This article was written for the 21cryptos' magazine's first edition. If you liked this article, make sure to visit www.21cryptos.com or reach out to their Twitter account to find out more! As a promotion for their first edition, the magazine is going at only$10$5! Without further ado, let's get straight into the article!
Introduction Prior to trading, I played poker actively for about 6 years. When starting out and after two years of paying tuition fees, a turning point for me was when I read Dusty Schmidt’s Treat Your Poker Like A Business, that helped transition my mindset and game from one of taking uninformed gambles to taking systematic and calculated risks.
Once I started trading, I quickly realized that many of the lessons picked up from the tables were directly applicable, familiar concepts such as bankroll management, tilt, and positive expected value, come to mind.
In this article, we’ll go through 5 key concepts, explain how they are related to trading, and what we can learn from them to become better traders.
1. Managing Your Bankroll & Protecting Your Capital
The term bankroll management in poker refers to the same risk management concept in trading.
Just like how professional poker players compete at a stake where their bankroll covers at least 100 buy-ins, professional traders typically risk no more than 1% per trade. This is only a general guideline, as more aggressive players may play with just 20 buy-ins, or a trader risking up to 5% a trade.
Protect your capital! Trading takes a lot of skill, and if you think that everyone trading is making money, think again. It’s not that making money is difficult (especially in this cryptocurrency bull market), but rather, the difficulty lies in preserving capital and keeping the profits. A common saying goes, “take care of your losses, and your profits will take care of itself.”
Trading cryptocurrencies come with a high degree of exchange risk. Your capital is your inventory, and there's a huge risk not only in losing your money, but also your time invested if the site you're on shuts down tomorrow. Keep you money with reputable exchanges, spread it out over various locations, and never invest more than you can afford to lose!
2. Dealing with Variance & Playing a +EV Game
Variance is basically that which deviates from the norm, be it good or bad. And this is where the concept of expected value comes into the picture. Short term variance is part of the game, and it is important to understand that trading is a marathon, not a sprint. The difference between gamblers and professional poker players or traders, is that the latter focus on the outcome of playing the long game.
To avoid being a gambler, one must make trades that have a positive expected value. Do you know the expected value of the trades you make in the market? To really understand what are your odds of making a profit, and the expected size of that profit, requires establishing a set of rules and testing those rules over a large number of trades so you can determine the expected value of your strategy rules.
You may want to buy any coin that has strong fundamentals and a market capitalization of $10m or less, or one that has retested the 200 MA support. Sounds like a good idea, but is it? Only testing that rule over many trading examples and market conditions can really tell you if this simple approach to the market is an effective one.
Strategies do not have to be complicated. They do need to be well tested! If you approach the market without a set of trading rules and an understanding of the expected value of your trading approach, you are a gambler. Yes, you will get lucky and could make great profits. However, in the long run, the profits of the gambling trader are just short term loans.
3. Knowing Your Risk Tolerance
As Dusty Schmidt put it, “part of growing your business is coming to an understanding of how much risk you can tolerate.”
If you have a mindset that you must move up [in stakes] quickly, trade a large size, risk a large amount, and manage your bankroll liberally, you’re setting yourself up for a really big mistake in the long run. That is a gambler’s mentality with which few people can succeed long term.
I look at trading not as a gamble, but as a skill. I want to make a small business out of that skill, and like most businesses, I don’t want to risk having to close up shop. Staying open is the goal first and foremost; maximizing profit is second.
4. Determining Your Style & Knowing When You Have an Edge
Just like how there are different playing styles in poker, such as loose-aggressive, or tight-passive; there are various styles of trading and investing, such as day trading, scalping, position trading, growth investing, value investing, and many more. As an aspiring trader, it is important that you understand your own circumstances, risk preferences, goals, and develop a strategy that suits your style. Read the crypto trader’s essential starter kit here: https://alunacrypto.blogspot.sg/2017/06/essential-beginners-starter-kit-for-cryptocurrency-trading-bitcoin-altcoins-ethereum.html
To find an edge in poker is to understand who the fishes are at the table. From the Rounders movie, "listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker." Also, having an edge means to play hands with positive expectancy, knowing when you have a better hand than your opponent and maximizing your profit, while minimizing losses when behind.
In trading, this is akin to first understanding the general market conditions, then taking trades with positive expectancy, that is, trades that stand to win more than they lose over the long term, so that you make more in your winning trades than lose in your losers.
A common mistake new traders make is in being myopic about technical analysis, without factoring critical overarching concepts such as the general market conditions, market cycles, trader psychology, and risk management. Why sit at a table with 8 sharks? If general market conditions are not favourable, don’t take the trade. In poker, you typically play less than 15% of your hands in a full ring table. Similarly, in trading, sit out when you don’t have an edge.
5. Managing Your Emotions
Traders who have played poker should be familiar with something called “going on tilt.” In the poker world, this refers to a state of psychological or emotional frustration or confusion that causes the player to start making decisions that are less than ideal. Usually, this means adopting overly aggressive strategies that are unlikely to work, and which the player would never use in a more psychologically sound state of mind. Poker players usually go on tilt because they are frustrated with their own mistakes, with bad luck, or with other players. Does that sound familiar?
If we are not emotionally prepared for the possibility of losing, we are more likely to be thrown by losses. We set ourselves up for the tilt state by needing and expecting to win, rather than letting probabilities play themselves out and accept that there will be winning and losing periods.
Emotional control can also be improved by understanding probability and variance, and setting long term monetary goals instead of short term ones. Respect your risk management plan, and lose your ego. When you know you are on tilt or off your A game, the faster you get off the tables (or stop trading for the day), the more money you will save in the long run.
Conclusion
There is a multitude of lessons that traders can learn from professional poker players, since both involve similar characteristics of incentive, risk taking, strategy, probability, emotions, psychology, and mental discipline. Success is determined not so much as which strategy but the determination and discipline by the trader to carry out the plan. At the end of the day, be careful not to treat trading like gambling. Remember, trading is a business more than anything!
This article was written for the 21cryptos' magazine's first edition. If you liked this article, make sure to visit www.21cryptos.com or their Twitter account, to purchase their first article at an affordable price of only $10 $5, and enjoy over 50 pages of cryptocurrecy market insights, analysis, and articles. Also make sure to look out for future editions as I continue to be a guest writer for 21cryptos.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking about trading Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies at the first CryptoSG meet-up in Singapore, alongside 6 others speakers who covered various other topics about Bitcoin, Altcoins, and Blockchain technology.
In this presentation, I introduced an approach to trading that (I hope) is not what your typical "trading course" or "technical analysis class" would teach, and shared a method that I believe is one of, if not the only way to be able to make sense the market with a complete picture. I shared some tips and overarching concepts that I feel are more important than just charts and indicators, and hopefully this will be able to shorten your learning curve and help you find a footing in the market without having to go through the same mistakes I made.
Why does this methodology of "market structure" and "emotional market crash cycle" work so well? If you think about it, the only common denominator between all markets is nothing other than the people trading them. Therefore I believe it stands to reason that human emotions and trader psychology play an immensely critical role in being able to understand how markets work.
I'll just leave it at that so I don't spoil the rest of the video for you. Unfortunately, the first 5 minutes or so of the live talk got cut off due to technical issues, but I also recorded it into a webinar if you're interested to watch the complete presentation. Enjoy!
This presentation was merely an introduction and a very brief high-level overview of how to approach trading, where I highlighted a wide range of important things to look out for, but you probably still have a ton of more specific questions such as about how to get started, what to look out for on a chart, or how you can apply market structure and the emotional crash cycle into your trading strategy.
It's impossible to condense 3-5 years of experience and knowledge into a single book or a video which you can absorb and magically become a pro trader. There's no short cut to becoming a profitable trader, except through hard work and dedication, with time and experience.
Don't be afraid of getting your hands dirty; learn by executing trades and making mistakes, because nobody ever learnt how to ride a bicycle by reading a book. With the right attitude to succeed, you too can eventually become a full-time trader and achieve your lifestyle or financial goals. However, know that it is not an easy road; never give up, keep learning and improving, and you will be rewarded in the end.
In life as in trading, many things don't go according to plan. If you fall, get back up.
— Aluna Cryptocurrency (@AlunaCrypto) July 9, 2017
To supplement what I covered in the presentation in my previous blog post, spend an hour to listen to this @chatwithtraders podcast with Michele Koenig who has over 14 years of trading experience and shares very relatable information about how to approach trading and start out as a beginner.
Lastly, I just want to again highlight the last but most important point about trading, and that is risk management. This is probably the most undervalued component of trading especially for new traders, and is coincidentally why most people continue to blow up their accounts.
If you play Texas Hold'em, or some other form of poker, you may have heard about 'bankroll management' and this concept applies to trading perfectly. Just like how professional poker players compete at a stake where their bankroll covers at least 30-100 buy-ins, professional traders typically risk no more than 1-2% per trade.
You can have the best strategy and psychology. But without proper risk management, you'll blow your account up.
One of the most common sayings on Wall Street is to let your winners run and cut your losses short. Many new traders make the mistake of being patient at the wrong time, and holding onto a losing trade longer than they should. This is caused by 2 things, firstly not having a trading plan in the first place and hence allowing emotions to eventually get the better of you, and trading without a stop loss. Stop-losses can help you to quickly cut losses when a trade goes south, as well as to protect your profits as you continue to ride the trend. Read more about how to use stop-losses effectively with these tutorials by @Rayner_Teo, an esteemed financial markets trader who's also from Singapore.
How to set a trailing stop loss to protect your profits and ride big trendshttps://t.co/6dg9pc0kU7
With that, I hope I have opened up your mind with a unique view on how to approach the markets and changed your perception on what trading is all about, and also provided you with some practical information that can help you kick-start your trading journey.
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave them in the comments section, or reach out to me on Twitter, Telegram, and join the AlunaCrypto community on Telegram to discuss Bitcoin and Altcoin markets, share price and technical analysis, and keep up to date with the cryptocurrency market.
