Bitcoin Forum

I have been in crypto for a few months now and only recently feel I have a good grasp on trading (both long term and short term). But it took quite a bit of digging and trial and error to get to a point where I somewhat understand how the market works.

I thought I would start a thread to help newer traders avoid some of the mistakes I made and losses I took.

In the last month or so I managed to take 1 btc and turn it into 1.5 btc (would have been more if it wasn't for the unexpected China crash last week but still holding some coins I got cheap). This is purely from day trading which I have come to like. Most of the advise out there will tell you to hold for the long term which I do agree with, but since I started using 50% of my investment to day trade it has made this space much more interesting.

My best profits in the last month has come from the following coins:

LSK
OMG
RADS
DNT
PAY

My biggest losses came from:

YOYOW (Was supposed to be a quick flip based on hype but China killed that)
DNT (bought back in after made a nice profit then it tanked)
NEO (auto buy order triggered while it was tanking and then it kept tanking based on the China news)
MCO (WolfofPolonex made a tweet regarding Visa deal that tanked it right after I bought in)

Currently holding waiting for a good exit point:
CVC
TRST
RADS (Just bought on the dip)
PAY (only recently started going up after I bought back in on a dip last weekend)
WAVES - Long Term Hold

In between I bought and sold other coins but these were the most notable. As you can see above the crypto space can be unforgiving. Nice profits in one coin can change drastically on a whim.

I believe the most important thing in this space is patients. Ive learned that the hard way and I believe many people did with NEO recently.

You have to be willing to wait it out when a coin drops and not be too greedy and sell at a predetermined profit level when a coin moons (unless its a long term hold).
You also have to be disciplined and NOT buy when a coin is on the rise - IT WILL DIP at some point (This has been a difficult one for me).

Looking forward to some other replies and a good discussion on other's trading methods.

this is a decent thread.
i am also more of a day-trader myself when it comes to altcoins. and in fact i always find it a little weird that people say hold altcoins for long term to make profit! in my opinion the profit is always in short term trading of altcoins not in the long term.

i have had my losses too, just like you. but the cruel days in this market has taught me that i must dump any coin that is not performing well instead of holding it until it is reversed. this way i always keep my losses small and open the room for profit for myself. if i dump i have the money(bitcoin) to buy at the bottom. if i don't dump i don't have anything to buy at the bottom and i have to wait to see whether or not price recovers.

and that is what i like to add to your thread.
i am glad i dumped NEO fast when the threat of dump was presenting itself that helped me to buy at its bottom and make a big profit from the recovery. now i am free to do whatever i like. i can hold, buy more, sell and buy back and lots of things.

Disagree...the big money is in sleepers that at some point perform x20...To perform the same at short you must de 100% 20 times...The deal here is, not everybody is made to wait for MONTHS.

Best bet in my opinion is take the short profits to buy sleepers you trust.

This is good in theory, but for those of us that are new it is very difficult to identify these sleeper coins. What you have to do to succeed in this is to know that a coin is good before everyone else does. Because once everyone knows, the price goes up and it is no longer a sleeper.

Yes I agree that long term holding of great coins will indeed make the most gains. But in my opinion this is a big gamble also as the roadmaps to those projects are very long in crypto time and you never know what will happen from day to day in this space. There is also regulation looming and we do not know what will happen with that so all this thing have to be taking into consideration. This is why I keep 50% in long term coins and 50% in trading. I also recently started with ICO's which I will get into in another post when I have some time.

Good point. By Sleeper coin I am referring to projects such as Waves, Rads, TRST which are known with a bit of research but haven't really woke up yet. Now there are some coins that just shoot up 10x in a week but these are very difficult to predict and I don't spend time searching for them because many times these are just P&D and will eventually fall.

