Bitcoin Forum

Hello ! :)

Can someone give me a list of good books or information sources regarding trading / ta analysis / speculation ?

I m "trading" just for fun and i even made a little bit of profit, but most of the time i m just wildly guessing. I justt ry to buy low and sell high - if thats not working, then i m bagholding like a champ.  ~:)

But i really would like to improve. For example: understanding fibbonacci or all the other special terms.

Where did you learn your skills ?

Thanks in advance

Well, here is a couple links that will get you started with basic chart patterns and Fibonacci retracements. A note on chart patterns--emphasis on 4H candle or longer charts. The lower the time frame, the higher the noise.

http://stockcharts.com/help/doku.php?id=chart_school:chart_analysis:chart_patterns
http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school:chart_analysis:fibonacci_retracemen

And if you look into only a handful of indicators, I suggest:

http://stockcharts.com/help/doku.php?id=chart_school:technical_indicators:relative_strength_in
http://stockcharts.com/help/doku.php?id=chart_school:technical_indicators:moving_average_conve

Good luck! :)

I don`t have a list of books.But an advice: to get experienced with TA it will take YEARS ! you cannot learn this in crash courses or in a few month.
Go to Google and search textbooks.
you mention fibonacci,well, this is already a bit special and not for the beginning
I see a lot of noobs here doing TA and it is horrible. I can read TA because I got experienced years ago in stock markets.
As german I do not know english textbooks,sorry
I don`t think this Forum is the right way to learn about TA.
Good luck
P.S for the beginning start with Basics of TA  and then go to Patterns .
ChartSchool
http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school

http://www.taguide.com/index.html

Good book to start with, in my opinion:

http://www.amazon.com/Technical-Analysis-Complete-Financial-Technicians/dp/0137059442

IMHO bitcoin market is very unique.

I read the Content and it seems to be good

This one is for free for a Kindle:


Technical Analysis: From Trends to Moving Averages- Your Step-by-Step Guide to Trading with Technical Analysis... von Joel Sanders (5. Mai 2014)

It's somewhere in the middle, difficulty wise, I'd say...

You probably could, in principle, get most of the information from the book from web resources like Stochcharts - Chartschool (http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school), but the book is well organized, reliable, and covers a wide range of topics beside charts and indicators.

Then again, for someone who never traded before it's possibly a bit too technical (although the math required is nothing more than high school level). Depends on whether OP is serious about getting into TA (then the book is a good start), otherwise BabyPips (http://BabyPips.com) is maybe more accessible.

I agree again for that

Well, as a retiree I should dig out my high School math which ist Long ago ;D ??? ::)

Technical Analysis: From Trends to Moving Averages- Your Step-by-Step Guide to Trading with Technical Analysis. von Joel Sanders (5. Mai 2014)

This is the perfect book to read for a newcomer, well written and easy to learn.

Haha, I'm sure that won't be a problem. I just mentioned it to make clear that, to follow the book, you don't need a university degree in a field like math or physics, just basic mathematical maturity is enough. And if you're retired, you're definitely mature enough :P

You should also learn that there is next to none empirical evidence for technical analysis to be an effective predictor of future prices

Take a look at tradingview.com! It's an amazing (free!) tool for charting and the Bitcoin chat community is quite active, knowledgable and helpful! Just keep in mind that it isn't obvious easily who's right or wrong, and that even the best chartist/trader does make wrong predictions regularly, so don't follow anyone blindly ;)

As someone else said, it isn't so much about being right or wrong, but about improving your odds, finding critical points where something is bound to happen, and finally managing your trades in a way that you profit in the end.

True. Chapter 2 of the book I linked to goes into that topic. Hint: not every reproducible effect is reproducible in the (rigorous, but  ultimately also extremely conservative) setting of an empirical study.

I used the analogy of chess opening theory in a discussion with Jorge in the wall thread a while ago: imagine you tried to formalize (and program) chess opening theory as a computer scientist, say 20 years ago. No chance. You would have (rightfully) dismissed it as "way too intuitionistic".

