Bitcoin Forum

Hello,
I'm just interested if is it possible or there is some catch. I see that price of BTC on stocks is different (of course) but the difference is big enough to make money with just buying on one stock and selling on the other one. So my Q is what's the catch? I already checked fees and still it's should be ok.

I've never trade BTC (yet) so correct me if I'm wrong or there is only classic risks like falling price..

I check price @  http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/currency/USD.html

Thanks in advance for your time.

the catch is you're going to guess wrong at some point and lose out on a lot of money.

this is because there are people with enough funds to manipulate the market when it still has such a small market cap.

buy and hold.

To be honest, it's not that difficult to make $$ trading BTC, considering its history. Buy low, sell high. Buy high, sell higher. Not realizing the loss when the market moves against you has historically always worked out -- but we'll see how the $1100+ crowd fares. :P

Now, that's making $$. Making both $$ on BTC profits is a lot more difficult. You may find even though you are making more $$, over time, you may be losing coins.

This sounds more like arbitrage than day trading. Are you sure you know what you are doing?

Daytrading in any form, is similar to gambling imo.

Dont get me wrong, daytrading is totally different from just buy bitcoin at its low then holding on to it.

When you are doing day trading, your making multiple trades within that hour depending on your approach.

No, that's not necessarily true. To be specific, that would be "intra-day" trading. Day trading positions can take place over the course of days (plural) to be sure. I rarely make more than one trade in a day (scalping), but I do trade on the 1hr/4hr charts, so, days.

the catch is that a lot of people don't have the psychological and emotion control to be winning traders. it may look easy, but it's not. it takes skill, hard work and a lot of patience to let your trading positions play out.

Intra-day trading is perfectly possible, on bitstamp for example its common see more than 0.4% variations when the market is sideaways, so its possible have at least small profits from day trading. 

i don't think he was saying it wasn't possible. he was making a distinction between day trading and intraday trading, since a lot of people erroneously think that day traders always close positions before the end of day, and multiple times a day.

With a market that does not every technically close there really is no distinction between a day trader and an intra-day trader.

well, i'd say there certainly is when someone defines a "day trader" as having to make "multiple trades within that hour". that simply isn't true, so it's a valid distinction to make, at least in this instance.

What the OP is describing is arbitrage.  It works, but only in some areas (some countries don't have the speed to move $).  It doesn't work well on holiday weekends.  And you can lose a lot of the coin price jumps up and you're out in fiat.

Ahh. I see your talking about arbitrages. Well, there is no catch here. It's another form of risking your money if you do not have enough knowledge on what you're doing. It's also hard to go with the flow of the markets when you don't have the $$.

Before you make any decision, run a test for a short ammount of time, for example put all the choices you would make in excel and do it for 2 weeks and check if you are doing well. If you will notice you are good at it, than go ahead and good luck ;).

The catch is it's not as easy as it looks. Sure, it looks simple buying low and selling high but it's never that simple. Give it a go and you'll soon find out.

And thanks for reactions, I will give it a try :)


yea, I was more or less referring to "buy & sell higher", sorry for confusion.

I think a lot of people think they can strike it rich by day trading, but very few people can make a living off of it. It takes up a lot of your time as well, but good luck if you try it.

Spot on.

Day trading is a loser game.

Arbitrage - making money off of differences in the exchange rates between the exchanges is possible but increasingly difficult.

Day trading - buying and selling BTC and alts is essentially a zero sum game, so your gains are someone else's losses.  So while it is possible to make a lot of profits here, it is hard to do so sustainably.

CEG makes a good point in that since the trend of BTC price has largely been up, if you buy and the market moves against you, if you hang on, you will probably be able to exit with a profit.  After all, a year ago, the price of BTC was only about 70 USD!

Note that this does NOT hold with alt coins.  They almost invariably get pumped and then dumped and then die a long slow death, check the price history of dogecoin for an example of this pattern and it was one of the more successful alts.

