Bitcoin Forum

http://s17.postimage.org/6pwq4jx0f/chart.png

if any of you still don't 'believe' in charts, let's take a look:

-the Chaikin Money Flow became positive for the first time in early December... the same day that

-the MACD crossover to positive occurred,

foreshadowing a strong uptrend for December

furthermore, three very important signals occurred within the 1-2 days around the huge Bitcoinica mass liquidation:

-MACD/EXP crossover to negative

-AROON UP/DOWN crossover to negative

-testing of zeroline by the Chaikin Oscillator

lucky for me i got out at $6.85 when the MACD crossover occurred. you fools!

learn 2 charts

-arepo

ps clear bear market now, dead center, actually; if you follow the sine curve of "sentiment" we are now in pessimism, which immediately precedes PANIC


 ;D

EDIT: pps bear market signalled by the Chaikin Money Flow going negative for the first time since early December, and a huge crash (+/- crossover) in the Chaikin Oscillator (momentum of the Accumulation/Distribution Line) these past 2-3 days.

lol...I dunno I found the OP quite funny  :P

Oh, and here's a pic of a falling knife

http://www.itulip.com/images/financialsknife.gif

But, but, but... the manipulator!  ???  ;)

dude, you don't understand how charts work. the manipulator moves the price; the charts help determine how much MOMENTUM the price move has. for instance, by only looking at the price, you neglect volume, which is an important indicator, as well as price. the charts i use are simple transformations of the price and volume, many of which act as oscillators which is very important for predicting maxima and minima (i.e. learn 2 calculus)

here's a post i made days after the MACD crossover, immediately after the AROON UP/DOWN crossover, and predicting the plummet in the Chaikin Oscillator:
 

Manipulators move the market, charts describe and predict how the market reacts to the movements.

this shit is crap. shove it.

explain yourself

actually, first: have you ever taken calculus?

hihi... ;D

to OP:

I was making a joke. Hence the ;)

As cunicula put so eloquently... it is ludacrous to try and use quantitative/technical analysis in such a thinly traded and highly manipulated market with high intervention tendency. And dude, believe me, I know charts and how much they tend to say shit about what is going to happen at later on to be dubbed 'black swan events'. A chart is a chart, the rest is what you read into it - all the more so at a commodity with no actual underlying value.

Also, I'm basically the guy that says bitcoins are overpriced because manipulator ruins both price stability and attraction of more investors. So yeah...

i am familiar with black swan events (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory). that would be equivalent to me attempting to predict the big, obviously manipulated price movements. i am merely predicting/noting the trend. there is still a trend regardless, and charts [read GRAPHS] are good visual representations of the price and volume.

please, think about calculus. one can predict when one function will reach a maximum (read: reversal) or minimum, by following the 'momentum' of a line, or function scalable to the derivative. a "zero-line crossover" of a derivative is an x-intercept, which tells you that the function is undergoing a 'reversal'.

(EDIT: for instance, this is the exact relationship between the Accumulation/Distribution Line, an indicator based solely on price and volume, and the Chaikin Oscillator, which measures the ACC/DIS Line's 'momentum')

so no, this was no black swan event. i predicted not that massive, manipulated movement, but noted the beginning of a reversal at the end of the bubble to 7.20, and sold at 6.85.

When will people learn that (we) are the manipulators?

+1

there are big players, but the mass movement of medium players still has a trending effect.

Calculus has no predictive power. The pricing function's derivative will be ~ 0 at the maximum because right after the maximum the next value will be slightly smaller, so the adjacent difference will be negative, and we'll assume there was a 0 between the positive difference and the negative one (because our signal isn't continuous). This requires hindsight. You might see it approaching 0 and extrapolate that it will keep going that way, but then you're just making assumptions and the calculus is just a means to express them.

Even if we could spy one instant ahead, seeing a derivative of 0 tells us nothing about whether the next moment the derivative will be -1000.

All these technical indicators can do is smoothly model assumptions about future market behavior based on (a very restricted view of) past behavior. Whether they work or not is another question, but if they do, it's because the model's assumptions were correct, not because of calculus.

Exactly, even if calculus was predictive, it can not be applied to discontinuous data.  You can only apply it to projections of that data, and each projection has it's own biases.

i got out, this market is so insane i cannot find single reason to support it, i'll get back in when hits bottom

to the manipulator:  enjoy your fucking greed, hopefully the rate will stay below for so long until you lose patience and sell for pennies on the dollar.

