Topic: Why didn't you sell? - page 5. (Read 13386 times)

Oh please, I asked some very basic questions. We can agree the China news was negative, but how do you know exactly what the price will do?

Edit: Didn't see you changed your post and removed my name.

Arguing with you two clowns (cscape & bassclef) is like debating with my cat.

Unless you have something intelligent to say please spare us your nonsense.

I've been debating on an intellectual level with some of the users here, and you two come and spoil the party.

Traders like oda.krell have years of market experience and are much better equipped to time these price swings than the average bear. I'd listen to his advice way before Captain Hindsight here.

Put your money where your mouth is, JayB. Will the price break $1000 in the next 48 hours or is this a dead cat bounce? Let's see this mind in action.

You are getting these types of responses because it appears you are trolling us.

Your "sell at 1200, buy at 700" is very easy in hindsight, but how do you know exactly how the market would react to the China news? The price could have easily gone down to only 1000, then back to 1200. How do you know where to place your bids? If you miss your bids, when do you buy back in? What if the market were to jump back very quickly above your original selling point, before you realized your original bids were not going to be hit?

To answer your topic question, I did not sell because I do not actively trade, I am not interested in short term movements. I know I cannot be accurate (enough) with short term speculation, I'd rather not risk my coins in this way.

I knw that very well

But what Nassim labeled as "Randomness" wasn't actually absolute randomness. Randomness doesn't exist in this world. There are scientists who would argue it does exist on a sub-atomic level, but in our physical world it doesn't.

What Nassim labeled as randomness is merely the inability of human brain capacity to predict certain complex events.

For me the move that happened after the Chinese government's announcement wasn't a complex event that couldn't be predicted, but merely an action-reaction phenomena. You can argue that this could be the case 99% of the time and then there's 1% chance a black swan would occur and the market would move in a way that is different to what I predicted. Fair enough, but I'm willing to take this chance myself. And I believe if you take this chance in a new and volatile market like that of Bitcoin, even if you are proven wrong in rare circumstances you'd still make a decent return (may not be true for mature markets as I said).

Are we on the same page now?

sorry for my sweeping and somewhat misleading statement - you are right the truth is more complicated I agree - but I had to keep it simple for this very special case.

what I should have said is 99% of traders are 100% lucky. 1% of traders are only 49% lucky - they are 'the house' so to speak.

Do not risk it all to gain little. Risk little to gain lots. He made his money with options designed to pay off big when unpredictable stuff happened, which it inevitably did, not by trying to time the market. Are you sure your read his books.

Do you understand that whilst you are trying to capture small gains by trading in and out there is a chance that the market will suddenly and very unpredictably move massively against you.

When you read stuff you are supposed to understand it for what it says, not just make it fit your pre-conceived view.

Because those of us who have been around a long time realize that all our crazy activity ended up doing worse than just buying and holding.  So now we just buy and hold.  It's really easy to come on here and say stuff while never having tried it yourself.  Talk is cheap.

How about this?

Buy 1 bitcoin right now.  When you have 10, then let us know how you did it.

I should've opened a topic saying "You guys are awesome, for all those holding up to your Bitcoins, keep up the good work", and I would've got praised like a God. You just want me to feed your ego so that "I make sense"?

I've seen the dumbest of topics in this forum applauding Bitcoin holders get the most praise in the world. If you guys can't grasp a topic in an open minded way I rest my case.

There is always a chance your "common sense" will turn as a disadvantage one of these days, don't you think?
Why don't you create a thread and show us your long/short and we see, it's so easy to predict what just happened 10 minutes ago.

My common sense says that we are about to crash for a few weeks now, not because of this I sold any of my coins

I can't stop laughing.

I've read Nassim Taleb's books as well. Not only that but I've been following him on Facebook for the past 4 years or so. You're not saying anything new to me.

Not only that but I have a degree in finance from a very reputable school. Not only that, but I have actually come up with my own model of pricing non-dividents paying European options that my professor couldn't find a flaw in. You want me to continue?

I'm not trying to brag about anything, I just want to make a point once and for all that I know the "Finance" and trading topic very very well. It seems it's you who doesn't want to have an open minded view about what I'm trying to say.

What you fail to see is that all the things you've been reading on Black Swans and "randomness" sure exist, but u fail to see how unrelated my original post is to those events. IF ANYTHING, holding your investment for an extended period of time would have a much higher probability for you to experience those events and lose a big share of your investment.

Mature markets behave in a certain way, and new ones in quiet a different way. I don't think you fully grasped the content of the last couple of books you've read. And for your info Nassim Taleb was a big speculator himself, he was betting that the market will crash for the most part of his life (the fat tails of a normal distribution) and made it in 2008.

If you want to talk more about that I'll be happy to do it in person, check your inbox for my Skype ID. But I think things have gone way to far here....
 