I believe OP is indeed thinking about arbitraging instead of day-trading.
For arbitrage, you could make profits if the price difference between two exchanges is large enough to cover all the trading, deposit and withdrawal fees.
For day-trade, you could make profits if you can buy low and sell high in the same exchange to cover the trading fee.

No catch, it's basically gambling lol with the exchanges being the real winner.

Sometimes I am confused, I see "day trade" a lot, and not sure what it means. Does it mean short term trade?

yes, short term. could be within the day or several times a day (intra-day), or over a period of several days. basically, it's playing small moves and "scalping" rather than "swing trading" larger moves.

the catch: you give all your money away to the better traders. ;)

This is not necessarily true. If you truly know and understand the market then you can potentially make money from "day trading"

At this point the market has become too large and efficient for day traders to really profit. In other words the market reacts to new almost instantly and is accurately priced.

Sure, the better traders make money -- the worst ones lose it. And most lose. :)

I disagree on "too large and efficient for day traders to really profit". Forex is bigger by huge magnitudes, and professional day traders trade that market as well. Admittedly, I've heard forex is more challenging than bitcoin.

With a more volatile market, the day traders have more opportunity to make profit.
In that sense, bitcoin is a much better place for daily traders than forex or stock or gold. :)

Difference is, in forex, traders use 500:1, 1000:1 leverage -- in bitcoin, the most I see is 10:1 (which is crazy), and on the more prominent exchanges, 3:1 and 2.5:1. Makes a big difference on little moves. :)

Other than btc.sx and bitfinex, are there any other exchanges have leveraged trading?

FX Open has leveraged trading, I believe, but I haven't used it, so I can't say much. BTCE has leveraged trading through the Meta Trader platform (you can find it under the "finance" tab.

Thanks for the information, I didn't know btce offer leveraged trading as well. :)

the catch is that the commissioner get richer

What you're referring to is called arbitrage. You buy low on one exchange and sell a bit higher on another. This is a well-known exploit in trading.
I've done it successfully a number of times with other coins. With BTC, you'll have to invest a lot of USD for it to be really profitable.
The only thing you have to be wary of is price volatility combined with transaction time (the time it takes to receive the BTC can vary quite a bit).
If you've noticed the price difference, other people have too  ;)

Also note that if you're trading via arbitrage then record keeping can get pretty messy and if you're required to pay tax on the income it can become cumbersome without a script or database.

I never seen a successful arbitrage since the deposits or wire transfers are always seemed to be delayed.

And the exchange like btc-e states they never receive it etc.

The catch is losing your money lol.  :P

There are many ways to predict the market, but none of them are correct 100%.
You have to be able to admit that some trades are bad ones, short and go on trading like nothing happened,
also, in some cases , the market is manipulated so that many of those who analyse charts make the bad move.

If youre going to start trading anything, start in low bets, and as you progress and learn more, increase your bets accordingly

Isnt it like gambling?

Pretty much. There are some different theories to predict asset price though.

I think forex trading is easier than bitcoin trading. Forex trading, you can see news what is happening in that country, major events and press release. All these can move the price of forex. It is more predictable. Where as bitcoin trading, the price just goes up and down for no reasons most of the time.  :-\

I used my skill and experience in forex trading, and apply that to bitcoin trading. I lost over £200 in one day. That is why I don't trade in bitcoin, I just hold.  :)

The catch is...there is risk.

Trade with caution. I would only trade and invest with money I could afford to lose.

This is not financial advice.

I've been watching the BTC for a month - it seems to go up and down for no discernible reason.

The catch is the fees make it negative game for average seller/buyer. Fortunatelly there are many buying/selling at any price so you just hope there are not many traders who preffer buy low and sell higher, who compete with you to try make profit

The catch is potentially losing a shitload of bitcoin. I only trade what I can afford to lose, sometimes invested in the right alt currency at the right time (though i've lost a couple of btc buying into several shitcoins).

the catch is you lose money, compared to a similar Buy&Hold strategy.  don't believe lies like Wolf of Wall Street.  no sane man makes $1 million a week

If I understood you correctly you are taking about buying from an exchange and selling to another (though I think this can't be categorized as day trading that much)
if you consider the costs of depositing to the cheaper exchange -mostly cheaper because it has limited deposit options- and the cost of withdrawing in the other more priced one you would be in negative most likely -bankwire fees, exchanger fees- also it would take days to do a single one of these "exchange operation" and the BTC price might have fluctuated against you since the price difference isn't that big...

and also all fees of trading
that eats up most of pofit

Trading is a zero-sum game, and don't forget that trading fees will accumulate to a significant amount if you are doing intra-day trading.