However, that doesn't mean that opening theory is worthless, as the practicing chess player well versed in it would have proven to you by kicking your poor alpha beta pruning machine's ass.


Note: the above does not mean everything that's not reproducible in a study is worth following. Homeopathy, cold fusion or denialist climate science come to mind...

True, but that's no reason for the OP not to learn TA.

While it may be less applicable to Bitcoin it has a long tradition of successful application in other markets.

Knowledge never hurts. Just remember that, as Einstein said, imagination is more important.

Just don't take TA too seriously.

Technical analysis, just like any methodology, is not 100% accurate, but it can be a valuable tool, one which can be used in conjunction with other types of analysis to help improve your stock market returns.

also check out Goomboo's Journal thread. he's using a simple method, and there is tons of other information in that thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=60501.0

And to get how bitcoin is NOT like a stock, I would read SlipperySlope's  Stephen Reed's Million Dollar Logistic Model Thread.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=366214.0

to me daytrading feels like gambling.  i'll stick to blackjack -  i like my odds better.   

Yes , only with alts you can get some signs of a dump / pump , but with bitcoin you can be seeing a very bearish orderbook and then suddenly one whale appears and make a million buy.

i feel the opposite. i hate playing against the house. the odds are stacked against you. at least when you are playing against other market participants, it's more so a test of skill. like 60% skill, 40% luck or something..... :P

This is what I thought due to how it fluctuates, but a lot of people argue otherwise based on the data gathered from historical prices. I still think it's just coincidence that things match up the way they do though.

what would you expect, though? like any other investment vehicle/speculative asset, it is traded on a market. that comes with fundamentals, technicals, sentiment, etc, just like any other asset. sure, i think bitcoin is more or a less a new asset class, but that doesn't mean it isn't subject to the same market dynamics as all other instruments traded on markets. and there are plenty of extremely volatile instruments out there.

Wouldn't you think that the regulated vs unregulated market would have an effect though? We're basically in the wild west here.

Regulation doesn't change anything in that respect. People still have the same reactions to the gain and loss of money. It's precisely that psychology that makes TA work for any speculative asset.

I was thinking along the lines of market manipulation. For example, we hear the news about China and Bitcoin drops like a rock. They legalize it and it shoots up. This went on for a while, over and over. We wouldn't be experiencing the same thing in the stock market.

We wouldn't be Goxxed in the stock market either.

we could experience similar things. what happens to the stock of a biotech company when the FDA rejects their wonder drug on trial? or vice versa -- gives the green light to a groundbreaking drug. similar effects are seen there, methinks.

I'm pretty much just starting to grasp TA myself, but I can really recommend following people on tradingview and trying to replicate their charts.
I learn by seeing and doing, so applying the TA of others and seeing the results help a lot.

yes, this can help. however, be careful not to go blindly on the TA of others. it is very easy to miss a projection, and then it is up to you to adapt to the market. i think some people look at another person's chart, thinks "that's plausible", then when a prediction or formation gets invalidated, they don't realize it.

Yeah, absolutely. I find my self both agreeing and disagreeing with people I follow, which is good. That means I'm thinking logically and going deeper into the meaning of their analysis. If I was just looking at a bullish scenario and applying my emotions to it, believing that it sounds plausible because I want it to go up, that would be very bad and could lead me to lose it all.

I've learned that you have to be willing to adapt to changes when you see them. My first chart had a channel leading up to $621.. then we broke out of it. I really had to trust in my ability to understand what was going on then and change my strategy.

yep easy to get swept up in other people's charts. i have learned the hard way -- i trust my own TA and no one else's!!

babypips.com can teach you the basics of candlestick patterns, fibonacci, and basic indicators and they apply to forex.

The forex market is similar to the bitcoin market because of its decentralized nature and relative stability of the supply-side - more similar than stocks at least.

Investopedia has a good set of dictionaries that help
Reading the SEC securities books also are really helpful
https://www.csi.ca/student/en_ca/courses/csi/fp1.xhtml


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