Meh. You know (cause I told you already :D), your posts get a lot of respect from me, sgbett. This one is no different, 95% insightful, but a sweeping line like "TA is apophenia" is just, no offense, dumb. Might as well claim particle physics is like predicting lottery numbers -- just because the process is stochastic doesn't mean there are no patterns.

If you don't understand something does that make it dumb?

You got tantalisingly close to grasping it but couldn't quite make the mental leap. The corollary to the question I asked is 'hands up those people who lost BTC trading?'. Of course you probably don't understand why that is important so I will explain.

The reason I didn't ask that question, is because everyone will tell you about the trade they won, not many people will tell you about the losses. That goes for this board, for wall st traders, for poker players, the guy in the bookies betting on the nags, the old lady on the slots in vegas and every other risk/reward scenario in the world. Its an innate feature of human psychology regarding loss aversion. Gamble for enjoyment by all means, but never kid yourself you will win (in the long term) unless you are the house.

See you keep making all these posts about how smart you are, and then also making all these posts that demonstrate you are as thick as two short planks, and need everything explaining to you in terms a 12 year old will understand.

You aren't interested in understanding any viewpoint other than your own. You keep reframing your argument in ways to prove how right *you* are and how everyone else is wrong. Your posts reek of insecurity and a need to prove how smart *you* are. You aren't even interested in arguing the matter at hand, just your personal standing.

I don't care if I am wrong about which way BTC is headed, I just execute trades based on rationality, sane risk/reward, and preservation of capital. I don't care how smart or great people think I am, it doesn't really matter in the end. If I say some dumb ass shit, I expect to get pulled on it, and I'll think about what I said and come back stronger.

Here is an example. I used to think I could trade, then I found out I couldn't then I found out that nobody could. TA is apophenia, a chart can be found to retrospectively justify any trade. Statistics quite handily demonstrate why there are trading legends. The people that 'can' trade are lucky. Sometimes a heads comes up 100 times in a row. At any second you could lose it all.

Whereas you by your own admission, have no skin in the game, but need to come on a forum and tell people what they should be doing, even though you don't even understand the basic concept of risk/reward. Have a deluded idea that you can somehow predict that $1200 was the sell point even though it could have been anywhere from $80. Don't seem to grasp, despite having had it explained to you countless times over, that if the trade goes wrong you can incur significant losses.

Markets are primed to screw traders. The bitcoin market is primed to utterly destroy you. If you knew the first thing about the concept of anti-fragility, or hedging against black swan events then you would shrink into a corner embarrassed at how naive your view of things is. I apologised before because I thought maybe I was being too harsh. Your flippant response to that demonstrates material immaturity and an abhorrent personality flaw that is really going to screw you up in life at some point. I realise now I wasn't being too harsh but too kind. You are a child that needs grow the f' up.

Sure you might catch a few good 'trades' on the way. When it all comes crashing down and you are crying in the ashes of your own ruin maybe then you will feel the humility necessary to count yourself as 'human'.

Please do stick to your word and don't even bother trying to respond. You'll just embarrass yourself even further.

You too, don't get my point. I never said I am an investment guru that never loses money.

Spotting an opportunity doesn't mean I can give you a failure proof advice for the rest of your life. This could've been a one time opportunity, but it was clear to me then that it was an opportunity to be taken advantage of.

All the factors were pointing out that money could be made when it happened, and I'm glad some users too advantage of it.

JayB, please let us know: should we sell now? Yes or not? If yes - where should we place our bids?

Answer that and prove you can consistently beat the market or you are just a troll.

SO you're telling me if you hold your Bitcoins you never lose. Maybe true, but I never said this wasn't true.

This would've also been true if you bought the S&P 500 stocks in 1950 and held it till today (you would've actually made many times your money back). Does that mean this is the best strategy you could've made? Does that mean you made the most returns in the world?

I'm just saying you can gain EVEN MORE by just using your common sense to take advantage of volatility (opportunities).

I'm sorry you are so dumb you can't even give good arguments. I'm not answering your crap anymore.

I only recently finished my 'buy in'  period. Since then, my trades were btc profitable, despite taking place in the bull market. Ironically, my trades earlier this year, during the April aftermath, were btc neutral, but I was completely new to trading then and still had to learn even the most basic methods (not that I'm very experienced now. But I feel confident trading the larger swings at least)

5- I did not know how this announcement will effect the price. I tell you, what I did:

1. Suddenly I saw a red boner on the btc-e chart. I wanted to know what happend, but there was no good news. Then finally something clearer, but I didn't know. Did China ban Bitcoin? Will they ban it? Who can use it? Was it just a recommodation by the central bank?
2. So I sold my Bitcoin for dollars and then had to watch the price rise again. Very good. Panic over. Bought back btc and had less btc.
3. So the day afterwards you can look at the chart. The price went down and up. I made the same wrong decision again and was left with less btc again.
4. After losing 300€ I stopped trading.
5. I did not sell at 600€, not at 500€, not at 400€, not at 500€, not at 600€ and now it is back at 650€.  

I was asking if you increased your bitcoin stash by trading.