Made a windfall during the recent cryptocurrency bull trend?
Thinking of taking out your student loan to invest long term in Bitcoin, Ethereum, or some other alternative cryptocurrency and blockchain technology?
Considering to quit your day job to be a full time cryptocurrency trader?
Before you take an impulsive step that will drastically change your life for better or worse, take a step back and consider what this actually means, and if you have adequately planned for what you're getting yourself into. Are you sure that you are ready to play the hardest game in the world?
Before you actually take out that loan, or submit your resignation letter, know that most professional traders spend first 3-7 years losing. pic.twitter.com/PSmvH1LAuh
— Alvin Lee 🚀🚀🚀 (@onemanatatime) June 17, 2017
Whether you're new to this whole trading game, or if you have some experience trading traditional markets but feel like crypto "is a totally different animal", this post is for you!
If you're just like most new traders, you might not even understand what a "pip" is, or have no clue where to get started in reading and interpreting charts & candlesticks, and everything may look very foreign, daunting and overwhelming at first sight, but fret not!
Cryptocurrency trading is no different from trading traditional markets, and in fact provides a more level playing field with relatively less "smart money" in the game today, and if I may say, "easier" to learn too. Whether or not you have any prior trading experience, this blog post aims to provide you with a starter-pack of essential knowledge and resources to help you learn trading, and to present a framework with which you can approach trading cryptocurrencies and the global markets at large.
Trading and the world of Bitcoin and Altcoins may seem like trying to navigate through a dense jungle at first, but once you learn how to read your compass, have the right lenses on with which to view the markets through, and with the right attitude and propensity to keep trying & improving, you will quickly be able to develop an eye for the market and chart patterns, and begin to make sense of it all.
Indeed it is fact that most professional traders start their career by losing for the first 3, 5 or even 7 years. On the flip side, I assure you that this is no rocket science. With the right strategy, proper risk management and discipline, anyone can make trading profitable, even you! So let's get down to it...
— Alvin Lee 🚀🚀🚀 (@onemanatatime) July 9, 2017
What is a Market?
No matter how you look at it, you became a trader the first day you
bought your first Bitcoin, Ethereum, or altcoin, from someone else.
Whether you're trading as a hobby, want to make this your full-time
career, or simply just dipping your toes into the world of blockchains
and cryptographic currencies, I believe it is prudent for you to at
least arm yourself with basic trading techniques and price analysis
frameworks, since trading is an integral aspect of owning
cryptocurrencies that you cannot avoid whether you like it or not.
Before we get into the tutorial proper, let's start off by looking at the markets and trading from a more abstract perspective.
What's the one thing in common between all traded markets, be it stocks, bonds, commodities, or even cryptocurrencies? You may have guessed it, it's none other than the human beings trading it, and it is the emotions of these people that drive prices in the market. By this logic, we can argue that price is the collective representation of human emotions, and hence emotions and psychology are a critical puzzle piece and first step to understanding the rules of the game.
We all have different styles, from the clothes we wear, to the time we sleep and wake, to the type of diets we have. Similarly with trading, we all have different risk appetite and propensity, schedules, preferences, portfolio size, and it essential for someone getting into trading to first figure out what type of trader you are, to form your own unique understanding of the market, your own perception of how to analyze the market, and your own framework on how to approach the market.
With that said, though there are many different parameters you can tweak to develop your own style, there are several over-arching factors that you need to take care of regardless of your strategy or style, and the path that you have taken.
The rest of this post will cover these key concepts, to give you a baseline for devising your own approach to trading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, that you can bring along with you everywhere and trade any kind of market all the same.
Understanding Yourself - What Type of Trader Are You?
To begin, let's start with the simple yet effective 5W1H (except the 'when', which isn't all that relevant here) questioning technique, and dig in to understand ourselves better.
First and foremost, WHY do you trade and WHAT do you want to achieve?
Do you want to achieve financial freedom? Make some side income? Have an interest in the technology and wish to invest in it for the long term? Or do you wish to travel the world without being bound to a desk-job?
Whatever the reason, make it clear to yourself and seek the advice and support of your family and friends.
WHO are you? WHEN can you trade?
Do you work a 9-5 job or are you a freelancer? Do you wake up at sunrise and go to bed at sundown, or are you a night owl? What is your schedule like? Do you have a family and kids, or are you single? Are you studying, or working?
I'm sure you already know all this about yourself, but have you also considered these factors in developing your trading style?
WHAT type of trader are you?
Only after figuring out the why, what, who, and when of your trading,
can you be able to tailor your strategy to suit your circumstances.
Are you a day trader, swing trader, or position trader? If you're working a full-time job and can't babysit your positions throughout the day, don't attempt to be a day trader trading 15m candles but focus on higher timeframes such as 6h, 12h or 1d candle charts instead!
And the million dollar question, HOW can you devise a profitable trading strategy, suited to who you are, to achieve your goals and live your dreams? Unfortunately, there's no straight answer here, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or out to cheat your money. The answer lies in you, to understand yourself, your needs and your goals, in order to create your own unique strategy. But that's not all...
The art of trading is a simple yet seemingly complex task of putting together all the available bits and pieces of information to form a complete picture, in a world of incomplete information. On top of that, it involves 100s if not 1000s of hours of testing setups and strategies, finding your own way to make sense of it all, gaming probabilities, creating a plan and diligently following it, and most importantly, controlling your emotions and learning to apply proper risk management.
Nobody said it was easy, but if you are ready to play the hardest game in the world, I'll try my best to hone you in the basics of the art of trading and to get you started on this adventure.
For a primer on what to look out for as a beginner trader, spend some time to listen to this podcast where Jerry Robinson shares his journey, experience, and growth as a trader, and covers a wide range of diverse topics perfect for beginners, from the importance of having and following a trading plan/system, to the difference between the types of trading styles, to technical and fundamental analysis, emotions, the use of stop losses, and more.
Perfect starter kit & trading intro.
Day, swing, or position trader?
TA vs FA, Emotions, Strategy, & more!https://t.co/6PUAsPXa0S@FTMdaily
— Alvin Lee 🚀🚀🚀 (@onemanatatime) June 16, 2017
How Do You Trade?
Analyzing
markets can involve the use of one of or a combination of numerous
methods, such as fundamental analysis, technical analysis, quantitative
analysis, based on retail order flow, based on news, or by following
other people's tips or "insider information".
Should
be obvious but I'll just emphasize anyway, you should NOT be entering a
trade based on a gut feeling, or on a coin toss, or worse
still based on a "hot tip" from your uncle, colleague, or something you
heard on the TV.
Everyone has their own unique style, and the hard truth is that while some of them work, most don't.
Moving forward, we'll break down trading into somewhat modular components and look at what determines a good trade, how you can start winning and be a profitable trader, look at some of the things you can do to avoid the trap of trading based off hot tips, and provide you with the necessary skills and knowledge to approach trading and conduct yourself in the market.
What Determines a "Good Trade"?
1. Trend is your friend
Generally, you should only take trades in the direction of the trend. i.e. only long / buy in a bull market and never try to short it until the trend has shown to reversed.
2. Price
What is price? Price is the representation of a value that market participants are willing to pay for a stock or commodity. (Read: Cost vs Price vs Worth vs Value)
Price should always be taken relative to something else. You are probably familiar with the BTC/USD pair, which represents the value of BTC in terms of USD, as well as the pairs with other fiat currencies. However, do not limit your perception, since price is relative, we can value BTC in terms of other commodities, such as gold (TradingView: BTC/Gold), or even big macs (Bitcoin Purchasing Power Index).
Lastly, 'cheap' and 'expensive' are relative terms. A coin should not be seen as cheap just because it costs 1 satoshi, compared to Bitcoin for example that costs over $2000. Price should be analyzed in relation to it's market cap (supply * price), as well as the perceived value of the company, commodity, or cryptocurrency.
3. Timing
Market timing is an often overlooked yet hugely critical component of a good trade. As some traders would say, "when it comes to trading, timing is everything."
There's no 'good' price without a 'good' timing. You can buy at a 'high' price but at a 'perfect' timing and it'll be a good trade, but if your timing is 'bad', your 'good' price could quickly go against you and end up being a 'bad' or losing trade.
Here's a couple of articles for you to further digest the concept and importance of market timing in trading:
To chase or not to chase, that is the question. Well, not really. It is a no brainer to know that chasing price is a sure way to increase your risk, decrease your profit potential and, in time, probably blow your account.
What most new traders might find perplexing at first is that you don't have to win >50% of your trades to be profitable. There is an important concept called "risk-reward ratio" in trading, that can make you a profitable trader even if only 25% of your trades are winners, by taking only trades with rewards that outweigh the risks by >3x. i.e. you can make 3 losing trades at a loss of $1 each, only make 1 winning trade with a profit of $3, and still end up breaking even.
So back to the question, how can we win? Perhaps to answer this question, we might get some clues by studying how people lose. People lose in two ways, by being impatient and getting into trades at the wrong time, or by being patient at the wrong time and holding on to a losing trade longer than they should. Don't be that guy.
The elements of good trading are:
(1) cutting losses,
(2) cutting losses, and
(3) cutting losses. pic.twitter.com/mxnsqOFF4i
— Aluna Cryptocurrency (@AlunaCrypto) May 20, 2017
Cut Your Losses Short and Let Your Winners Run
One of the most enduring sayings on Wall Street is "cut your losses
short and let your winners run." Sage advice, but many investors still
appear to do the opposite, selling stocks after a small gain only to
watch them head higher, or holding a stock with a small loss, only to
see it worsen. (Source: The Art Of Cutting Your Losses)
It may be a
little counter-intuitive at first, but the path to winning lies simply in
managing your losses. As the saying goes,
"take care of your losses and your profits will take care of itself".
