Bitcoin Forum

I've mined over two thousand Bitcoin and my shops have generated 97.  Mining difficulty is high and shop sales are for a fraction of a Bitcoin so to build my stake, I will try day-trading on mtgox.

This is my first attempt and just in case anyone wants to see how a newbie does in the free market, I'm posting a trading log.  I know most day-traders lose their funds so if I do so, feel free to point and laugh.  

If anyone is interested, my only preparation is reading "The Disciplined Trader" by Mark Douglas from https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17639754/Douglas%2C%20Mark%20-%20The%20Disciplined%20Trader%20%281990%29%20-%20ISBN-0132157578%20%5B245%5D.pdf

So far, I have gained 7.4 Bitcoin on top of the 2197 I started with.  I'm hoping to do significantly better once I have verified an OKPay account and am able to do a little arbitrage between BTCE and MtGox.

Day 1 Closing Balance                                                                          BTC Balance                                                                       USD Balance
April 29 @ 0958: Sold 97 for $138.99 each.                                    2100.00000000 BTC                                                           $13,401.13782

Day 3 Closing Balance                                                                          BTC Balance                                                                       USD Balance
April 29 @ 0958: Sold 97 for $138.99 each.                                    2204.35338829 BTC                                                           $22.55013

Very good idea. Please keep this updated, will be fun to follow.

Totally off topic, I assume you're a fairly well off guy in his late 30s early 40s, no thoughts of cashing out your 280k and just paying off your mortgage, buying a car and chilling? I know a few miners who had 500-100-1500 BTC and the recent run to 266 was enough for them to say "it's been fun, I'm out!".

I have paid off my mortgage and bought a car.  This is me chilling ???  I love playing the auction house in online games and Bitcoin is more of the same.

I have found that trying to get all in at the "low" and all out at the "peak" of runs and pull backs leads to panic buying and selling, which leads to getting burned. What I do these days is stagger my buy orders down from a set number (If you have $5k to put in and want to be in at $136, make 20x $250 buy orders starting at $139 and going down by $1 each all the way to the $110s.) Same for sell orders, (though this is more to make sure you always have a stake which you clearly do), I have my btc separated into increments of 20 as sell orders every multiple of $25 or so.

Do you have a bot to do that for you?

Be careful, it's big money to play with.

I like to do it by hand ;)

Your transparency is very respectable and you may come to learn through this but selling at the bottom of a rally week was not the right call.

Yeah - newb mistake.  I had 97 listed at 145, got bored and relisted a lot cheaper.  Now it looks like I may have to wait weeks to get my Bitcoin back and since increasing my stock of Bitcoin is the only objective here, it was a mistake.

Yeah kicking myself for getting out at $133.  I put in an order for $121 but it only went to $122 and never looked back after that.

My 2 satoshis :

Do your research before any trade. What was your motivation behind the 97btc sale ? What is your reasoning, why did you think the market would go down ? Document your reasoning, so you can look back and improve upon your successes and mistakes.

I wouldn't start with 100btc trades if you've never traded before. Play with 1btc or so, just to get the hang of it. See how you deal with the grief of money loss, before moving to bigger trades.

2100 btc is a lot, I hope you are not keeping that in your hot wallet at the exchange. Never go all in, in neither direction.

Otherwise this is a great initiative, looking forward to following your trading adventures !

Have you spent a lot of time just watching the market and getting a feel for how it behaves?

Hi, good luck with trading. It's a great way to lose hard-mined money fast ;)

Just be sure to use ALL your information sources: charts, news, fundamentals, more charts, even more charts.

LOL 0,6% for GOX when you sold and 0,6% when you will buy.  ... are you sure you will make profit ?

I'll make 1 BTC.  Its not much but the stake I am playing with isn't much either.

I think you will pay 0,6 BTC fee
EDIT: your profit 0,4 BTC (if any)   GOX profit 0,6 BTC + $80

Thanks so much for sharing your trading. Very curious how things will work out.

Any screen shot for proof? How do we know your not just trying to manipulate the market with FUD?

