Topic: When do you attempt to sell and rebuy lower... (Read 2776 times)

From what I can gather, TERA is a very good trader.  Unfortunately, he tends to give (honest, IMO) advice from that perspective which would be disastrous for most people to follow because they are not in the top percentage of traders like TERA.

Buy lower? There is no lower!

Stop spreading FUD you troll, oh you.

TO DA MOON!

I did`nt sell to rebuy lower but I bought more at the last volatility Chance April10.
I just read the TA by an expert (Godmode-trader.de) which stated March 3:

Kippt die Stimmung wieder mit Kursen signifikant unterhalb von 490 $ per Tagesschluss, sollte ein weiterer Test des Unterstützungsbereichs bei 360 - 400 $ eingeplant werden
http://www.godmode-trader.de/analyse/bitcoins-totgesagte-leben-laenger,3679751
Translation:
It took 3 weeks for BTC-Rates going down and another week for support-test 340$.
Good buy for another 20 BTC.
Now we have the same Situation but with different $ range:

Fällt der Kurs jedoch auf Tages- und Wochenschlusskursbasis unter 335 $ ab, müssten Abgaben bis zum Unterstützungsbereich bei 250 - 270 $ einkalkuliert werden
http://www.godmode-trader.de/analyse/bitcoins-situation-spitzt-sich-zu-2,3730868
Translation:
Support 250 -270$ is the April 2013 resistance which turned to Support by surpassimg this rate at about october 2013.

Edit:18:00 PM local time (04:00 PM Forum time): Links repaired

I used the 25% constant as a very rough approximation. I called some of the tops/bottoms more accurately, and some I just slept through (I literally slept through them :/) But in principle, the answer is 'yes, mostly'. The strategy I tend to use I'd say is a hybrid between momentum trading and predictive trading. I'm sure, better and more experienced traders than me are more apt at pattern recognition, so they can see the major lines (and where they converge) ahead of time, but I most of the time trade after the fact, so my main emphasis is based on momentum. The question then is, "how long after the fact", and is it still consistently profitable.

Nah it's not really hard with volatility like this:

You must be the best day trader in the world to make 400-1000% profit in a week.

Sell when you have strong evidence of a reason that would cause the fall, or when you have strong evidence of manipulative pumping(for exemple: when litecoin has been added to huobi, biggest pump and dump in the crypto history).  For me wait for 60% fall is too much, if this happens, you might be in the burst of a speculative bubble like the tulip one and ends up losing everythin. I'm happy with 10% falls.
I guide myself more by news and psychological behavior than by analysis of graphs and economic indicatos, unless I want see if there is manipulative pumping. It's working so far, for almost 6 months only one great loss that took more than 1 week to recover

Yeah, this is what a lot of people tend to do in this realm. A lot of the trading depth in the crypto-currency world comes from those who trade through emotion and expectations of winning. The mindset that they have to win, they should win, or that they will win because they are "better" ends up beating a lot of people.

Of course though, one has to also recognize that in this scene, a lot of the traditional fundamentals do not apply because of the lack of regulation, constant dilution and exceptionally high risk that exists with Bitcoin (and all of the many alternate crypto-currencies).

So your strategy is not to try to guess the top/bottom beforehand, but detect them after the fact?

Trading is a sero-sum game, i.e. it is a losing game for the less smart half of players and winning game for a more smart half of players. So the answer seems to be an easy one: if you're smarter than average, do trade, if not - don't.

But:

1. If you are asking if you should trade, you belong to the less smart/knowledgeagle half. So it's kind of catch-22: answer "yes, do trade" should be given only to those who don't ask the question.
2. Most of people consider themselves to be smarter than average. Trading would be very costly method of self-deception.
3. Winners to losers ratio in trading is probably 1:10 rather than 1:1. So even if you are really smarter than 8 out of 10 bitcoin traders, you still may belong to the loser's camp.
 

Blind people can be trained to process a signal from a digital camera through the sensitive nerves of their tongue and in a controlled environment make their way through a room full of obstacles without collision with any of them.

the only indicator/oscillator one needs is a chart, and eyes will always serve one better than a macd will, if one trains them. the question is only discipline.

Trading requires a lot of discipline, and experience. You have to know how to properly guage momentum, read indicators, calculate targets, follow indicators for your closing trade, set stoplosses, improvise, make quick judgements, and accept defeat. Most people don't have any background in trading and do not use one of these components, and so they fail. Therefore they think trading is 'rigged' or 'futile'.

One guidance that professional traders use is that they only have to be right about the direction of the trade about 30% of the time and they will still come out ahead as long as they are cutting their losses and letting their winners run.

What an awfully complicated way to set up a very basic question: how often do you trade, and do you make a consistent profit doing so.

I don't see how the taxes factor into the frequency of trading. In the tax system that applies to me, any selling of btc before a year will incur a tax depending on my personal tax rate, so any profit of an individual trade will need to be lowered by that tax rate. If the trade itself was profitable though, it will be so even after tax.

Here's a list of the trades cycles I took part in during this bear market. I'm sure you can easily find the corresponding dates on the chart.

sell at 1200, buy at 400: ((1200*0.75)/(400*1.25))*0.95 ~= 1.7 times btc
sell at 1000, buy at 400: 1.4 times btc
sell at 700, buy at 340: 1.17 times btc

The assumption here is that you missed the optimal selling point after a 25% decline, and the optimal buying back point after a 25% increase. Then take off 5% for slippage and fees. Taxes not included in this calculation yet. The overall result is about 2.8 times the amount of btc than initially held. The same could have been achieved of course with a single perfect trade (from 1200 to 400), but it's not a very realistic assumption.

The numbers above are not exactly what I personally traded, but not completely unrelated to my trades either.

that's exactly why while trading you should think yourself as a casino instead of a gambler that throws money away at slot machines.

-Your (even basic) technical analysis, entry and exit strategies make it more probable to engage in a winning trade than in a losing one.
-losing trades must be closed early compared to winning ones.


With multiple trades in the end you have a profit.
You can make a very good profit even if you win "only" 60-70% of your total trades

It is different when you are a market maker (only big institutions can be) but other than that it's like people at the casino claiming they have a system. And some people get lucky. That's what keeps the casino going.

Please do not say this as a global assertion just because it applies to you personally and to inexperienced traders. There are actually people who are very effective at trading. Not trading may be what is right.. for you, but not for everyone.

Trading is a losing game. You sell because you need liquidity to by things you need. You sell because you wish to re-balance your portfolio. You don't sell "to rebuy lower".

Always.

Don't ever say "Never" 

Never.