For most professional traders, stop-losses
are an integral part of any trading system, especially as you start to
automate strategies. Be it the scalper looking to buy a high momentum
breakout, or a position trader getting in at the accumulation phase,
professional traders plan their exits (both take-profit, and stop-loss
levels) before even entering a position.
The benefits of having a stop loss include:
Preventing you from blowing up your trading account
Limiting your losses
Living to “fight” another day
However, in crypto, and especially in the less mature markets, you may find it close to impossible in low liquidity markets to use stop-losses without running the risk of losing your entire accumulated position due to one careless wick. It is still advisable to use stop-losses especially when swing or day trading more liquid markets (e.g. 1000 btc daily volume or more), or at least have a plan and perhaps alerts set up to tell you when you should get out of your trade if you don't physically have a stop-loss order in place. Knowing exactly where to place your stop loss will take time & practice to hone, and there's no better way to learn than to actually get trading.
Regardless, the concept of booking profits by moving stop-losses up, like a trailing stop-loss, should always be exercised to protect your profits during big trends and at the same time keep your draw-downs low.
If trading is new to you, something basic like reading the chart might be a little confusing at first. However like I said, this is no rocket science. Learn more about the basics of reading a chart, meaning of trading terms, and other technical analysis tools and patterns to help in your analysis, with resources such as my other blog posts, investopedia.com or babypips.com.
Trading analysis methods usually fall into two distinct categories; Technical Analysis (TA) or Fundamental Analysis (FA). You can find out more about the differences between fundamental and technical analysis by reading this Investopedia article here and this writeup on diffen.com.
Fundamental Analysis refers to the study of the merits of the company behind a stock, typically by looking at a company's earnings, earnings per share, revenue, profit, growth, return on equity, and etc. Or in the case of cryptocurrencies, FA would include factors such as the project's technology and product, the strength of the development team, support from the community, and etc.
Technical Analysis, on the other hand, involves the study of price action, looking for structure, cycles, patterns and setups based on price data and probabilities. TA is more of an art than a science. It is a science in that there are probabilities and quantitative data to analyze, but with people involved, it becomes a social science. As pointed out above, markets are traded by people, and people are irrational. Though chart patterns have probabilities of success and failure, it is ultimately decided by the market's participants and governed by their emotions, and hence TA is unable to 'predict' the precise price or timing of a move due to the multitude of factors that affect each other in a web, and where the action of one man can change everything.
"To be a good trader, u need to trade w ur eyes open, recognize real trends & turn, & not waste time/energy on regrets & wishful thinking." pic.twitter.com/kf9FSX4vaL
Most traders use a combination of both, in some manner not very different from this: Use FA to sort out the stocks that you'll actually put money into, while using TA predominantly to find entry point, to filter the stocks picked by FA, figure out which one is the right one to enter, right now. You may have a universe of great stocks, but knowing WHEN to buy them, is the key if you're a trader.
Although FA gives you an idea of which stock is a good buy, it gives zero clue on the timing of entry for the trade. It is prudent to note that not only does FA not consider stop losses, it tends to go completely against stop loss strategies by encouraging one to add to a losing position, when price decreases while the fundamentals (e.g. P/E ratio) of the company remains the same. Whereas for TA, the concept of stop-losses and cutting losses short is imbued into most all strategies, and as mentioned is a key to preventing you from blowing your accounts.
Fantastic (audio) book for beginners about how to approach trading and technical analysis.
— Alvin Lee 🚀🚀🚀 (@onemanatatime) May 30, 2017
Trading Strategy, Plan and Ruleset
According to Wikipedia, a trading strategy is a fixed plan that is designed to achieve a profitable return by going long or short in markets.
Would you drive a car on the road without understanding the road rules? I'm guessing you probably wouldn't, unless you wanted to dramatically increase the chances of a crash. So why is it that we still see so many new traders, rushing into the markets with no trading rules in place? Laziness, ignorance? Who knows, but one thing is certain... if you trade without any rule based trading strategies in place, then you are positioning yourself for disaster.
It may be difficult to even know where to start at first, and it will take some time looking at charts, trying out various indicators, before you can get some idea of what may or may not work. From there, find some potentially profitable setups, and add parameters to your ruleset for entering and exiting a position.
Besides the technical ruleset for the execution of trades itself, you should also seek to incorporate portfolio management considerations into your strategy. This could include things like your goals, a plan to manage risk, trade size, maintaining a trade journal, or even an exercise or diet regime to keep your mind sharp.
By fixing your trading plan before taking any positions, and strictly following your plan and the rules you set in place, you should be able to better handle your emotions, as you trade based on quantifiable targets instead of relying on guesswork and being lost without any predetermined targets or exit plan.
Stop focusing on the perfect entry.
Instead, FOCUS ON:
Risk management
Trade management
Position sizing
Emotional control
Exits
There's a reason why 3 out of 5 of these relate to managing your losses and risk, and we'll explain that in greater detail later. Here's some readings about forming a trading plan and how to go about creating rules for your trading strategy:
Another fantastic podcast with @basso_tom about trader psychology, trend following, rulesets processes & automation:https://t.co/KxCY2HkUch
— Alvin Lee 🚀🚀🚀 (@onemanatatime) June 16, 2017
Emotions & Trader Psychology
You may have heard the saying, that when your neighbour (or mother) starts buying, you know it's almost time to sell. This is true because trading is a zero-sum game, meaning that for every seller there is a buyer, for every winner there is a loser. In addition, information is more valuable the less people have it. The idea is that if "dumb money", or the mom-and-pop investor, is buying and yell that it is going to be the next best thing and will make him rich, it should be time for you to sell.
Again, such emotional tells work in a market, based on our assumption that human emotions and trader psychology are drivers of prices, and critical components or puzzle pieces in understanding how this game works. Other than your neighbour or mom buying, other tell-tale signs include even things like tattoos.
Remember this one? Posted 2 days after the Bitcoin ATH of $1,163 in 2013. Imo tattoos like this are a pretty good indicator of exuberance. pic.twitter.com/wsnJLP1IjK
Ethereum is not a bubble. Etherium is not a bubble. Eterium is not a bubble. Etheriem is not a bubble. Ehtireum is not a bubble. pic.twitter.com/GgpaIty0mw
— Alvin Lee 🚀🚀🚀 (@onemanatatime) June 25, 2017
When people start getting overconfident or complacent, to the point where they get so deeply and emotionally attached to the stock/coin, you should take a step back and realize that euphoria is kicking in and the top may be near or already in. Examples would be people talking about buying lambos, mansions, yachts, or calling the investment a "store of value", "long term investment" after a 10x rise in price, or saying things like "i just need to hold for 1 year and i'll be rich".
— Alvin Lee 🚀🚀🚀 (@onemanatatime) May 21, 2017
"I think ripple is becoming a store of value"
Contrarian investing is epitomized by Baron Rothchild's quote, "the time to buy is when there's blood in the streets." The name of the game here, keeping the emotional crash cycle in mind, would be to buy the fear, and sell the greed. Burn this chart into your mind, because it is the single most important concept you need to know about markets and trends, in order to get the big picture and make sense of it all.
"Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria." pic.twitter.com/YpFXipG4bR
Watch the video below by @cryptopicasso who explains succinctly why and how this cycle is relevant to all of trading. If you like the video, you can subscribe to his webinar tutorial package for 0.5 BTC. Make sure to mention that you were referred by @onemanatatime, to enjoy $100 off your subscription fee.
To delve deep into trader psychology, listen to this interview with Mark Douglas, author of "Trading in the Zone", where he discusses trading psychology and risk management, as well as another podcast, How to master trading psychology with Brett Steenbarger by @chatwithtraders.
Risk Management is undoubtedly the #1 most underrated trading philosophy, and also the most disregarded by new traders, who incidentally continue to blow up their accounts until they fix this.
You can have the best strategy with insanely high gains, but if you are risking 20% or 50% on every trade, or if you cannot keep your draw-downs low, it is a risk management disaster and is not a good trading strategy! As a guide, in traditional markets, profitable ETFs and hedge funds look for draw-downs of no more than 7-10% per month, averaging about 10-20% or more profits per year.
Rule number one of trading is you want to let your winners run, and cut your losses short. And back to our earlier point that if you manage your losses, your profits will take care of themselves. Sure, crypto is a different animal altogether, and your profits could be in the 100s or 1000s of %, but if you don't cut your losses to aggressively protect your bottom line and drawdowns, it'll only be a matter of time before you blow your account.
In terms of trade size management - never go all in on one trade! Set rules so that you risk only 2% (or 5%, or 10%, or more depending on your risk appetite) of your portfolio in a single trade. And lastly, don't overtrade!
"Major mistake made by novice traders is their bet size is too large -- often they risk 5%, 10% or more of capital on an individual trade."
Some platforms offer up to 100x or even 500x leverage. With margin trading, small moves in price in the wrong direction can wipe you account (Read: Margin Call) if you're overleveraged or trading too big a position than you can afford.
Friendly piece of advice, don't use more than 10x leverage, or even 3x for that matter, especially if you are not familiar with Margin Trading!
Your Attitude
Your attitude is everything, not just in trading, but also in life. So let me just leave you with a couple of last points and my personal thoughts about the attitude of a good trader:
1. Don't think you're better than anyone else, or that you know it all. Be humble!
— Alvin Lee 🚀🚀🚀 (@onemanatatime) June 8, 2017
2. Be open to new ideas that may not necessarily agree with yours. Be objective with all kinds of information, remove bias and emotions when analyzing a chart.
— Alvin Lee 🚀🚀🚀 (@onemanatatime) June 8, 2017
4. Never give up!
I hope this post has given you the essential knowledge to find your way around in this cryptocurrency trading jungle, and has provided you with some practical insight into starting your own trading journey, and how to go about approaching trading and analyzing markets. Will go in depth into technical analysis in one of my next posts, but for now, let me just leave you with this...
Have no prior experience, but want to learn the ropes of trading markets?
Bought some bitcoins and not sure what to do with it?
You've come to the right place!
