activities since March 1, and it appears that I had about 58 buy orders execute and about 28 sell orders, a bit higher activity level than usual.