Great addition thanks for posting!

thanks for a nice thread.
i'm in a similar position, having traded crypto for a while but joined bitcointalk only in the last days (after a bit too much lurking :P )
iit may be true that the biggest gains are in sleepers, but aiming only at those potential waking giants can keep your money frozen for long, and be less profitable than using a more proactive approach. investors in MAID know something of that. personally, i have got the best and safest returns by diversifying and hedging my bets a lot. so, not only different assets but also different strategies, like % in long-term and % in day trading as you mention and based on market mood. also, i've found it rewarding to keep a few bucks on potential sleepers and even a few pump&dump shitcoins, as a way to follow them closely and be ready to jump in with more, without having to freeze too much of my resources in the meantime.
as to ICOs, i confess not to have dared touch them even with a stick... all the more curious to hear about your experience cause of that

Nice Thread  :)

I've also been starting daytrading just some weeks ago. So far i learned to stick to reputable Coins - buy in dip and sell in pump.
Long-term only for "sleepers" as they were called in a post above (i.e. Ubiq, Waves)


Let me Show you something..

If you start with (lets say) 1 BTC and add 5% Profit every here and there (i experienced it this way) - you double very soon.

1.05
1.1
1.15
1.21
1.27
1.34
1.4
1.47
1.55 <- +55% after 9 trades
1.62
1.71
1.79
1.88
1.97 <- almost doubled after 14 trades

Of course, this is just an example  ::)

Nice example! That's my reasoning also. The only difference is in the real world you will take some losses on some coins that will fail to perform unless you are willing to wait a very long time for them to rebound.

thanks for the insight.
after so many times of finding myself with completely worthless coins left in my hands, i'm also trying to learn some of the discipline to dump quick to minimize the losses... but man, it's hard! i think i get sort of sentimental about my buys and reluctant to sell them ;D anyways, during the latest China crisis i've managed to dump and re-buy part of my NEO stack (which i held since < 1 USD!) with decent timing (although far from perfect), so i hope i may be slowly healing from this perversion... but i'll keep your post in mind as a good reminder in times of doubt!

That will be so difficult to say the sleepers coin have a lot of the potential. We can try to make a comparison about those sleepers coin and a lot of them just another crap that doesn't have a lot of day trade volume.
that was true.

That`s why i recommend to stick with coins that were in a stable uptrend the last months.
i.e. BTC, ETH, LTC, DASH ... one might say every coin that has a Tether pair on bittrex  ;D

Take a look at this article about day trade : https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-bots-and-black-marketers-are-influencing-bitcoin-price-altcoins-value

"I believe Poloniex and Bittrex both have a ton of internal trading bots that are monitoring people's trades, and due to a massive bot reaction, the entire market saw a decline,” he says."

This is a nice example of progression, but an important point is that you need to go for a decent % on each trade. You can't do this sort of progression so easily if you're only going for maybe 2% on a trade, because the exchange will take a % cut on the buy and again on the sell, and wipe out your gains.
So just to note it can't be done on very small market changes but just on the bigger swings.

Newbie trader here as well.

Everything is crashing hard right now due to (new) China news. What to do? I'm going to scoop up ETH and BTC, but I'm unsure what to do in terms of Alts. Scoop up as well? Or due to falling purchasing power of ETH & BTC, wait until ETH & BTC have recovered to buy Alts?

When every alt crashes, this means that bitcoin falls as well. So one way to avoid losses is to trade into Tether USDT which is supposed to stay =$1. That way you don't have to cash out and can stay invested in cryptocoins and trade back to your alts or bitcoin once everything has stabilised.

Thanks for this thread, we can learn a bit from each other.

I got into cryptocurrencies when I bought altcoin trading bot. I didn't know at all what are altcoins about but daily profits made by the bot looked great. After a few weeks of bot trading, I realized the bot makes such high daily percentages because altcoin markets performed even stronger. I became to study altcoin markets the same way I had studied forex markets years before.

Nowadays, I am kind of swing trader, holding positions for 5 - 10 business days. I call it riding the waves :) From my point of view, I could make even better results holding coins during explosion phases (especially low and mid cap coins) and investing in large cap coins for longer periods of time (month or two). I am now carrying out a small research on market potential for these longer timeframes.