Here's a complete guide to trading cryptographic currencies such as Bitcoin & Altcoins, tailored to suit both beginners and advanced traders, whether you're familiar with or new to cryptocurrencies.
This tutorial includes topics ranging from the basics of Bitcoin as a technology and trading instrument, a technical analysis framework for approaching trading, basic and advanced technical analysis tools, fundamental analysis of cryptocurrencies including altcoins, and tips for developing an effective and personal trading strategy. The full outline of the contents is as follows:
Bitcoin as a Technology, Currency, and Trading Instrument: What is Bitcoin?
Introduction to Trading: How it Applies to Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin & Altcoin Markets: Introduction to Cryptocurrency Trading
Technical Analysis Framework: Mass Market Psychology & Emotional Cycle
Technical Analysis Tools: Basics
Technical Analysis Tools: Advanced
Fundamental Analysis: Cryptocurrency Characteristics
Fundamental Analysis: Picking the Next Profitable Altcoin
Developing a Profitable & Effective Trading Strategy
I hope this post and other material on my blog and twitter teaches you how to approach trading markets such as Bitcoin and Altcoins, provides you with valuable, practical, and effective tutorials and insights that is easily understood and applied, and enables you to develop a profitable trading strategy that is tailored to your personal requirements and risk appetite.
Thank you for your support! If you like my work and would like to see more, consider contributing a coffee in Bitcoins to me at: 1Hbodfhu7Nx1RJZmpudVfiiDTpG2o24mMi
Bitcoin as a Technology, Currency, and Trading Instrument: What is Bitcoin?
Before we get into trading, let's go through the basics of what Bitcoin actually is, as a technology, as an alternative to FIAT currencies, its implications, and what makes it a potentially revolutionary technology.
How are digital currencies created? Just like physical currencies, digital currencies like Bitcoin don’t just pop into existence; they have to be made. In physical currencies, paper bills are printed and coins are minted by government agencies, then distributed into the banking system. In the same way, digital currencies must be created and distributed to users. For a digital currency like Bitcoin, the currency is created by a software application. This software runs on each computer connected to the Bitcoin network. All of the computers connected to the network work together, sharing the complex calculations necessary to create each Bitcoin, and a certain number of bitcoins are created each day. This process is called mining, and is not free, as it costs computer power and electricity. To compensate computer owners for their work, bitcoins are paid to the software users connected to the network. How are balances kept and transactions processed? Just like at your bank, your account balance and transactions are stored on a server. At your bank, the bank owns the server. But, as a digital currency, Bitcoin's account data resides on a peer-to-peer (computer-to-computer) network that consists of all the computers logged into the network. This allows for additional security as there is no single server that hackers can attack, and each transaction is verified by all the computers on the network. Just like logging into your bank account with your browser, you can see your Bitcoin balance and spend it using a Bitcoin Wallet App. The wallet gives you all the info you need, just like using your browser for banking transactions. The Wallet App is available in several versions: Online, MAC, Windows, Android, and IOS.
Chris Dunn goes into great detail about the basics of Bitcoin and the blockchain technology and trading, while keeping it non-technical and simple to understand. I'll be quoting him a lot for the first portion of this post. From his book, he explains the technology behind Bitcoin, what determines its money supply, and how that differs from our current monetary systems where governments print money and the banks distribute it:
"Bitcoin is not governed by political whims, instead it is governed by the laws of mathematics. Its source code uses advanced cryptography to secure the network and regulate the process of new Bitcoins created. The source code is completely open source, which means anyone who understands coding language can review it. Nothing is hidden. When you purchase Bitcoin, your money is locked on the public ledger and can be accessed anytime with your private keys. For this reason, there is no limit to how many Bitcoins you can send or receive, and there is no third party that can restrict your Bitcoin transactions. Financial institutions cannot counterfeit or arbitrarily create more Bitcoins because the core protocol of the blockchain times the flow in which new coins are created."
He goes further to discuss decentralization and how Bitcoin puts the power back into YOUR hands.
"Usually all our money or data is stored on centralized servers, which requires trust in a third party. Traditionally, when your money is in your bank account, your bank's servers are a single point of failure to be attacked, which makes your data extremely vulnerable. In a decentralized network, information can be broken into pieces and encrypted. This creates multiple points that need to be attacked in order to access information to take down the network. Bitcoin truly is a revolutionary technology that is changing the rules of society. Now is the time to take a couple of steps ahead of the herd and place yourself on the cutting edge of this transformation. I promise it will pay off. With that many advantages Bitcoin offers, the market is growing exponentially. The growth creates massive opportunity for traders. Opportunities like this don't come around often, and I hope you are beginning to see the very potential Bitcoin has created."
He then goes on to discuss the viability of Bitcoin "mining" today, and explains how it compares with trading:
"And while you may have heard about the opportunity to profit from mining, for small scale operations it is actually cheaper to buy Bitcoins than it is to mine them. Only major industrial operations can make money from mining. By far the easiest and most profitable way to make money in this industry is by trading Bitcoin with an effective strategy. This requires no setup expense whatsoever -- all you need is a strategy that works. And we have a proven strategy which we're willing to share with anyone who's serious about learning it."
Introduction to Trading: How it Applies to Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
Buying Bitcoin opens up the doors to trading - bitcoin itself is a tradable asset against the USD and other currencies. As a result, being involved in Bitcoin naturally introduces one to trading markets, because from the offset, the price volatility creates the need for users to make a bitcoin purchase at a favourable target price. Therefore it is crucial that you learn the basics of trading and arm yourself with the necessary skills to maintain or even grow the value of your investments.
If you're looking for a "stock" to buy in 2016, #Bitcoin is one of e best choices. Only 3-6 mths timeframe, w immense potential profit. $BTC
Chris Dunn, one of my favourite trading gurus and experts in Bitcoin Trading recently sent me a copy of his book, titled "Bitcoin: How to Trade it for Serious Profit (Even If You're A Complete Beginner)". It's a really good read with very practical strategies and easy-to-apply techniques that you can use today to improve your trading.
He also has a ton of training material and useful resources about trading strategies and market calls, and I highly recommend you check out his work on his website, youtube and twitter accounts!
I'll be using some his material for this portion of my post, because honestly, I can't think of a better way to say it than the way he did. So here goes; I compiled what I think is the most important and applicable concepts that you ought to know for trading Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, which can also be applied to trading any other market.
"Trading is about making emotionless decisions to buy or sell an asset based on probabilities. Just like a casino knows the odds are in their favour, professional traders use strategy and risk management to tip the scales in their favour. Trading is a zero sum game. Every trade has two investors taking opposite positions on the price -- one on buys, the other sells. Because of this, someone is bound to lose. When two people agree on a price, a trade is executed and the market valuation is set. Usually buyers set orders lower than people who want to sell. This creates 2 sides of an order book between buyers and sellers. When there are more buyers than sellers the prices goes up, and when there's more sellers than buyers the price goes down. The constant exchange of prices forces the market into periods of equilibrium followed by bursts of volatility.
Many people think the only way you can make money trading Bitcoin is to buy low and sell high. But that's only half the equation! You can long, or you can short. When you long, you're betting that the future price of Bitcoin will be higher than your original position. So you're BUYING Bitcoin. When you short, you're betting that the future price will be lower than your position. So you're SELLING first with the goal of buying back at a lower price in the future. Find the trend early. At any given time, the market is only doing one of three things: trending, channeling, or breaking out. Markets don't go straight up and down. A trending market is when a market is stair-stepping up or down. The easiest type of trade for most people to take is a "trend trade". There are 8 basic components to a trade: 1) Order book 2) Reading the market 3) Candlesticks 4) Reading charts 5) Margin trading 6) Long and Short trades 7) Margin call 8) Stop order Reading the Markets. Price charts are very simply the visual representation of the actions of all market participants. In other words, there's no magic behind the bars moving up or down. Rather, the driving force behind price moving up and down is the buying and selling actions from all traders. Sometimes, market prices show signs of a general trend. A bull market happens when prices progressively increase, and a bear market shows a steady decline in value. The movement in price is generally referred to as price action. Looking at the swings in price and interpreting it for patterns is called technical analysis. New traders should learn the ropes first before trying to grow their accounts with leverage. Also, you shouldn't trade with money you can't afford to lose."
Bitcoin & Altcoin Markets: Introduction to Cryptocurrency Trading
Here's a little history lesson about Bitcoin's price since inception. Bitcoin has been through several price bubbles, characterized by exuberant buying into a parabolic price structure, and eventually correcting back down quickly and crashing over 80% from the peak over a short period of time.
Over the last 8 years since Bitcoin was created, it has gone through about 3 notable bubbles, first when it climbed from under $0.01 in early 2010 to $0.80 in November 2010 and then to $32 in July 2011 before the bubble burst, sending price on a downtrend for 2 years and hit a low of $2 at one point. Our second bubble came in April 2013 and coincided with the Cyprus financial collapse, where we saw prices break above the previous high of $32 to about $260, before crashing down to about $50. And the third bubble came later the same year, where prices peaked at $1200 in November 2013.
Since the beginning of 2014, Bitcoin price went on a year-long downtrend, making lows of about $160, over 80% decline since the $1200 peak. This low came in early 2015, and prices consolidated and stabilized within the $200-300 range for a large part of 2015. The 1.5 year downtrend was finally broken somewhere mid-2015, followed by a break above $300 in October 2015. Since then, we have been trading between $300 and $500, and more recently within a wedge ranging between $382 and $420. Read about my analysis of price action during the periods since September 2015 in these previous posts:
"Just like any world-changing market or technology, Bitcoin has gone through several crash and boom cycles in its history. It's the normal process of "price discovery", or finding the fair market value of a new asset."