Yea lets face it..as hard as it may be to take...FIAT currency is safer atm than Bitcoin, which IMO is currently just a commodity to trade in to increase your FIAT balance and is no different to gold or silver.

calculus isnt predictive, it just describes how, for instance, crossovers can predict reversals. when the slope of a function is zero, at its maximum/minimum, the slope changes sign; in price terms, a reversal. if one were watching the function graph over time, as we watch the price function, if we were also keeping an eye on the derivative/point slope, we would be able to anticipate a reversal even among the noise of the market (stemming largely from the discontinuity of price data, as has been pointed out).

and your good points are why good traders don't just use one chart. they are all approximations and models. almost similar to predicting weather. when a whole bunch of signals agree, however, one should take note. rather like meteorology is awful for predicting daily weather, but we know the direction whereto our climate is going (global warming, &c).

Unfortunately your statement is more true than us BTC fanatics would like to believe.  There are a lot of people here who are trying to grow an infinitesimally small BTC "economy" when really the only thing it is still good for right now is to increase your fiat.

Maybe to YOU...

The speculators in this section really need to do some soul searching, and find out why this project is special, instead of ZOMG GOTTA MAKE GREEN BACKS ASAP!

U jelly bro?

Also, I prefer to make some Bitcoins. 8)

I don't understand your charting

knife gonna knife?

If charts work, then why do people lose money in the stock market?  Are they just not looking at the charts?
Maybe a contest is in order. People could present their theroies and each could fund a wallet with 1BTC. Trading with their respective systems we could see who profits the most after 3 months.

see where the various functions (lines) crossover towards the negative? those are bearish signals, to put it simply.

you hit the nail on the head. whenever i bring up my analysis here i get scoffed at. i doubt many traders look at the charts, or know how to read them. i have a B.S. in physics so i've had a lot of practice reading graphical data, and i love the relationship of the fundamental theorem of calculus with the way signals work; it's fascinating.

and as for a 'contest', i've been trading based on my own analysis of just the charts at bitcoincharts since october and i'm looking at 50% returns.

one of these days, ill make a post quoting all of my correct analyses and predictions. you guys can ignore me for now, it only hurts yourselves...

btw, i hope you can tell the difference between this stupidity:


...and actual chart-based technical analysis. price trends constitute only half of the information in the market...

So did we move from pessimism to panic yet?

not until the real selling begins.

In that case, let’s see if you can call the low when it happens.

not at all. panic is like the polar opposite of the frothing of the mouth that occurred on the forums at the peak of the $7.20 bubble. it's a sentiment thing, not exact, that wasn't exactly the pith of the OP...

I am not a manipulator. But if the price goes below $ 1 to fuck, I'll buy all the coins! And placing a few to buy \ sell walls ... I have no idea what would happen, but
i can consult with other reputable professionals ... The general consensus ...

i will predict the low, when i see the signals. it's not for a little ways still... the month-scale Chaikin oscillator is reaching a local minimum (momentum of downtrend decreasing), but i doubt this is stable. definitely still bear market.

EDIT: another small signal; AROON crossover on the 10-day scale. combined with the shifting depth on mtgoxlive, i think we might have already hit the bottom during the last downspike to $5.05. perhaps quasi-stable here, and i suspect we'll test $5.00 again. as long as the resistance holds, it will delay the falling knife. otherwise, bear market on.

new breaking signal!

10-day Money Flow Index just crossed strongly positive after being oversold yesterday. we may be bottoming out yet.

I just looked at goxlive, and it looked a bit bullish on price action, looked like a short term rising wedge might be forming. I thought maybe we could be heading back up. Then I checked RSI hasn't bottomed OBV/PVT are still tanking. I think its a bull trap.

If we break to the upside It won't hold, it might push through 5.50 to get everyone on board, but it will top out at 5.70 and then look for new lows.

This medium term correction has to run its course, my money is still on retest of ~2.20. If we test 2.20 and it holds then that will become e early strong support level. Any lower and people will be all at sea again wondering what do.

so nothing happened, pretty much?

i think you're wrong. this movement was preceded by a few short-term indicators turning bullish. also, this:


the depth at mtgoxlive is manipulated. we don't have nearly that much support on the ask side. the bottom was when we bounced off $5.05.

$5.00 will hold. i was wrong; there was no panic. maybe we're all a little more mature as traders now :)

fantastic post. I dont think Ive seen this much nonsense in a single post in a long time.

since you can differentiate this function, why not just use the function itself to see where the price is going? guaranteed profits, like stealing from a baby.

fantastic post; i haven't such blatant lack of knowledge of calculus in a single post since the person to whom i was responding when i wrote the post you quoted.

so let's see: if we have a function (discontinuous, mind you), and we want to know if its "very next" value will be higher or lower than its present, you want to know if it has a positive or negative slope. the problem, however, is a single point in a discontinuous function is NOT differentiable. so your above challenge is impossible.