Trading is like gambling. You cannot predict the exchange price accurately. Most exchanges have fees which eats up a sum of your profits.

I'm going to start day-trading soon as I've got enough btc, probably only trade small amounts to start off with.

Buy now, sell later.

Day trading is like gambling. Close to 100% failure rate.

Risk and stress.  The stress is the worst part, always have a side income if you are trading or have other riskier sort of incomes.  With limited stress anything becomes easier.

Totally -- the stress of day trading and scalping is the worst. I don't want to do it forever, but I need to maintain my long term bitcoin position, and short term, I need income.

the "catch" is that 80% of traders lose. the winning traders lap up all the money while the majority slowly bleeds away their capital...

This is not all cases. But when you believe in the coin and what its doing. Buy when others are selling, and sell when they are desperately buying. That usually works out.

That is why its risky unlike in the FOREX market things happen and sudden changes in the market has reason like Non Farm payrolls.

have you ever tried trading forex? i got slaughtered, coming from a bitcoin trader's perspective. day trading bitcoin is $$. it's so robust -- anytime i'm wrong about going long, i just baghold. it always recovers. (just be careful with margin ;))

Day trading is extremely hard with bitcoin considering there is no long term pattern. You might be able to see its direction in the next few hours but thats probably about it. Any news that comes out affects the bitcoin price but also it seems to go up and down randomly as well. If you can have a bit of luck you might be able to make a profit but in the long term its hard to keep making profits.

I've never actually tried bitcoin trading but I do trade with forex. And this is manually trading and setting up the indicators myself not EA.

Does bitcoin charts have indicators too?

There is one catch, every day trader loose in long term.

Close to 100% failure rate. Learning to be poker pro actually has higher chance of success.

It is better to just buy and hold, than to day trade IMO.  :)

Enough to get you burn if you are leveraging, if not, well dont expect huge profits anyway, the swings are very weird sometimes.

Every one? I doubt it. From what I've heard, traders (like many other groups) tend to fall under a Pareto distribution of sorts, meaning that 80% lose, while 20% win. Similarly, 80% of one's profits tend to come from 20% of trades -- this, I know to be the case with me.

Trading bitcoins on exchanges and trying to make a profit. I may be wrong.

Nope, that's called arbitrage trading. I think it is using strategies to know when to buy and sell and try to profit.

i think its by pair or somewhat of currencies usd/gbp.

you have to also buy by pair. now thier chart have indicators which will tell you probability.. somewhat of mt4/5 software.

You cannot know, only predict based on certain data. For example the past event 'silk road coins sold' could mean the price going down.
If you have an accurate model, you could have a good prediction - but it's still a risk.

Have more luck betting on football if you do your homework.

IF a trader knows how to use the indicators in the charts like moving averages, RSI, MacD and stochatics, it will be easy for them to forsee where the market is going.. its what they call bull and bear movement.

easy? not so much. give it a try yourself! i found trading quite difficult... :)

how do you day trade, is it based on past prices? or speed on selling and buying on btc-e?

chart patterns, momentum, overbought/oversold indicators. poke around stockcharts.com.

my favorite longterm setups are mostly based on geometric patterns and fibbonnaci ratios. not so much a day trader here.

Exactly.
Even for those professional stock/forex traders lose badly from time to time.

the key is simply to have your wins outweigh the losses. i have heard for prop traders that 60% win rate is good to shoot for.

BTC is so volatile -- real money is made trading the swings, not daytrading, IMO.

the catch? most lose money. question is, are you going to be the majority or minority?

i don't recommend day trading. too much stress, too little gain. if you're going to trade, do it on the larger cycles. wait for the bubble, watch for crash, sell the bounce. then time your re-entry.

i used to day trade, but it made me miss a huge move in early 2013, and since then i only trade the major moves.