Will there be a 4th Bitcoin Bubble, bringing prices about $1200? And could it happen in 2016? In order to tackle this question, let's first take a look at some fundamentals of Bitcoin and its underlying technology:
In 2016, you have probably heard a lot more of the term "Blockchain" than "Bitcoin" itself. The Bitcoin blockchain refers to an electronic ledger that records all transactions that take place on the Bitcoin network, that is fully open-source and transparent. There are more applications for blockchains than just money, and the fact that the blockchain can bring about revolutionary improvements to our current processes and systems is only now starting to be understood by companies and individuals at the forefront of technology and embracing change.
Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology is becoming more widely accepted, and is currently being tested by various corporate institutions including a group of big banks and a consortium called R3, and even accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC). Not to forget about the exponentially increasing number of merchants, including big names like Overstock and Microsoft, that are now accepting Bitcoin as an alternative form of payment to credit cards and cash.
Bitcoin is often referred to as Digital Gold, making it not a far-fetched proposition to compare it to physical gold. These two markets tend to work in similar fashion, from the point of view that Bitcoin may be seen as an alternative "safe haven" asset or commodity in times of economic crises, much like gold, as was demonstrated in April 2013 when Bitcoin rose to over $200 over a short period of time during the Cyprus financial crisis. In fact, proponents of Bitcoin would argue that Bitcoin is a better form of money than compared to physical Gold, especially in the 21st century, in terms of fungibility, transportability, and divisibility. Here's how Bitcoin looks compared to Gold:
Third thing to consider is that Bitcoin turns 8 year old in 2016. Based on the Bitcoin algorithm that determines its fixed money supply and schedule of distribution, the amount of coins that is added into the network halves approximately every 4 years, or more accurately, every 210,000 blocks with each block estimated to take 10 minutes. The next supply halving will happen in July 2016 (source: http://bitcoinclock.com/).
The liquidity of the Bitcoin market is only a small fraction of real world money markets such as Forex, Gold, Oil, other commodities, and Indices like the S&P 500 Index (SPX).
There are over 1000 different altcoins, and the liquidity of these markets can range from peanuts, even some with 0 trading volume over 24h, to highly liquid cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, and more recently Factom, Dash, Monero, MaidSafe, and several others that have also been trading at significant daily volumes of 1000 BTC and above.
However, the number of coins that fall into this category only make up a small proportion of the total population of altcoins in existence.
The altcoin market is made up largely of illiquid cryptocurrencies tradable against BTC, and sometimes other units of currencies such as the USD, LTC, or XMR. With that said, there are also several top tier alternative cryptocurrencies that are sufficiently liquid, enough to trade it without too much worry, as I have shared above. There are also less liquid coins which usually have less than 25 BTC or even 10 BTC trading volume per day, but also have potential for greater gains even though you will be limited to investing 1-2 BTCs due to the liquidity of the coin, and you'll have to keep a much closer watch on them. Keep in mind that the lower liquidity a market has, the higher the risk associated with it.
With that in mind, and if you're ready to dip your toes into this exciting world of cryptocurrency trading, here are some general guidelines to trading altcoins, especially applicable if you're new to all of this:
Trade altcoin markets that have significant volume. With altcoins, trading volume is a must. As a rule of thumb, don't trade an altcoin market that has a 24 hour volume under 10 BTC, or up to 50 BTC if you're more risk adverse. A market with little trading volume is easily manipulated by insiders, pumpers, and bigger traders. Stick to the liquid coins and you'll have an extra layer of protection.
Trade altcoins that have community support.
Trade altcoins that offer innovation over existing coins.
The altcoin market is one of the most inefficient markets out there, so there are many profit opportunities that you can take advantage of, but this also requires a large amount of time and effort to research and spot such opportunities.
Forget all that you currently know about trading. Only two things can happen in a trade, either the price goes up, or it goes down. Simple as that, and everything else is just a matter of perspective. You will need to first decondition yourself from any prior understanding of trading, and undo any bad habits you have accumulated. The following chapters, especially about the technical analysis framework that I'm about to teach you is designed to decondition your mind to see price action and charts for what they simply are; a representation of human behaviour, while price is simply put; the perceived value of a stock by its market participants. Keep these very important points in mind as you read the remainder of the post.
With the right state of mind to maintain your discipline, a keen interest to learn the ropes, and the willingness to work hard and put in 100% effort, anyone, even you, will be able to become a profitable trader after learning and applying the skills taught in my blog and especially this post.
Altcoin Markets & Trading: Strategy Insights
Here's a quick summary of how to approach trading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and other altcoins like Ethereum (ETH), Dash (DASH), Monero (XMR), MaidSafe (MAID) or Factom (FCT), and many others. Even for beginners, this should give you a good idea of what goes through my mind as I plan and execute my trades, and how technical analysis can be effectively applied to trading. And at the end of the post, I'll discuss about developing a trading strategy that is both effective and tailored to your own style.
I personally stick mostly to high market cap coins and those with higher liqudity, because risk is much lower with such coins. For example, I think that Ethereum will never drop back to ATL at least not for the next 6 months, although when the pump is actually over, it should drop about 70-80% or more. That said, I also use a small portion of my funds to dabble in higher risk trades with low liqudity coins, provided they meets certain requirements.
In terms of how long I hold each trade, only because of the current market condition and environment being a hotbed for pumps, I've been buying some coins and holding them for anywhere up to 2-3 months. While some trades can last a short few minutes to a day or two. Generally, I feel comfortable holding about 3-5 altcoins at once, although it is common for me to now have about 10 different altcoins at one time. Personally, having more than 5 becomes rather difficult to handle so I always try not to spread myself too thin and manage too many different trades at once.
As an example, in December 2015, I bought Dash and held for a few weeks. I also bought ETH in late January 2016 when it broke above 0.005 and rode it for about three waves, selling after each wave and buying back later or another breakout and bullish confirmation, so I held for less than a week each time. I went into MaidSafe (MAID) in late January 2016 or so, and held it for about a month all the way to the new All-Time-High (ATH) of around 26-28k, which also took about a month. In late Jan and early Feb, I bought Monero (XMR) at about 110-120k, and held for a month before selling at about 300k in early March. March was also an action packed month, and some of my bigger profits came from VanillaCash (XVC), New Economy Movement (XEM), and SiaCoin (SC). To be fair, I also have some trades currently underwater that I have bought and held for a long time, some as long as three months, including Lumens/Stellar (STR/XLM), Peercoin (PPC), DarkNet (DNET),
@CryptoChrisG gotta use those fib extensions for future price targets when it's at an all time high
To give you a better idea of how to know when to exit your trade, or set targets and take profit, I'll discuss my MaidSafe trade in greater detail. When MAID pumped hard past 17k (previously ATH), the large volume indicated that there was good momentum behind the pump, but I also knew that it had to top out somewhere because parabolic moves generally don't end well. So I did a Fibonacci Extension from previous ATH (17k) to the bottom (4k-ish), which gave me two exit targets: 50% Fibonacci Extension was at 25k and the 61.2% Extension was at 31k. I then placed some sell orders at 25-26k and 30-32k.
As buyers chomped at my sell orders, I managed to unload about 1/3 of my total holdings with my 25-26k orders, while I remained open to both possibilities; that this was either the top, or it'll continue to break ATH and head towards my next target of 31k. At this point, I watched the price action of MAID closely, looking out for a big fat red candle with large volume which is commonly referred to as an "exit candle" and indicates the end of a pump. True enough, I soon saw the big volume red candle, and made a quick decision to sell everything so pulled all my higher sells and sold off some at 24k. Prices then went below a critical support, which was my confirmation signal for a trend reversal and the beginning of a downtrend, so I just waited for it to bounce back to 24k-ish before I dumped the rest of my coins.
All this took only about an hour or so, from when it peaked at 26k, to the point when it broke below 24k. MaidSafe eventually went on to make a new ATH of 29k, and is currently consolidating in a healthy range, with potential for another move up. This was the exact same method I used when trading Monero (XMR) to determine a target of 300k satoshi; my point being that it is definitely replicable, and even you can, with enough training be able to identify such signs and know how to act on them accordingly.
Refer to my tweet and charts below regarding the big volume red candle and critical support I mentioned above.
I'm 1/3 out at 25-26k, dropped a bit more at 24k, and dumping the rest when this retraces to 24ish. Buying bk later. pic.twitter.com/bVowKDKB3I
Some trades I hold for hours, some for days, some for weeks and even months. Keep in mind I'm only holding so long (weeks to months) because of current market condition (being that BTC is just starting its bull run). In a downtrend, you will want to be largely in USD/FIAT, because although opportunities to profit from buying an altcoin will also be available, it will happen at a much lower frequency than today.
When asked about how to know which altcoin to buy, when to sell it, or the classic "how to become a better trader", this is my usual reply: It's a combination of a complex and inter-related web of factors, including understanding the market crash cycle structure, learning about the different phases of the emotional cycle, analyzing price action, understanding price structures that represent various phases of a crash cycle, such as accumulation, distribution, pump, dump, and how they look like.
To keep things simple, you should look at 2 things only, price action (candlesticks or others), and volume. And of course, context is always important, e.g. what coin, what is the situation of the development and new projects, of the environment etc. I will discuss these technical and fundamental analysis frameworks and tools in this and the following chapters.
For now, here's a generalized idea of how the Altcoin markets as a whole has been performing since mid 2015 to now. Since that time, several altcoin markets have moved up a couple of legs; some breaking ATHs, some breaking multi-month and multi-year downtrends and major resistances, mostly getting ready to continue on this recent bullish uptrend, fueled by a fresh influx of funds currently flowing across different altcoins in waves. With the Bitcoin halving just around the corner, it is safe to say we have at least another 3 to 5 months of bull market action in the Bitcoin and Altcoin markets that we can capitalize on.
From my personal analysis, altcoin markets in general bottomed out in tandem and have progressively moved up since September 2015. You can see how various altcoin markets bottomed out around September to December 2015, and began to form an uptrend in early 2016, and we're currently at the foot of a major bull market waiting to erupt. This can be represented as one whole market or Cryptocurrency Index, if you will, as in my two charts below.