I suggest you delay the story, so your current positions are not exposed. Only when your order is executed, you come and tell us what it was. Same value for the reader, but more fair to everyone.

You forgot the fees for buying. You get charged selling and buying.

When you buy that 98 BTC, you only get 97.412 BTC. 0.588 BTC is the fee. That assumes you are currently at 0.6%.

Decent MtGox fee calculator. http://bitcoin-fee.sbrk.org/ (http://bitcoin-fee.sbrk.org/)

So you'll make .412 BTC, around $60. MtGox fees are crazy high. They reward heavy traders as you can scale down to 0.25%. https://mtgox.com/fee-schedule (https://mtgox.com/fee-schedule)

their fees are disgrace.

Don't know about you guys but I pay .3% :)

HOLY SHIT YOUR PENIS IS HUGE! Thanks for sharing!

https://i.imgur.com/TwnQr.jpg

That's still too much.

Well the fee question is all academic in that I appear to have lost my 97 Bitcoin and picked up $13k or so which I didn't want.  Coming weekend is a long bank holiday so maybe price will dip then and I'll be back in the game.  For now I'm just thankful I only risked 97 Bitcoin.

I have tried to show you that GOX will make 3x more than you with almost ZERO risk. If you want make btc ... try something different. :-) ... I have started trading(to prove my strategy) with 1 BTC (lose)  then 2 btc (lose 40% in 2 days) :-)

EDIT: but I have learned a lot.

BTW
2100(2003) btc ? ... there is no more than 11,000,000/2,100 = 5 238 people in the world with this amount.

also, best tool on the bitcoin market: http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/ (http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/)   with this as a close second http://bitcoinity.org/markets?theme=dark (http://bitcoinity.org/markets?theme=dark)

There is a btc address at the bottom of the page to donate to clark moody if it helps you :)

He was talking about his 1 BTC profit and 97 BTC investment. Although 13k USD is probably still a fairly decent size to be playing the market with compared to most of the people on this sub-forum.

The question is do I sit on the $13k in the hope Bitcoin fluctuates back to the $136 range or accept my losses and buy in again.  Right now, I'm thinking that I'll leave it a week or so and see how things work out.  The 2100 Bitcoin will stay in cold storage until I can actually prove to myself that I can make a decent return on the first lot.

Depends if you think BTC is going to hit $150 first or $136 first. I'd probably cancel the buy order, wait for it to hit bottom. If it goes down to $125, that buy order at $136 will hurt. I leave sell orders up, I rarely leave buy orders up.

Tuesday (curently today) in Japan should be a day they process a bunch of wire deposits, which could mean money floating around, which could mean a mini rally. I'd wait for a fairly decent drop before I bought in, because those always come. I'm not sure I 100% buy this long weekend boat load of money coming in theory which will bring us to 150-160 shortly.

My first WoW bot was for the auction house only and it worked on the principle that you should set your target and then stick to it.  My target is a 1 BTC gain and if I achieve that I'll try to do it again and make a 2 BTC gain :)  I know that if the price does fall to $136 it will probably fall further but there is great value in a bot taking the winnings you targetted as opposed to trying to guess when the market will bounce.

My theory is that by this time next week, the bank holidays will have caused mtgox to run low on cash and I'll have my target :D  If I am wrong, then a week is a reasonable time to have waited.  The only reason I am in this mess is that I got impatient this morning and killed an order to sell at $145 and sold at $139 instead.  

Thanks for the thought though.  I can see your logic and it does appeal.

I'd probably do it when you're offline. Otherwise I'd keep an eye on it. If it's dropping fast to 136, I'd want to see some sign of a bottom before I bought back in. Because if it goes to $125, then you're putting an ask order at $139. So you're taking some profit and might be putting yourself in a huge hole for the next trade. Don't catch the falling knife is a pretty good approach when the price is dropping quick. =)

I canceled my orders @$60 morning and set new @$180 and @$130  when the price was @$260. Nice day with friends ... some beer ... got some calls "PRICE IS FALLING !!!" (do not bother "I have my buy orders at 180, 130") .. :-) ... Next morning price was @ $50

you don't hang out with friends or anyone else when you are daytrading bitcoins  ;D :D :o

BTCE is selling Bitcoin for a lot less than MtGox.  In fact, for less than the buy order I have outstanding at MtGox.   Were it not for the old "If it looks too goood to be true, it is too good to be true." saying, I'd cancel the MtGox order and get 100 or so Bitcoin on BTCE.