HOWEVER, using charts can be almost exactly described by this intent. if one smooths the data using averages, for instance (even the data you look at when you look at price charts has been smoothed, usually by boxplots), and then graphs the derivative of this now-continuous function, you might get an idea of what kind of trend is occurring. in fact, this is extremely easy, and can be done by just about anyone during a strong trend. long-term PVT and Accumulation/Distribution Line will both be increasing, and thus the Chaikin Oscillator ('momentum' or scaled-slope of the ACC/DIST) will be relatively constant and positive. guaranteed profits, like stealing from a baby!

identifying tops and bottoms (protecting those guaranteed profits) is more difficult. using indicators that also look at volume is helpful, as price and volume are the two core pieces of "data" that are free, information-wise, in a market, and should always both be considered. also looking at oscillators which are slightly different than indicators that just act as scaled derivatives is helpful because they try to track the 'momentum' of price moves -- that is, the tendency of markets to swing from 'overbought' to 'oversold' -- which are signals of a market reversal.

tl;dr put your money where your mouth is; i've been trading on my analysis since october and am up 50%, while, though i am not one to believe everything i read, you just got 'goxed'.

Shit is crap. Cut the calculus for dummies bullcrap.

Just post pictures of your shits. Superimpose some charts on the turds. That'll tell us where the market is headed.

So, you've been doing this since October, when we hit rock bottom pricing of $2 per BTC (and we hit that again in Dec.), and since then BTC has increased roughly three fold and you're up 50%. That's not very good, as basically luck alone and guessing you should invest when we hit $2 would have given you much greater returns.

Calculus is powerful, and I've likely known about it longer than you've been alive.  But you know what determines bitcoin price at this stage in the game?  Big players /manipulatorS, with $50k+ BTC/$250k+ USD, and when they choose to enter or exit the market.  Predict what they're going to do, and you'll know where the game is headed.  Your charts have more in common with tea leaves than with a predictive model of bitcoin prices.

did you know in october that the price was going up? nice hindsight bias, dumbass.

i've addressed this before. in fact, i've made a whole thread about it (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=61402.0).

briefly: manipulated movements are large, sudden, unpredictable, and unprofitable except by luck.

also, "THE MANIPULATOR" is a hypothesis.

most of the volatility we see is from leveraging on bitcoinica,

and there is still an underlying trend formed by the collective movement of everybody else's trades.

in other words, manipulators move the market, charts show and predict how the market reacts to the movement.

+1

@arepo
How is stating the limitations of calculus a demonstration of a "blatant lack of knowledge of calculus"?  It would seem at this point you're just trolling.

Yes, calculus is great, in fact I have a degree in mathematics, but math is nothing but trouble if you don't understand the limitations and assumptions you are working with.

wow Im convinced, arepo I will be following your trading advice.
please make more threads, I will donate btc to you.

IMO, arepo's claims are wrong about calculus in general but correct on the manipulation and correct on the part that the method implied could be used to make money from October to now.

In each of the cases, there is a statistical argument in it. The statements on forecasts use additional assumptions, which seem to boil down to trends giving nonzero information on expectation value. This should not be the case normally, and is not a generally correct mathematical concept. However, reading Goomboo's posts, trends have a strange tendency to continue more than expected on some markets, very especially on Bitcoin in the last year.

On big instead of small players acting on the market: all we get is few large movements instead of many small ones. This doesn't really change the general nature of the market, just gives it a little more noise on larger scales. There is no magical power in money that enables one to manipulate others. Sure, you can place a few manipulative large orders, but only if you accept the fact that they may be filled, because there's always a player around who could to that if he wanted. Okay, people who are overly manipulated by far-away orders can be manipulated, true, but that behavior is asking for it.

Claiming that the market is controlled by the large traders only is overdoing it. There's also little reason to assume their psychology and objectives being much different from smaller traders.

+9000

i think you and i agree on more than you think. you've very masterfully stated what i've been griping about for a while about "the Manipulator". you've also pointed out that my method does work, and works via the tendency of markets to swing from overbought to oversold (see: trends have a strange tendency to continue more than expected...)

however, i don't understand your point about any "generally mathematical concept". The only general concept used here is the fundamental theorem of calculus: that the derivative of a [continuous] function is equal in magnitude to the slope of the function at any point. The function P(), the price function, is just whatever the price is: that function is equivalent, mathematically, to the function that the market mechanism is computing. as traders you are aware that this is a wildly erratic function: many economists (Elliot) believe it to be infinitesimally complex, i.e. a fractal! But it can be smoothed and slopes can be figured, trends can be identified, and profit can be made because trends have a strange tendency to continue more than expected....

i hope i have clarified my previous points

also THIS. this is the point.

trends DO yield information on 'expectation value'; in a perfect-information market it would not happen, but in real markets price has momentum. and thus scaled derivatives and oscillators are useful in identifying trends (and their limits -- tops, bottoms).