People are describing at least 2 different types of trades here.  Trading crypto pairs can be risky because you can end up getting stuck in a worthless coin like XPM.

Trading BTC/fiat pair is only as risky as BTC itself.  Your should really lose money except for trading fees, but you might miss out on a run if you're in fiat.

The trouble comes when you are trying to profit both in BTC and in dollars. Making $$ by trading BTC is very easy -- at least it has been historically. Trying to make $$ without losing coins? That takes skill. :)

Yeah that's called catching knives and guessing the bottom.  Most people will fail at it.  It does involve some skill to assess risk and look at some trends, but with Bitcoin there is lot more luck involve than trading something than an equity like CSCO or MSFT.

The same is true for bitcoin as well. Although over the long run the price of bitcoin has risen sharply, however it has crashed and taken a long time to recover to it's previous peak.

I'm not sure that I can agree. I would say that most people lose, yes, but that doesn't mean that that more luck is involved. Why do you think trading stocks involves more skill?

I think bitcoin follows patterns similar to any other market. Market psychology at play, just as with any instrument.

Day trading is so risky if you are not making informed trades. Of course, you can get lucky with some trades, part of day trading is having the balls to click buy and sell.

I wouldn't bother with inter-exchange arbitrage, it takes too long to send the coins, unless you already have coins waiting on the target exchange. It's all about identifying an exchange that has multiple fiat markets for a given coin - intra-exchange arbitrage is where it's at :)

I am not sure if there are "informed trades" in the bitcoin world. Most of the time, the price just went up and down without any new market information.

There are definitely patterns that occur on the crypto markets that are unrelated to news. Sometimes the patterns that appear to be developing are spurious, but experienced traders that use charting techniques would have us believe that they can anticipate this.

It's a bit different to trading on the stock market, which is much more news driven. The crypto market is unregulated and therefore often manipulated by those with many coins who are in cahoots with each other. For small fish it is very much a guessing game, though there are some indicators which can help you make a bit of coin.

Well other things may have been happening in crypto around that time to cause a price drop, but it could be down to manipulation.

I think that a lot of people have it in their minds that a piece of news should have a massive, positive impact on the price whereas actually it can see the coins overbought and then dumped.

Look at when Litecoin landed on Huobi, people were talking of a $50 Litecoin, it hit $22 then tanked hard - it was overbought and whales dumped their coins on all the people rushing to buy thinking that it was going to make them filthy rich.

I gotta say, seeing the Dogecar (Racegod) on the track was comical.

But I believe ltc has been oversold, and it has already reached the low at ~0.01 btc last week. :)

Yup, it's surprising how much Litecoin has dropped over the past few months. There was a time not that long ago where 0.035 BTC was the supported rate for 1 LTC. Then it dropped to around 0.025, and now it has nose-dived massively.  It was believed that Litecoin would follow Bitcoin, both up and down, but that has definitely not been the case of late.

Bitcoin has been very strong - a lot of funds have moved from classic coins like PPC, NMC, LTC to newer coins like DRK and beyond. Daytrading is very risky, mostly when buying into rising prices.

Maybe someday we can see some developers creating EA for bitcoin trading. Forex traders decide when to buy/sell just when they see possibilities. of course its not easy that is why they have to educate themselves in pipsology.

But so are in stock exchange. if a sudden resignation of a CEO happen, you could  your investment in a day.

There are very few uses for LTC other then speculation. If people have no way to use LTC then they have no reason to purchase LTC.

As was once the case for Bitcoin. As was once the case with the World Wide Web, mp3s etc.

This is true only to an extent. This was true for bitcoin as well, at some point. I'm not going to speculate on how much infrastructure development we'll see in LTC, but for merchants and payment processors that are entering the bitcoin realm, LTC becomes quite accessible with little additional development needed.

True, but there is little benefit for bitcoin-accepting merchants to accept LTC (or any other altcoins) as it won't bring many new customers to them IMO.