This forum is full of people who are natural arbitrageurs.  How come this discrepancy exists?

Fiat's a bitch to move.

If that's the only reason, I'll try to upload funds to BTCE this week and see how it goes.

EDIT: You were not kidding notme. The only way for me to add funds is OKPAY. OKPAY's fee is 1% and BTC-E fee is 2% for a total of 3% on a deposit!  MtGox also charges 2% for withdrawals. No wonder BTCE appears 5% or so cheaper all the time.

He is in the Vladamir's Club

My buy order was fulfilled and after MtGox commission I have earned the princely sum of .42226034 Bitcoin profit and have $$3.94781 to boot.

Placed the 97 for sale again for $139.89.  We seem to be bouncing around in the $130s so I'll try to get another half Bitcoin this evening.

Nice job!

Thanks Fitty.  Not sure I am doing it right as I suspect that if gets to 139.89 it will cross $140 and I will be left waiting around for hours again.  But at least its fun :-)

I do not daytrading bitcoins ( :-) until they go too faaaaast ). I place bid/ask orders (range 30% between bid/ask and more) based on my Excel (do not use emotion ... not more :-) )

How's that working for you?  I'm debating if I want to go to bed with the 97 Bitcoin @ $139.89 offer outstanding as I could wake up with a lot of fiat and Bitcoin in the $150s.  I'm also brooding on how to make a proper bot for this.

Based on idea "When price doubles then sell 25% of your stash" -> you are never out of bitcoin, you can/will realize profit an enjoy it or re-buy bitcoins. (just set-up your GOAL -> WHAT YOU WANT )
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=189671.msg1968247#msg1968247 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=189671.msg1968247#msg1968247)

My sale of 97 Bitcoin for $139.89 went through.  I've bought 100 for $134.99 so after commission I have 2199.89226034 BTC and $0.64549.

It looks like the price is happily bouncing between $130 and $140 for last few hours.  I've put 99 on the market for $137.9. 

Picked up 3 more Bitcoin today in the wild bouncing about. 

Still clueless as to what is moving the market...

Picked up another 2 Bitcoin.  This bouncing about makes it fairly easy.  Still only trading with the 97 stake I peeled off for day trading.  Its getting tempting to start trading all 2205 Bitcoin.

2200 btc are welcome. If you fell "I can lose them" DUMP them all.

a) you will buy them at $70 (this week) ... a lot of fiat (same amount btc)
b) you will buy them at $210 (next week) ... (1/3 btc ... still enough)

There are other options.  Like accepting that we don't have a clue where the market will be in an hour let alone a week and trading accordingly.

Don't do it.
Read "The Disciplined Trader" again and understand money management.
Risking 5% of you money (BTC) at any one trade is about ok. I would suggest to split that ~100 BTC to 2 or 3 chunks. 
Just think How many BTC you mine and how many you get on top of that by trading with just 5% of you holdings.
Risking(trading) all your BTC will be very stressful and you probably going to burn them.
I thing you are doing very well.

Yes - you make a good point.  Perhaps 3 days trading is not a sufficient track record  :P  I'm enjoying it though.  Listed 105 for 126.99 now in the hope of buying back for 123.99 later and picking up another Bitcoin. 

I'm having a weekend break in Amsterdam and it seems the Bitcoin world is all excitement with prices all over the place.  I'm on 2207.46779757 Bitcoin and zero cash which is OK given that I was on 97 Bitcoin on Monday.  I think the bank holiday will kill liquidity on the markets over next few days.  Not sure if I should sell and wait for price to fall hard by Tuesday or stick to small steady trades.

sell alot please :-D  thanks for the journal