+1

I got my bachelor's in mathematics over 30 years ago, along with another in economics with a concentration in quantitative methods. Grad school was EE with a concentration in computer science, I never finished it as I was concurrently working in the financial services industry and suddenly found myself busy being buried in money, or so it seemed at the time. No problem is ever completely solved  ;)

Calculus is great, linear algebra is really cool, I had a knack for abstract algebra, and I found probability, stats, and game theory very stimulating because it was often counterintuitive at the start.

What I learned on the job was the importance of marketing and social engineering. I got to observe a great deal of it, as well as participate. When it comes to investments and speculation, the fact of the matter is that there are quite a few standard "plays" around, particularly for a 500 pound gorilla, and it doesn't always have to be just a smash and grab deal either.

I'm not going to reiterate points I've made previously about market capitalization, the promotional cycle of an investment, etc. I'm not going to point to the Hunt brothers manipulation of the silver market, the selling of "Japan Inc" in the 1980s, or the dozens of small cap scams I studied in the 1990s when I took an interest in the behavioral psychology of fraud in the financial markets, nor will I regale the board with first hand tales of the madness of crowds during the real estate lending boom/bust of the first decade of the 21st century.

IMO, bitcoin is not a good fit for a purely quantitative/technical approach. A post I never made here a few weeks ago was in response to a thread asking "If you were the manipulator, what would you do next?". One possibility that crossed my mind was to start a technical analysis thread in an attempt to gain adherents, a block of votes in the market if you will. It's a lot easier to lead lambs to slaughter if you get them to follow you first. I lack the inclination to do so myself, I don't do much other than write equity options for income these days, but the idea seemed like a natural.

There is a problem using this as a general rule on markets. The more traders follow this rule, the more true it becomes -- but a trader that simply dampens oscillations will ultimately eat all those who follow trends too much. In such a situation, it's those who break trends who get the money of those who followed them.

As always, the market will compete to eradicate any pattern that gives information on the expectation value of the price. Depending on the time-scale, profits, and complexity of the pattern it might take a while though.

agreed, it's very much the Red Queen's Race; but with a little effort i can try to constantly trade ahead of the market. it's not a guaranteed system, just one that is currently working for me, for the bitcoin economy.

i can agree with you here. many more things than strict technical analysis go into my decision-making. using this forum as a sentiment gauge works really well, actually.

This is a good post. However, gathering of lambs who mimic you and then have predictable (read exploitable) behavior. That is all technical analysis is in any market context.

That is why I recommended divination by shits as a functionally equivalent alternative. It would be much more entertaining.

Calculus aside, what is the forum sentiment in your opinion, and how do you use this to decide on price movement in the near term?

I made my position clear on that. I think we need to hit panic/despair before we get to the bottom. Since the new year rallies I would say optimism has remained pretty high.

That's my impression too.  There was no katharsis, so to speak, to free everyone of the fears :)  (and liquidate that over-leveraging on bitcoinica)

Bitcoinica showed the * on the buy side (no, not on the sell side as well) today when it was ~5.6.

you're assuming the last top was a reversal, and not just a correction from $7.20. we hit the trend line right as the last short-term downtrend started to lose momentum.

It certainly is, Holmes.

after seeing this thread for like.. weeks, i need to express my bad feeling about it:

useless, panik spreading "KNIFE IMMINENT!" - bullshit thread. doomsday is at 12.12.2012, not NOW!

the "knife"-metaphor makes me kind of aggresive, excuse me.

if there is anything like a "knife" it is somebody selling 10k bitcoins - OH MY GOOD, THAT IS SO BAD, I BETTER SHOOT MYSELF IN THE FACE!
..get over it. price moves.  8)


..

stop opening such threads, please. we don't need neither "KNIFE IMMINENT" nor "RALLY ABOUT TO EXPLODE" threads.
thanks

 

This..





And for all you people..  The manipulator ..  exists..

If you cant see it, your retarded...

Gewure: you get pissed by bearish threads because you have a long position :D

So what’s your position and why do you hold it? :)

guys, let's get back to topic:

imminent knife is imminent.. or.. is it?

Walls are just people jockeying for positions

They are the jaws of the manipulator!!!!!!!

nope. almost every indicator has turned around since i made this post. im certain that $5.25 was the bottom, and we're continuing a massive trendline now undisturbed finally from the bubble over 7.

it actually did look pretty terrible when i made this post. i was being a little sarcastic by using said metaphor but that is my style. a few days of hindsight bias and it may seem obtrusive and unwarranted because the knife no longer seems imminent, and if you have any sense you ought to be back in BTC now, we're definitely turning around. as such, you're probably long again so i'm sorry for the FUD-style OP.

Tis the Season!

Party Time!!

Herp... derp...


Theres no manipulator...

Herp... derp