Bitcoin Forum

Buy low and sell high is the first rule of trading.

But you can buy high and sell higher, or sell low and buy lower also.

By selling highest you get the advantage of selling with a profit even when you have bought also high. By buying real low, you get the profit of not having to sell at a certain margin. You can wait till profit goes really really high.

Lets say a genie gave you the ability either to sell at the daily maximum or to buy at the daily minimum. What will you choose?

It all depends on what benefits do you expect from the purchase and how soon you need to get your money back, if you just bought and tomorrow there is a need to sell, you do not get a greater benefit.

I don't think in this world any one can predict the low or high prices of either share prices or currency prices so it is better to buy in small quantities when ever you feel prices are ok for you and sell it when you get some profits but if you try to do a day trading then it is purely based on luck so either you may or may not make profit. But many day traders has lost all their money.

Buy low and sell high is easy to say than to do. But most ppl are losing money. So do not be obsessed with it. Due to the potential, we could buy it for the long term. We know bitcoin's price is hovering around $200-300 for long time. If we buy at that time, we could sell at $450 recently and get $150 for one btc. Do you know what I mean? Just buy and hold.

It is nothing about which strategy is better. It is about which one is suitable for you! It will make you get profits not make you lose.

There is no right way to trade on cryptos. Staying up 24 hours staring at the screen will help  :D
But all you need is to have the right timing then your gold. 

there is nothing like better between both of two option as rates may subject to change any time . For me buying low has been most of the part safer for me

I think those two needs to come along. You need to buy low to be able to sell high. It's impossible to seperate the two, don't you think? Also either way, price will be moving so it really depends on your preference. Either you will gwt profit if you know what you are doing.

The thing with your concern is that buying high and selling higher afterwards shouldn't even be an option here, reason why is that, scenario 1: imagine buying a BTCitcoin at $400 then trying to sell it for $420.... scenario 2: Buy BTCitcoin at $360 and sell it at $400 .... The profit is much more on the buy low,sell high rather than in buy high,sell higher due to the fact that you don't have much of a flexibility in terms of asking or rather selling higher since there isn't a room for it and no wise buyer would buy from you so they rather wait to buy lower even though their going to pay much more in terms of over price value...hope this is clear enough

both, in that order offcourse, strange question btw, I think you can count ???

Try reading the trends. Daily targets and support limits are important to keep track of while trading, but really it all breaks down to being aware of what the current trends are. I'd say that bitcoin's market is fully speculation based, but rarely real world events have an impact as well. Buying high generally isn't considered as risky when the market is on the peak of a bull run as when a bull run has been going on for a while. Look at order walls and decide if support is decent enough for you to open a position at current levels, keep in mind that orders can be subtracted too so don't take big risks only based on that.

actually i prefer to sell first, because at least you can have your profit if the price then skyrocket, this if i have acquire bitcoin in other way, besides buying

with buy low sell high, if the price get even lower you're screwed

For me, it depends on how fast/slow the value goes up and down

Of course a steady value is really good but so far i've only been able to buy low and sell high which works for me

You actually cant predict accurately what is the low and what could be the high the next day. If you want regular and quicker returns always go for buy low and sell high, nut trade only with a minor portion of your total BTCs.

For me, I set an amount for each trade I make. In forex, it's 30 pips and in bitcoins it is $5-$10 minimum. So it's not buy very low and sell at a very high amount. You need to be practical and set an amount that is easily achievable.

There is many different ways to go about the trading as you have stated. Most common strat is to buy low and sell high. But when is low? Low is often a time where some amount of panic has hit, making weak investors drop out forcing often a new low. Once faith is restored, watch for signs of a confident rising trend again. I like to get in on the way up and jump before the turn down. Of course this is only possible because I work from home and I am able to keep a constant eye when day trading which is very advantageous.

Just trade when u feel like it will go down. And buy when it is low, like 200-250$ if it ever will be such a low price again. There isn't any real strategy that works, just like gambling. Mayby only way, but then u need to be in a trading group which can pump/dump very good.

trust me...
Buy low and sell high << this dude is just a myth
before we buy low, a godlike "bot" will bought some in just matter of 1second
and when price crashes... that same bot will dump faster than you can blink  ;D

Buying low is ALWAYS better. Enough said.

The very best thing you can do is to leave your coins in cold storage and that you quit trading altogether. When you account for all the risk, all the nerves lost and all the coins you are probably going to lose, even if you make some profits, in the end this just ain't worth a trouble. At least that's my conclusion about trading.

Since I quit trading I am a much happier man! :)

The methods are not important. From my perspective if you buy high and sell higher its the same as buy low and sell very high. Sometimes you just can't wait for bubble or for for price to drop.
As long as your gained some money from your trade you are fine.

buying low and selling high can always be a good option but sometimes you have to wait for a long time before selling. there is also a risk of the price not going up at all or you losing the product. I would prefer buying high and selling higher. high is associated with quality but there is also a risk of it going low. therefore to be safe just combine both

The reason most traders use some sort of technical analysis is to make sense of meaningless words like "buy low"  and "sell high".