As I discussed in the introduction chapter of Altcoins Markets & Trading, perspective is everything, and I highlighted the importance of concepts such as market structure, crash cycles, market psychology, fractals, and the environmental conditions, as a framework for analysing charts and price action. IMO, this is the single governing framework behind TA, and we’ll discuss this in greater detail in this chapter.
To understand trading, you first need to understand the anatomy of a Market Cycle and the Crash Cycle, so that you can identify a pump before it happens, and know when the party has ended, so that you can potentially profit from it. Another important concept is Market Structure, and being able to identify the price action and patterns that are unique to each of the various phases of trading, including accumulation, distribution, markup, markdown, breakout, consolidation, retracements, corrections, etc.
Another concept to understand is the driving force behind price movements. "Whales" is a term used to represent individuals or groups with large amounts of funds used for trading, and sometimes also take on the role of a "Market Maker (MM)". Whales play a big part in any trading ecosystem, and are also present in the Bitcoin market and even in Altcoin markets. They contribute to a large portion of the trading activity, decide how high or low prices go, and also decide when the market will move and in what direction.
Armed with the knowledge of how whales conduct themselves in the market, and the technical analysis framework they use to manipulate the markets, you can profit by identifying smart money and analyzing their intentions. Therefore, it is imperative that you know how whales operate in the market, and you can learn a good deal from our dear friend Wolong in his eBook about "The Game of Deception" that is trading, and trade with an understanding of the market crash cycle, as illustrated by the "Psychology of a Market CycleWall Street Cheat Sheet" below.
How do I know if a pump is over or if it is still not done? Here's my two satoshis worth:
You can never predict for certain exactly where it'll top. In fact, you should never try to predict it baselessly, but rather you should let the price action tell you the answer. If you refer to the "Psychology of a Market Cycle" chart as above, this is IMO one of the most important frameworks for trading, and you can find this market structure or fractal everywhere. When pumps end, it'll always look like euphoria to complacency stage. The key here, is to look out for high volume price action. If the dip between euphoria and complacency stages has a bigger volume bar, than compared to the euphoria top volume bar, then you might want look for an exit. Of course this is just a general guideline that only considers one aspect of a trend reversal, when in reality many more factors contribute to it. That said, this is still one of the key ways to determine that a bullish market has exhausted.
As discussed in the insights chapter above, it's crucial to know the exit signs that signal the beginning of a dump; a high volume pump, followed by even higher volume dump; the big fat red candle. Read my old blog post about Market Cycle, Market Cycle, and Manipulation for a more in-depth discussion about this topic.
Hopefully no one has done this before. 👋🎯😂
Technical Analysis Framework: Mass Market Psychology & Emotional Cycle
Trading is very simple; the price goes up and it goes down, that's it. But when you go to 9 different math experts, they can all tell you the answer of 1+1=2. Whereas when you go to 9 different trading "experts", nobody can tell you the same answer as to whether price is going up or down. Why do you think that is? Every trader has their own strategy and trading rules, resulting in very different analyses of the same chart. To take an example from The Matrix, "it's not the spoon that bends, it's you that bends." Why do I say that perception is everything? Charts are simply a representation of human behaviour, and price is the perceived value of a stock by the market participants. Always take this at face value and put all your perceptions and emotions aside, so that you can plan and execute your trades objectively, instead of allowing emotions and the comments of other people to affect your trade.
Trading is a zero-sum game, that is, for one to win, someone else has to lose. It's also worth knowing that all markets are manipulated, and like Wolong said, this is all but a game of deception. Market makers are present in every market, which also makes "whale watching" and "following the smart money" a viable strategy for trading any kind of market. Why is Mass Market Psychology and all of this relevant? Because there's only one thing common among all markets -- people.
The Pareto Principle, also commonly known as the 80/20 rule, applies to many aspects of trading. For example, 80% of traders end up losing money, 80% of the wealth is held by 20% of the participants, and 80% of profits should come from just 20% of your trades. In a similar fashion, I agree that trading psychology + money management are the 20% which is responsible for 80% of trading success. This principle can also be applied to your trading strategy, where you should aim to eliminate 80% of your trading losses by avoiding emotional or impulse trading, day-trading during important news-release times and chasing entries. Read more about the Pareto Principle and how it applies to trading here. The lesson of the story? There is value in scarcity. More specifically, information is only valuable when it is scarce; as more people know about a piece of information, the value of the information decreases.
Here are a couple of other insightful videos about Mass Market Psychology in Trading, by popular names like Mark Douglas, and Chris Dunn.
"You can think of it as bull trends take the stairs up, and bear trends take the elevator down. One's slow and steady, the other is quick and violent. These predictable moves in the market are mostly created by human emotion. Fear is stronger than greed. People get greedier and greedier as the price moves up, but are quick to panic at any sign of danger. Because of this, markets tend to give back their gains in a fraction of the time it took for the bull market to play out. There is no single "right way" to identify the trend, but the two most important factors are price action and volume. Price action is another word for analyzing the movement of price on a chart. Volume refers to the amount of Bitcoins traded during that price bar. For a trend to be considered healthy, there needs to be steady price action with increasing or maintained volume.
The key to being on the right side of the trade is to understand what the mass majority of people are thinking, and anticipate their next move. That's where the money is made in trading. As Warren Buffett says, "Be scared when people are greedy, and greedy when people are scared."
Sell when everyone else is Buying. Traders like to wait to buy into a market once the trend is already cut and dry. The only problem is this is normally when the trend is near its peak. The best time to sell Bitcoin or Altcoin is when the price has a parabolic spike upwards. Once a trend starts to get stronger and stronger, hype sets in and price reaches an inflection point where the amount of buying is unsustainable. Just like we see with exaggerated panics, over exuberant bullish trends also end with a strong reversal."
With this information about mass psychology behind the market participants that you are competing with, you should now have a better understanding of the framework used to approach trading, be more well-versed in the structure of a pump & dump, and understand why and how price action is fueled by human behavior and their decisions.
Technical Analysis Tools: Basics
While understanding market structure, crash cycles, and mass market psychology helps greatly on a macro-level by providing an overarching framework with which to approach trading, the technical analysis tools such as Support and Resistance, are critical on a micro-level, in the planning and execution phases of trading, for example to determine entry and exit prices.
I previously went through this topic in greater detail in these blog posts, so please refer to them if you're interested to learn more about technical analysis basics:
Surprisingly after learning trading for 5 years, the most common tool I use is the most basic of all tools, the line and rectangle tools. I mostly look at support/resistance and volume to analyze charts and price action.
So firstly, lets touch briefly on Support & Resistance. Although S/R lines are one of the most basic of tools, it is imperative that you learn it well. S/R is a crucial tool that you can use to determine your entry and exits, and mastering it can help you to significantly optimize your buying and selling prices, and seriously increase your profit margins.
Here's an example of how I apply the fundamentals of Support and Resistance to trading altcoins, with my VanillaCash (XVC) chart below. Notice how I mark out horizontal zones which were either previous tops or bottoms, or had multiple rejections when price moved near it. The purpose of having these S/R zones in places is so that you know where price action is most likely to get rejected, and you'll be able to plan your entry and exits accordingly.
Thirdly, Chart Patterns are the bread and butter of any trader, and you must train your eyes and mind to spot these patterns, understand what they mean, and know how to act accordingly. Instead of thinking about patterns as a way of determining whether price goes up or down, think of chart patterns as regions of consolidation, whereby breaking outside of the pattern can lead to a sustained breakout with volume. Always let price action tell you what to do, rather than predict where the price is going ahead of time. If your position goes underwater, make sure to follow your trading rules and cut your losses when they go beyond your threshold, as laid out by the parameters of your trading rules and strategy. Here's an exhaustive list of chart patterns all in one place:
I'd like to highlight just one particular chart pattern that's pervasive throughout the cryptocurrency markets, has a high probability setup, and is highly effective. I'm not entirely sure what it's called, but it is similar to Bulkowski's Busted Tripe Tops chart pattern. What I've noticed over the last couple of months is that 4 times seems to be a magic number for breakouts. Notice how in the following charts, price action remains within a certain zone as boxed up in the photos below, and it challenges resistance at least 4 times before breaking out strongly. How you can trade this, is to buy towards the end of the rectangle, once relatively higher volume starts to kick in after a period of relatively low and stable volume.
More recently, Digibyte DGB has also formed this area of consolidation, and is looking very similar to XEM before it broke above 200, as shown in the 2nd box as above. Will history repeat itself again?
For more information about the basics of technical analysis and tools, make sure to check out these posts:
When it comes to advanced technical analysis tools, the most common ones that come to mind include:
Fibonacci Retracement & Extension
Harmonics
Elliott Wave
"We never know where the bottom is going to be, but there is always means of seeing signs of a recovery. Fibonacci can be used for targets after breaking ATH."
For this post, I will instead focus on the Wyckoff Market Analysis tool.
(source: stockcharts.com)
Wyckoff focuses exclusively on price action. Earnings and other fundamental information were simply too esoteric and imprecise to be used effectively. Moreover, this information was usually already factored into the price by the time it became available to the average speculator. Before looking at the details, there are two rules to keep in mind. These rules come directly from the book, Charting the Stock Market: The Wyckoff Method, by Jack K. Hutson, David H. Weiss and Craig F. Schroeder.
Rule One: Don't expect the market to behave exactly the same way twice. The market is an artist, not a computer. It has a repertoire of basic behavior patterns that it subtly modifies, combines and springs unexpectedly on its audience. A trading market is an entity with a mind of its own.
Rule Two: Today's market behavior is significant only when it's compared to what the market did yesterday, last week, last month, even last year. There are no predetermined, never-fail levels where the market always changes. Everything the market does today must be compared to what it did before.