 

There are some coins that are good for holding longterm while some other are just for day trading because a miss of the right time to sell, can mean waiting for unnecessary longer time. This I have witnessed in my little foray into the art of trading but it'd good this is coming for everyone share ideas on how things are going in the market.

Some nice tips here, I'm trying out day trading myself, trying to make about 3% per trade (on average) this means you double your money about every 23 trades which isn't too much at all. I find with the markets currently on the bullish days there are easily 2-3%s to be made in lots of places whereas the bearish days there's very few small amounts to be made but a few good opportunities to make 10-15% in one trade if you get your entry and exit points right.

I think 3% is too small if you factor in the fees/risk and time. I go for anywhere between 15-30% depending on the buzz around the coin and how the market is trending. Currently with this latest China news and bear market I focus more on buying more long term hold coins since I haven't been able to pinpoint where it will settle once they go back up. Ive been getting burned on this China news because they are not going back to previous levels as fast as I would like so I'm stuck holding. But I may try to go for like 7-10% gains to see if this will work in these types of markets. Its just so risky because of how sensitive people are to the news without really analyzing it.

During this time the best scenario would be to have some fiat and BTC ready to make buys but I know not everyone can be in this position. For example the last crash I used most of my USD to purchase BTC and then BTC to purchase coins that i thought were dirt cheap only to have to go cheaper today lol. So the solution would be to throw more USD and BTC at them because I know they will rebound when this FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) China is spewing is over. I believe its good to concentrate on long term coins as I've noticed coins that just have buzz around them do not tend to recover as fast.

As a trader i am going to buy cindicator token. I am tired thinking about trading. Its now the time for artificial intelegent to do my analityc job. I will enjoy my days with my family and let the AI doing it. When i gor ssignal then i buy the coin.
That is my next strategies for trading

I have been in trading world for 11 years..and tired..

Could you please let know which trading bot you use? Thx

I have never used a bot. But here is a link to a good thread about them:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1944274.0

I used GUNBOT. I loved the community around the bot, they are more than helpful. The bot is highly customizable, and works for poloniex, bittrex and kraken. More in a thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1715214.0

0.25% comission per trade on bittrex. I think you might Forget about that even if you "just" go for 5%.

Risk is very small as Long as you believe in the market  ;D ;D ;D

Yes maybe for some the 5% would be good but is just not worth it for me because of the time involved. But I have recently started to experiment with bots and even 2-3% would be great if a bot can do it. I will post here if a bot can really generate these results consistently.

Your idea is very good.I am not expart in trading platfrom.Although i started trading before three months ago and i always try to trade two way.First is i hold some coin for long term and second some coin is for daily trading.

Yes this is the best way to do it.

i definetely agree to hold some coins in the long-term. I only hold 25% of coins, rest is tether or the coin that probably is going to offer profits.

+ trading in tether lets you easily see your winnings in $
 ::)

right now i recommend ETH, LTC and QTUM for relatively save profits in the next days.

Can't believe its almost 2 months since I started this topic. Anyway here is a quick update:

Since my last post I have had very limited time to focus on trading alts. So I started experimenting with Bots as someone suggested.

After some research I decided on  C.A.T and overall I feel it was a pretty good decision. It's a one off purchase unlike some of the other bots out there and it does what it's supposed to. However it does require A LOT of monitoring and tweaking and I am still trying to figure the right configurations to have it run mostly on autopilot. The overall downtrend in Alts is not helping either.

But despite this I have been able to make a profit overall despite some early losses while I was a bit impatient.

The trick with the bot is to focus on small gains 1-3% and use buy/sells when the markets are going up and sell/buys when they are going down. You also have to pay careful attention to when the trend changes so you don't get stuck either holding a bag or selling a coin that rockets up and you are left stuck with a low buy order (this has been the hard part for me since I haven't had the time to monitor it as I should).

Quality coins is key as even if you are left stuck with it, you are quite confident it will rise in the future.

Coins I am currently (actively) trading:

MTH
BQX
DNT
CND
TRST
HVN

Follow @PeterLBrandt on twitter, he usually has some pretty good trading advice.