After the bubble to $1200, $600 would have looked 'low' and been a bad buy. The same in the early days, $5 would have looked 'high' after trading in cents, and selling 'high' then has mentally scarred a lot of early adopters.

Tl,dr: 'Buy low, sell high' is a meaningless phrase used by people who don't know what they're doing and are almost guaranteed to lose money.

I totally disagree. Haven't done that since ages. It's a pure waste of time and you'll get mad very soon if you do that over a longer period of time. ^^

I have started planning my trades over a couple of weeks, a couple of months ago. Sold my last BTC at almost 500 (my average is lower, though) and now, I'm waiting to rebuy in the 250s. Then, wait for the next high, rinse and repeat.

I'm actually doing the exact opposite of starting at the charts all day. And it brought me way more money than any sort of day trading. Patience is key.

To stay within the topic: I'd definitely prefer to know the lowest buy price of each day, as this would enable me to sell at any time after I have bought. The other way around would probably achieve the same, but I'd feel more comfortable with the former one.

I have only about 2 weeks experience on trading, but I have to agree with you. I started not taking much care about the exchange ups and downs, just put buy orders lower than the actual price and sell orders a certain amount higher and I did profit without "staring" much.

Then I switched to enter the exchange much more frequently, watch the prices more etc.... and did profit also, but ended up with some BTC bought at a somewhat high price.

More watchfulness is not always better.

why should this be the first rule?
if you follow this rule you will certainly soon or late be a loser.

The first rule is:
buy if it goes up and sell if it goes down.

The usual beginner's error is to follow your wrong rule.
A beginner do buy when he starts...and sell when it is higher.
if it goes down...he waits and waits...

The old fox (lol) when he bought...and he sees that it goes down he is not afraid to sell (with lost) and so he can rebuy when it is lower.

Since I know nothing about investing I would say I want to be able to purchase at the guaranteed low price of the day because when it comes to btc vs fiat in the long haul I'd rather have more bitcoin in my wallet then fiat in my pocket.

eh that's the problem there is no way to kown what the guaranteed low price will be, there is no guaranteed low price, otherwise everyone would be rich or everyone would end up with 0 in profit

If you buy at high and try to sell at highest, you will probably loose your investment  :) Even Forex traders with a lot of knowledge, loose each day a lot of money worldwide  ;)

This exactly! This is very hard to know and in the Bitcoin world I would even say impossible to know. It all comes down to pure guessing! With Bitcoin, very often everything is upside down!

Everyone would love to be able to buy low and sell high and repeat however market timing is very hard to do so you are better off dollar cost averaging into that mutual fund (keep fees low) to take advantage of the low periods. 

It is definitely good to be able open both long and short positions, as then you can play the market both ways.

Some people are better with going with the trend ("the trend is your friend").
Other people - the contrarians, prefer to look for the moments when the trend is changing.

Combine them together and you'll get arbitrage. This is what you profit on.

If you combine the both you should make a good profit so neither is better.

The hardest thing to leave the coins in cold storage, and do not spend them, will always be tempted to do it.

But that's what the thread is all about. It's just a thought experiment.

if you ask my opinion that for a trading strategy as it is common, because if you only look at the low and high price I think profits will stop the same profite and will not get a higher profit.  :)

It's only meaningless in cryptos because the volatility is too high, on other things people knows more or less what the price looks like normally and the terms ''high'' and ''low'' have a meaning, anyone who says they can make profit on cryptos in the long term guaranteed is lying because it doesn't matter how good you are there is always the possibility of loosing a lot of money in a really short amount of time with bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

I don't know/use trading methods any other than buy low and sell high. It's the best investment method for people who don't know how to use all the difficult trading options that exchanges nowadays offer. You only need a bit patience.

It highly depends on the situation,you can gain good results with both methods but you have to be really careful and make quick moves.It's definitely not that easy and you will have all kinds of results.

If you would have read the original post I have a genie that grants me the ability to know 100% what the minimum or maximum for the day will be. I was just answering OPs question. If I could have one or the other I would choose the minimum. Of course you can't know what the minimum or maximum will be, but thanks for stating the obvoius ;D ;)


Ooops haha thanks for pointing it out

Didn't read the thread so I have no idea if this was pointed out earlier or not.

Either way you write it you are still buying for less and selling for more if you get a return on your investment so the question is really null and void.

Question did not pretend to be very trandescent. Just... if you have a superpower to choose from, Which one will you prefer?

A) To be able to always guess daily max (ability to sell high)

B) To be able to always guess daily min (ability to buy low)

Which one will you choose and why?

There have been lots of interesting responses discussing about this IMO. :).

Well, assuming that you would know that a coin would be at $100 in the morning and $200 at night then I would buy low and then sell it for higher when the price meets the daily high.

Limiting it to only one day makes it tougher as Day 2 the Daily Min might be the Daily Max for the previous day and it would be a lost opportunity.

To add a realistic example,

Coin A is at 0.00000099 and you know someone is going to crash it down that day then you would want to sell it as soon as possible and then rebuy again when it gets lower.