Instead of steadfast rules, Wyckoff advocated broad guidelines when analyzing the stock market. Nothing in the stock market is definitive. After all, stock prices are driven by human emotions. We cannot expect the exact same patterns to repeat over time. There will, however, be similar patterns or behaviors that astute chartists can profit from. Chartists should keep the following guidelines in mind and then apply their own judgments to develop a trading strategy.
Wyckoff Price Cycle
According to Wyckoff, the market can be understood and anticipated through detailed analysis of supply and demand, which can be ascertained from studying price action, volume and time. As a broker, he was in a position to observe the activities of highly successful individuals and groups who dominated specific issues, and was able to decipher, through the use of what he called vertical (bar) and figure (point-and-figure) charts, the future intentions of those large interests. An idealized schematic of how he conceptualized the large interests’ preparation for and execution of bull and bear markets is depicted in the figure above. The time to enter long orders is towards the end of the preparation for a price markup or bull market (accumulation of large lines of stock), while the time to initiate short positions is at the end of the preparation for price markdown.
Wyckoff Market Cycle
Before making a trading or investment decision, chartists need to know where the market is within its trend. Overbought markets are at risk of a pullback and positions taken with overbought conditions risk a significant drawdown. Similarly, the chances of a bounce are high when the market is oversold, even if the bigger trend is down. Selling short when market conditions are oversold can also result in a significant drawdown and adversely affect the risk-reward ratio.
Wyckoff: Accumulation, Breakout, and Markup
Wyckoff notes that an uptrend starts with an accumulation phase and then enters a markup phase as prices move steadily higher. There are five possible buy points during the entire uptrend. First, aggressive players can buy on the spring or selling climax. This area offers the highest reward potential, but the risk of failure is above average because the downtrend has not yet reversed. The second buy point comes with the breakout above resistance, provided it is confirmed by expanding volume. Chartists missing the breakout buy point are sometimes given a second chance with a throwback to broken resistance, which turns into support.
Once the markup stage is fully under way, chartists must then rely on corrections, which can form as consolidations or pullbacks. Wyckoff referred to a flat consolidation within an uptrend as a re-accumulation phase. A break above consolidation resistance signals a continuation of the markup phase. In contrast to a consolidation, a pullback is a corrective decline that retraces a portion of the prior move. Chartists should look for support levels using trend lines, prior resistance breaks or prior consolidations. Alternatively, Wyckoff also looked for support or reversal signs when the correction retraced 50% of the last up leg.
Wyckoff: Distribution, Breakdown and Markdown
A downtrend starts with a distribution phase and then enters a markdown phase as prices move steadily lower. Note that Wyckoff did not shy away from shorting the market. He looked for opportunities to make money on the way up and on the way down. As with the accumulation and markup phase, there are five potential selling points during this extended downtrend. First, a lower peak within a distribution pattern offers a chance to short the market before the actual support break and trend change. Such aggressive tactics offer the highest reward potential, but also risk failure because the downtrend has not officially started. The breakdown point is the second level to short the market, provided the support break is validated with expanding volume. After a breakdown and oversold conditions, there is sometimes a throwback to broken support, which turns into resistance. This offers players a second chance to partake in the support break.
Once the markdown phase begins in earnest, chartist should wait for flat consolidations or oversold bounces. Wyckoff referred to flat consolidations as re-distribution periods. A break below consolidation support signals a continuation of the markdown phase. In contrast to a consolidation, an oversold bounce is a corrective advance that retraces a portion of the prior decline. Chartists can look for resistance areas using trend lines, prior support levels or prior consolidations. Wyckoff also looked for resistance or reversal signs when the correction retraced 50% of the last down leg.
Fundamental Analysis: Cryptocurrency Characteristics
In my most popular blog post about How to Pick & Trade the Next Profitable Altcoin: An Insight into What Goes Through my Mind, I go into great detail about the fundamentals of cryptocurrencies, other fundamental factors that affect an altcoin's price, popularity and success, as well as some technical analysis and trading tips to help you mould an effective trading strategy. The cryptocurrency space has changed tremendously in the 2 years since that post, so I'd like to make an update of the post, explore the fundamentals of cryptocurrencies and the various types of altcoins by grouping them according to their technical specifications and functions.
When it comes to the fundamentals of cryptocurrencies, there are 4 overarching factors that contribute to the technical specifications, characteristics, and technological potential of a cryptocoin.
Algorithm
Smart contracts / DApps
Theme of problem altcoin is trying to solve
Privacy / Anonymity
1. Algorithm
There are more than 10 different algorithms used in the 1000s of cryptocurrencies out there, but I'll only focus on a select few.
SHA-256
Scrypt
X11 / X13 / Multi-algos
Blake-256
Ethash
zk-SNARK
SHA-256 was developed by the NSA in 2001, and is the algorithm used to develop the first decentralized cryptographic currency, Bitcoin, as well as many others since. The SHA-256 algorithm is highly secure, and is used globally by huge financial corporations, and even for the launch codes for nuclear missiles. The downside of using this algorithm is the large amount of computing power that is "wasted" in mining Bitcoin. On the other hand, this enormous and growing computing power backing the Bitcoin network is also what keeps it secure from 51% attacks.
Scrypt, as most of you should know, is the algorithm used in Litecoin. Scrypt is quicker and more simple when compared to SHA-256, making it much easier to run on a CPU and tends to use up less energy than SHA-256; as a result, it's favored by most individual miners. Read up on the difference between SHA-2156 and Scrypt in this article on CoinPursuit.
X11 is a chained proof-of-work algorithm that uses 11 different rounds of hashes to secure cryptocurrencies and their transactions, namely blake, bmw, groestl, jh, keccak, skein, luffa, cubehash, shavite, simd, and echo. This makes it ASIC-resistant, and more secure to 51%-attacks. It has the advantage of a multi-hash system, meaning that in order for the algorithm to fail, all eleven of its hashes would have to fail at the same time, resulting in higher security of the network. Taking into account the very minute probability that even one hash would be broken, the chance of the X11 system failing becomes almost zero. Read more about the comparison of X11 with SHA-256 and Scrypt. X11 was first used in DASH (formerly DarkCoin).
Blake-256 is a lightweight algorithm used in Blakecoin, and mining it produces a hashrate just under 3x faster on the GPU than compared to SHA-256. Energy efficiency is a primary advantage; mining Blake-256 uses roughly 3% less electricity than SHA-256D and roughly 14% less electricity than mining Scrypt. Blake-256 is also capable of generating considerably more hashes per second than most, if not all, other hashing algorithms. Read more about Blake-256 and Blakecoin here.
Ethash is the algorithm used when Ethereum launched on 30 July 2015 with Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining. However, Ethereum has a mining period of only 16 months before it changes to a full Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network. I have shared some PoW vs PoS resources below for your reference.
Lastly, zk-SNARK (short for "zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive ARgument of Knowledge") is the algorithm used in ZeroCash (ZCash) which is slated to launch in Q3 2016. zk-SNARK enables true decentralized anonymity when sending money. The algorithm allows for zero-knowledge proofs, i.e. you can prove a non-fact (you can prove something, without knowing what it is). For example, say I have the key, the network will run an agreed-upon arbitrary script to check the key is real, without any human learning the info about the key. This removes the middleman from the transaction entirely, while maintaining the integrity of the transaction such that there is no way either party can be cheated.
The way it works in ZCash is I can prove I have the coins, without revealing my own address, the amount of coins or receiving address to the blockchain. What I mean by that is the network is able to prove something is true without giving away any extra information. Say you have a key for a game; it's a long string of characters, and someone wants to buy it off of you. You create a script that proves the key is valid, the script then is given to the network, and the network gives an address to each counterparty. You send the key, the other party sends a payment, and the network now acts as the middleman. The script then goes to the site of the game and asks if the key is legit. The site says yes, so the proof is returned true without anyone learning what the key is. The network then releases the payment to the seller, and the key to the buyer. If it returns false then the transaction is reversed, and at no point does either party get the address of the other person. It's a bit more complicated that that when it comes to ZCash, but that should give you the basic idea. A similar thing could be implemented on any blockchain using smart contracts, but only within the smart contracts - not the cryptocurrency itself. That's why zerocash is special and has to be made from the ground up.
As far as I understand, the only real issues with ZCash is the centralized "launch" , and that if there ever is an error with the mining, distribution or transactions, we will never really know...
Shoutout to @Cryptopathic who helped me with this TL;DR on ZeroCash and zk-SNARK, follow him if you haven't already for awesome altcoin calls.
Proof-of-Work (PoW) vs Proof-of-Stake (PoS)
I have explained this before in my old blog post, so I will not go into this in detail here. However, here are some resources for you to read up on if you're interested to understand the technical details of PoW vs PoS mining.
Smart contracts and DApps (Decentralized Apps) have become a hot topic of discussion in cryptocurrencies especially in 2015 and 2016, ever since Ethereum popularized the idea. The possibility of smart contracts and DApps is also present in other alternative cryptocurrencies such as Expanse (EXP), and LISK which recently just competed its ICO and is slated to launch on 11 April 2016.
According to Wikipedia, smart contracts are computer protocols that facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract, or that make a contractual clause unnecessary. Smart contracts usually also have a user interface and often emulate the logic of contractual clauses. In short, as Ong from e27 puts it, a smart contract is a computer programme that automatically executes a contract between two parties.
What is the difference between decentralized applications, dapps and smart contracts? According to Max Kordek of LISK, decentralized applications consist of the whole package of frontend (what you see of an application) and backend (the logic in the background). A smart contract on the other hand, consists only of the backend, and often only a small part of it. That means if you want to create a decentralized application on a smart contract system (i.e. not on Lisk the dapp platform), you have to combine several smart contracts and rely on 3rd party systems for the frontend.
Wikipedia defines a smart contract as the simplest form of decentralized automation. It is a mechanism involving digital assets and two or more parties, where some or all of the parties put assets in and assets are automatically redistributed among those parties according to a formula based on certain data that is not known at the time the contract is initiated. A decentralized application is similar to a smart contract, but different in two key ways. First of all, a decentralized application has an unbounded number of participants on all sides of the market. Second, a decentralized application need not be necessarily financial. BitTorrent qualifies as a decentralized application, as do Popcorn Time, Tor, Maidsafe and Crypti (note that Maidsafe and Crypti are also platforms for other decentralized applications).