The main benefit would be speed and perhaps decreased volatility if there's a 2 coin index for pricing.  Sometimes a single block confirm can go up to 90 minutes on Bitcoin which could be an issue for some buyers.

When bitcoin did not have any/only a few merchants accepting it for payment, it was not competing with anyone. Today with LTC having no/very few merchants accepting it for payment, it needs to compete with bitcoin which has a stronger network and is not missing any features that LTC has.

That doesn't mean there isn't a place for LTC or other altcoins. It just means that bitcoin has the "first mover" advantage that ensures it to be the likely forerunner. Doesn't change anything.

Each additional coin that a merchant accepts will cost some incremental amount for the merchant, if it is additional training for employees, for paying the LTC equivalent of coinbase, updating their website, or other costs. However if a business accepts BTC they will really not receive any additional benefit from accepting BTC and LTC as it is very easy to convert LTC to BTC on most/any exchange.

And don't forget the user base of BTC and LTC are highly over-lapping (those holding some LTC are likely to be holding some BTC as well).

There are a few services like GoCoin which make it really easy to accept a few altcoins. No additional training is needed for employees.
There's no reason to accept BTC only when there are services like this.

Recently, Hustler.com started accepting BTC, LTC, and Dogecoin for subscriptions through GoCoin, and I'm quite sure that trend will continue :)

The catch is always losing your precious bitcoin lol.

If it was this easy, everyone would be trading all day and quit their jobs by now.

Thats pretty obvious dude..  ::)

I would assume that it costs GoCoin some additional amount for each additional altcoin that they support. These additional costs would likely need to be passed onto their customers.

totally. i think we might see similar price movement to the last bubble -- where altcoins looked like they were all going to die, then BOOM, they took off and outperformed BTC.

Not sure if I should make a fresh post but seen as this thread is already active and gone on a tangent...

I've put a small amount of coin in btc-e just to try day trading for to see if I can turn $10 to $10.20 but have an issue.
I put a sell order in but no one seems to buy it even if it's below the high order.
Some trades have gone through but not sure of the format yet.
I thought I put a sell order in and whenever someone want's to buy BTC at around my price then I get a cut.

Here's the history of a previous sell I made but still not sure why other orders aren't selling.

BTC/GBP    sell    0.00153402 BTC    377.422 GBP    0.57897289 GBP    11.07.14 21:37
BTC/GBP    sell    0.0451778 BTC    377.422 GBP    17.05109563 GBP    11.07.14 21:31
BTC/GBP    sell    0.0560092 BTC    377.422 GBP    21.13910428 GBP    11.07.14 21:13

Here's a buy I did
BTC/GBP    buy    0.384819 BTC    371.733 GBP    143.04992132 GBP    14.07.14 21:55

I understand there needs to be a buyer but thought some of my cheaper sales would go through.

Also should I trade USD, EUR or GBP as I've done everything in GBP.

Or rather (I just noticed) that Volume: 2 BTC / 656 GBP but USD is Volume: 1748 BTC / 1077710 USD
I could do EUR as I have a European bank and UK but not USD so would have to convert USD to GBP at some point which then feels like forex.

Thanks

Yeah daytrading is almost like gambling. Most big gains are made from waiting. Warren Buffet took 10 years to cash out on his Washintong Post bonds and he converted like 10k into 300. The wait fucking sucks and you may lose it all for all we know tho.

What about just deposit your bitcoin in PD (or any other reputable gambling sites) and make a 97% bet? It will be much simpler. :)

If I remember correctly, I've read on this forum about someone betting an absurd amount of Bitcoin (about 1000?) for a 97% bet.
He ended up losing :D

if you go to just-dice you can see in the statistics someone lost a lot of bitcoin (don't know exactly how much) on a 97% bet.
So you take a pretty high risk for low profit.

This is arbitrage not day trading.. 1000's are doing it and with many things.  I know a girl at my work that is pushing products from shevels at a low cost for a higher one on amazon.  It is prefectly legal and the crminals in power will want their tax money.