But you can only pick one, you cant know the low and the high at the same time. Of course if you knew both you would be a millionaire by now.

I don't think there is much difference between able to guess the high or the low.

wait so you don't sell at all or...? so if you know the low and you buy but you don't know the high so you can't sell the high?

Sorry, missed this.

If you know the daily low then you know it will be going higher. The only unknown variable is at what point will it reach the high or low.

Lets say you wake up at 10 AM and it hits you that HTML5coin is going to skyrocket up to 0.00001000 LTC per HTML5 and the price is currently at 0.00000100 then you would make the decision to go ahead and buy up as much as you can in order to sell it for higher later on.

But, it could work the other way around. The highest price may be at 10 AM and it just gets lower throughout the day which wouldn't be any good at all to know.

ehm, no. You just know one, either low or high. If you know the low you can sell when the price is higher because you know what the lowest is but you can't fully profit from it because you don't know what the highest will be. In the end you will profit the same using either of the options.

ohh I see I see. I'll prefer selling high. just a personal preference to know how much I'll earn if I buy now and sell later at the high

I prefer sell high. Buy everywhere. I mean buy at anyprice.

sell high...
why would you want to buy low and still lose if it continues declining? sell high and get it over with. No risk, you come out on top

if you buy low and it is still going down, then you can buy all the way down. the price will go up eventually. that's why you must never go all in. always keep fiat ready to buy more coins with. that's how i do it.

Personally I prefer selling high at maximum, on that note I can earn my max profit I can get :D I dont think there will be a guaranteed profit if ever I bought low, price may crash anytime.

Buying low is not guarantee of profit, selling high is cashed in profit.. so duh Selling high. I don't even need to be at the top point,i am not that greedy, 90% is ok for me;)

Selling high offcourse.

The problem with is that you never know when the ultimate top has been reached. When buying low you are sure it will go high (as long if you can be sure offcourse).

i'm a bad trader,can you recomend me a software like meta trader 4,its also avaliable for bitcoin? ;D i think it will good for me..

Buy high, sell low, since BTC is tanking more than rallying.

buy low, because maybe i'll use it to have fun in playing some gambling lol

It is said sometimes with the reference to the stock markets that the market takes the stairs on the way up and the elevator on the way down (meaning the up moves tend to be slower and taking longer then the down moves).

Looking at the bitcoin chart for the last 12 months, the same seems to be the case with bitcoin.

I would buy at the minimum

Because then I would have the option to sell whenever at whatever price

That's how you can make profits

i agree with you :)
buy HIgh sell low buy again at lowest rate then hld it and wait the highest rate and sell it

I'd buy at the daily minimum

because then I would be able to sell at the highest rate and make profits of off the buying price

Buy low and sell high is not that easy to accomplish. It isn't true that prices go up in a single day. You won't be able to make profit in a single day. The Formula is Buy Low - Hold it until prices go high - Sell High.

I am just making sure I understand;  my decision is based on that the genie can only grant me one of the two choices and I can do act anytime I want in the mean time. 
If this is correct on how I understand the question:

I would sell high.  The reason I would do this is because I could spend all day buying all I can and then at the end, just sell at the high.  i would be sure to pay attention to the market and make sure the stock I am going after is going down.  If it was not, I would just not buy. 

This is better for me
- Buy low
- if price down again, buy again,
- sell the 2nd buy at profit 40-50%
- Sell the 1st buy at profit 10-20%
don't waiting highest rate, better get small profit with continuous

either way, I always to do this, when I was stuck when the price goes down, then I will be backup to buy again :)

That's why instead of buying coins at one time one should buy coins in small quantities regularly so you will get best average price because no one can predict which is high price and low price. For this purpose do not ever take loan for trading because some times you may need to wait for long time to get profits so if your trading with loaned money then you may end up paying more interest than profits

It is a good advice to reduce risks. I also usually buy very small quantities when ever I think prices are reasonably came down.

Buy in the botton and sell in the top is trading basic. So nothing to say about it. The only you need is learn how to always do it.

 :D

Could you give me the code/algorithm/<whatever> to determine if the current price is the daily minimum? It seems you got some great concept, and I'm interested to implement it! Thanks in advance!

Well look at the price for the past week, bitcoin has been swinging between 310-330 everyday and you can benefit from it easily but there will be a day where bitcoin either goes way higher or gets dumped like 50-100$ and you might just lose all your previous profit

I like  to buy low and sell high and have patience.

that is not enough. there is a time to force you buy and sell in wrong position, sell low and buy high. what would you do?

Exactly my strategy. Never wait for first profit because it is risky. Taking your small profits and doing this continously is preferred and adviced.

Stagger your buys - need to go it all in one shot.

What's high and what's low, anyway ?

It's all relative and depends on what is your timescale - last year's low might be this year's high.

Best method is to buy and hold!
That's all you need to do.
If you can control your greed, fear and of course the temptation to make a quick buck you will do fine in the long run.

easy said then done.

for me, it's always buy high, sell low.  Buy low, sell lower :(

I think you are right, the time needed for being succesfull is very high, almost like a fulltime job or even more.