New alternative cryptocurrencies that attempt to develop a working smart contract / DApp platform will garner strong support from the community. Keep a close watch for coins that fall into this category (as well as new launches), as they can potentially be highly profitable trades, provided you analyze, plan, and execute your trade well.
Instead of grouping coins by algorithm, we can also group them according to their "function" and "type of problem/solution". Here's a non-exhaustive list that you can use as a guide.
Smart contracts - Ethereum
Dapps - Applications on the blockchain - ETH, EXP, LISK, VIA
Decentralized storage - MAID, STORJ, SC
Data time stamping - FCT
100% Proof-of-Stake networks - Plenty, e.g. NXT XEM
PoW x PoS combination networks - PPC pioneer, Blackcoin also pioneered and popularized the turbo PoW distribution period into full PoS model.
Anonymous networks - XMR, DASH
To stand out from the rest of the alternative cryptocurrencies, there should be practical real-world use attached to the coin. However, many coins lack this, while some have inherently flawed business models when you consider that most people would prefer to use BTC compared to an obscure Altcoin. Examples of coins that have some real-world value include XRP which is used as a transaction medium for financial entities, while GEO provides real world purpose to mining.
4. Privacy / Anonymity
Anonymity in cryptocurrencies is one of [if not] the most popular topics of discussion among the community. Although privacy and anonymity can be considered as a problem that altcoins are trying to solve, it deserves a whole section on its own due to the complexity of the topic.
Furthermore, there's no correct method to implement anonymity into a system, be it on a protocol level, or a transaction level. As far as I know, Monero currently has the best working solution for anonymity, while DASH can be argued to be second; however, this will change when ZCash launches. I shall not go into detail about this, but instead give you a brief list of the various kinds of anonymity features used by different altcoins. If you're interested, I have linked a few resources about this topic below.
Cryptonote & Cryptonight - Ring signatures - Monero XMR
Fundamental Analysis: Picking the Next Profitable Altcoin
Fundamental analysis provides you with a framework for understanding how a cryptocurrency fares against other alternatives, but will not be able to tell you if it is a good buy or not. Prices are constantly moving up or down. Make no mistake; no matter how great the fundamentals of a cryptocurrency is, you will still need to fall back on charts and technical analysis to determine your trade entries.
As a general rule of thumb, news is just a distraction and is usually already priced into the chart. However, this is not entirely true in cryptocurrency trading because most cryptocurrency markets are inefficient and information travels slower, compared to global money markets.
In the fundamental analysis of a cryptocurrency, there are 7 critical factors to consider:
Developer
Community
Technical Specifications
Innovation
Liquidity (and whales)
Branding & Marketing
Infrastructure
When researching about the technical specifications of a cryptocurrency (not to be confused with technical analysis), there is more to consider than just the algorithm. Technical specifications of cryptocurrencies were discussed in the previous chapter, namely about algorithm, but also includes several other critical specifications such as:
Block time
Maximum coin supply
Distribution plan
At this point, you might be wondering, so how are all these factors related to trading Bitcoin and altcoins? As a guideline, you should stick to only trading altcoins that have "strong" fundamentals, especially if you're new to the game. One way is to score your target altcoin on the 10 factors above, on a score of 1 to 10 and add them up, and see how that fares against other similar coins using the same method of scoring.
alt.report has detailed qualitative reports on some altcoins whereby they score coins based on 6 factors, not unlike the factors mentioned above, that you can reference for your fundamental analysis. Coingecko.com also has a more macro-level quantitative scoring method where they consider well over 50 factors.
With that in mind, here are some tools you can use to conduct fundamental analysis when researching on how to pick the next profitable altcoin:
Bitcointalk.org - for new coin launches, technical specifications of a coin, roadmap and future plans, developer activity and competency, community support and sentiment.
Twitter - a great tool for understanding sentiment of market participants, following market leaders, and a means of communicating with the community.
Tools - Charts, Coinmarketcap, TradingView/Coinigy/Cryptrader, apps like Blockfolio for tracking multiple cryptocurrency prices.
Exchanges
Altcoins: Poloniex & Bittrex are the two leading exchanges, while Yobit.net has many newly launched coins or those with small market capitalizations and liquidity. Poloniex also allows for margin trading for 11 altcoins, giving you a good chance to short altcoins like ETH, XMR and FCT when they're on a downtrend.
Bitcoin: Bitfinex for up to 3x margin trading, and OKCoin for up to 20x leveraged futures trading. BitMEX is a Bitcoin derivative exchange, with futures trading on Bitcoin (up to 100x leverage) and Ethereum (25x leverage).
Global money markets: 1Broker and SimpleFX give you access to trade global markets including Forex, Indices, Commodities, and Stocks, while maintaining your balance in Bitcoin.
Another important consideration for cryptocurrency trading is to understand how environmental conditions affect a market. For example, late 2013 and early 2014 was a hotbed for altcoin pumps, as Bitcoin was leading the charge in the bull market then. Thereafter, BTC went into a 1.5 year decline which led to the downtrend extending into altcoin markets as well. Similarly, we're currently in an environment similar to that of 2013, and as this BTC bull market plays out, we should continue to see a sustained pump across altcoin markets at least for another 3 months leading up to the BTC halving. In this light, take note of how major media outlets portray a particular cryptocurrency, and consider how it will affect the market, so that you can analyze on a broad scale how healthy a market is.
March'16
End: XMR (DASH)
-> Accumulate AMP under 10k
-> DNET under 2k
-> QORA under 11
Developing a Profitable & Effective Trading Strategy This last chapter will be about applying the framework, TA and FA to develop a personal trading strategy. I'll share 8 strategy tips for you to keep in mind when you develop your trading strategy. Some of you may be asking, what should one focus on while trading, and while learning to trade? Trading can be broken down into three major activities; learning, planning, and executing. After going through this tutorial, I hope I contributed to your learning process, and that you are sufficiently armed with the necessary knowledge to plan your effective trading strategy, and execute it accordingly.
In terms of trade execution, there are three methods of approach; accumulating, buying breakouts, and scalping. Accumulation generally has the longest holding period, while scalping has the shortest. In addition, accumulation will have a higher risk due to direction uncertainty at the point of buying, when compared to buying breakouts, even though the former will give you a better price.
A common strategy used to approach trading is to "trigger fundamentally, and enter/exit technically". In other words, you should make a decision to trade a market based on a fundamental trigger, but rely on TA to determine your entry/exit. On the other hand, you can also approach it from the reverse way. First, look through charts to find potentially "good looking" charts that are in, or about to begin and uptrend. Thereafter, use FA to validate and justify making the trade, while eliminating potential trades that have poor fundamentals. To get a better idea, here are two short articles by Investopedia and FuturesIndexTrader.
Next, when it comes to planning your strategy, there are two key factors to consider:
Risk Management - Never risk more than you can afford to lose, and never go all-in on a single trade.
Money Management - Set a % limit of your BTC portfolio that you can afford on each trade. As a rule of thumb, most traders risk up to 2% of their portfolio on any single trade. However, this may be too conservative for trading cryptocurrencies, so you may want to adjust it according to your own risk appetite.
In terms of execution, an important concept is to use multiple time-frames, or a top-down analysis, to analyze charts and price action. When trading, you always want to look at at least 2 different time frames; a larger one to get a better picture of the macro trend, and a smaller time frame to determine your entries and exits. Never be so focused on the short term trend that you forget about the long term or higher time-frame trend. E.g. Bitcoin might look like a good short on a small time frame. but if you zoom out to the daily or even the 3d candles, you'll see a totally different picture; mega bull. The idea of fractals is also related to this, where we have a "wave within a wave within a wave"
Timing is key. The trick is to know when to get in and out of the markets at the right time. Get out too early and you'll cut your profits short, get out too late and you'll lose money. This is why it's important to have the right timing. Furthermore, I'd very much rather buy some coin 5 minutes before it pumps, at a worse price, than buy it at a very good price, but having to wait weeks or months before it starts to move, not to mention the increased uncertainty of the move and risk associated with "buying the bottom". Afterall, markets are 99% watching/planning and 1% executing, so practice patience when trading, and wait for the "right time" to enter a trade and you will be rewarded handsomely. Here's a short article about trade timing and how to decide entry/exit points.
Focus on not losing. To win at trading, as paradoxical as it seems, happens only after you’re able to come to the realization that it's really not about focusing on making a winning trade. Instead, what really matters is NOT losing, or at least to minimize losses, and that's your first step to winning.
Lastly, it is essential that you plan your exit before you even enter a trade. If you don’t, you will be consumed by emotions before you can devise a logical and evolving strategy as the trade is “live”.
With that, I have come to the end of my lengthy, but hopefully informative post about trading Bitcoin and Altcoins. I hope what I shared will be useful for you, and that you'll familiarize yourself with the concepts and tools, and eventually be able to apply them and make a profit trading anything from Bitcoin to altcoins, and even other money markets like forex, commodities, indices and penny stocks.
Thank you for taking the time to read to the end of this lengthy post! It was a pleasure to share my experience and knowledge about Bitcoin and Altcoins trading, and I trust that I have sufficiently armed you with all the necessary tools and foundation to get you started on your cryptocurrency trading journey. All the best!
I hope this post and other material on my blog and twitter teaches you how to approach trading markets such as Bitcoin and Altcoins, provides you with valuable, practical, and effective tutorials and insights that is easily understood and applied, and enables you to develop a profitable trading strategy that is tailored to your personal requirements and risk appetite.
Thank you for your support! If you like my work and would like to see more, consider contributing a coffee in Bitcoins to me at: 1Hbodfhu7Nx1RJZmpudVfiiDTpG2o24mMi