I suggest with bitcoin, trading larger cycles, and not day trading. ;)

Instead of trying to profit from the <5% fluctuations that happen in the span of a few days, trade on large time-scales; ie. buy now and sell when the price is at 800$, then buy back at 600$, etc. This is less risky, since it depends less on luck.

I think that's what he meant.

Just depends what kind of trader you are. Some are very experienced trading single waves/sub-waves, and so are more inclined to make several trades in a day.

It's all about opportunism. Set low buy orders, high sell orders - you never know if they are going to be filled, but if they are then you're laughing.

Flash dumps occur more frequently than you might be inclined to think - if you're one of the smart ones with a speculatively low buy order then you can profit massively if/when the dump hits the market you're trading in. I don't mean a few hundred dollars, or even over a timescale, the returns can be massive - many thousands from a few hundred, and almost instant by dumping in another market or exchange.

As long as you know what you're doing and don't risk too much btc (never more than you can afford to lose) you can make a decent amount of bitcoin without too much stress.  Challenge is to not get too greedy  :D

That's true.
For example on Feb 10, the price on btc-e dropped from $700 to $102 and went back up to $600 in a few hours.

That's right, I've seen LTC drop from £6.50 to £0.11 before too, and not just drop, 11000 LTC were sold at £0.11! I've profited a bit on a few occasions from these flash dumps.

This morning I woke up and saw that LTC dumped again, it missed my £2.211 buy order by a fraction, then shot up to £6.333. Unfortunately I missed out that time, but it's the way forward.

Interesting. I didn't follow the LTC/GBP trading pair on btc-e and have completely missed that dump. :)

There have been some colossal dumps in that market, just as there have in some other markets too. I tend to only go for these flash dump opportunities.

Is day trading all lucks?
and how do you know what alt will explode?

You know that by analysing a coin's community, the past performance of the price, how the coin is mined and at what rate, by looking for signs of pumps and dumps, and by analysing the order books.

Luck is important too, but if you're good enough to analyse the above points and be more than 50% accurate, you will most-likely end up winning in the long run.

In my eyes most people just luck their way to wins - however there are ways to help yourself. Tracking patterns is one thing, but when the market is quiet it's really all about having the balls to buy in or sell before waiting for movement.

Of course, it's just about buying in and selling, it's a matter of timing and having the mental resolve to believe in your trade. That's why a lot of people, particular newbies tend to panic buy/panic sell.

Even those that often win with trades (or at least claim to do so) will lose occasionally, and those who lose will occasionally win.

But any whale can manipulate the order books, big ass sell or buy walls can dissapear and appear anytime  :-[
Most of the time even if the mining power is high, what happen is when coin hit exchange, coin gets dumped really hard, look at the graphs. It always goes down a lot when a coin is introducen in an exchange, it goes really low, then sometimes after a while it goes up again, or the coin just dies (Mazacoin, Auroracoin.. etc)

Many of the new alt coins have their 15 minutes of fame - whereby there is some degree of mania in the market causing its price to become artificially inflated. It's almost as if they go through the Bitcoin timeline at a faster pace and on a smaller scale.

The early adopters/miners line their pockets while the average Joe who wanted to get rich from a new alt is out-of-pocket. Even if they got in early, they will hold and hold as the price goes down, expecting it to shoot back up.

Yeah but my point is... being an early adopter with altcoins is even a beneficial thing? let us look at this graph:

https://poloniex.com/exchange/btc_xbc

this is the typical lifespan of an alt. If you get in early, you are already buying on the pump, which is basically guys that are in the mining time big time with powerful hashing power, dumping all the coins mined while the coin wasn't listed on any exchange. So what this means is, if you buy, you are fucked because you are already buying high.

Sometimes tho, the coin starts slow and goes higher, like BC or DRK. The thing is, you never know if you are buying high or low at the begining.

You can still get in on the pump and make some great profits, it's all about identifying that you are buying in on a pump and being prepared to exit within a short time. It all comes down to your expectations, plan and execution.

Luck is important too as somebody might dump hard just after you buy.

yes this always happen to me, when i buy, I say "wait a little bit longer", then it starts to fall, i say "wait a little bit longer it will go back up". End result: I end money and end up with toxic assets :(

Yup, that's daytrading for you. It's all about setting expectations and trying not to be greedy. The more of a loss that you are at then the more likely you are to want more profits out of necessity to recoup your losses.

Those who got in early can afford to simply hodl, whilst dabbling with some of their coins on the markets.

How come some people still do it then?

don't know about that. lots of traders have winning systems. some also use algorithmic systems as well and do not have to spend all day charting.

If you're not too greedy, and you're satisfied with profits of about 10% on a trade, and you don't panic sell or buy, it's not that hard not to lose money really.

It can be very frustrating when you lose money through order book friction.

yep, just got to cut out that panic! i don't use leverage, so when i'm wrong on long, i just hold that bag until i am in profit again! worked this morning.

The trouble is that the caveats you listed are some of the hardest things to conquer for many new traders. Even after time it's hard to shake off a habit. Aside from the discipline that you mentioned, it's all about believing in your trade.

I'm a terrible day trader, I am ultra bear short-term e.g. the belief that someone will dump hard and trigger something bigger when I buy in. It can take quite a while to recover, as I have found out with Peercoin of late.

That's true, everyone starts there and I panicked many times at first :P

But one gets better with practice, and that's why it's important, when starting, to only try with very small amounts that you won't mind losing.

I always tell myself after a bad trade or a missed opportunity that I should look out for these hallmarks and avoid/take the trade instead the next time - though I still make the same mistakes. I think that I judge myself against the 'perfect' trade too often, which leaves me a little disappointed.

It's sad to think that for all the profit people make, there are losers out there - but that's the fundamental of such a market and a risk everybody needs to remind themselves when going into this.

The catch is you're a newb so you're going to make mistakes.  The altcoin scene is littered with scams coins, clones, pump & dumps, whales, weak hands, bots, never ending hyping and oh my there's more..

altcoins are very risky. when BTC is in a strong bull market, i'll look for a bottom in alts then. for now, stick to BTCUSD.

I feel the same way but I can't help but try and buy I feel I should at least try and buy a couple different coins I think have real potential.  I'm also thinking if Bitcoin does make any real moves these same coins are almost sure to follow.  The problem is having bad judgement(on my part) during a coins pump and thinking you will get easy money..  Then you get dumped on. :(

10% is a lot for a trade that is done by a day trader. Most day trader try to make a lot of trades with small gains, hoping that these gains add up over time.

You're right if daytrading Bitcoin, but this is quite common with altcoins. In the last 24h, Dogecoin, Ripple, Darkcoin, Counterparty and many more have had swings of more than 10% :)

If do day-trading, you can try LakeBTC, you can put USD or BTC into CNY to do trading, which is free, it can help you save a lot of fee.

I have not seen many successful stories so far in the day-trading.
The only thing i did hear is that it is very, no sorry, extremely stressful and on the long run it eats you from the inside out...
Best of luck with the ones that try....

the catch is you dumping more of your hard earned bitcoin to a losing game.

Theres no real catch, follow the news, and react before the market does.
Alot of coins are manipulated, and thats why its so hard to make a profit.

Most interesting market for me is LTC-BTC pair. it moves daily, so its kind of interesting, but the manipulation is obvious.

cheers

The more trades you make, the more trading fee you need to pay, and the fee will eat a big proportion of your profit.

You need to always factor the fees into every trade. Every trade you enter, you are immediately already down by the fee + spread. So you need to plan accordingly, and not play for minimal gains that threaten to become losses.

Yup, and that's why I (without much luck and knowledge in day-trading :P) prefer to simply hold my bitcoin instead of trading it. :)

That's fair enough. I trade, but I wouldn't consider it day trading. I think we see cycles that are predictable enough -- long term tops and bottoms are impossible to call, but once we see clear failure/recovery, the trade is usually worth making.

This is exactly why I don't day trade. I just don't see a risk/reward that seems worth it to play $5, $10 moves. If BTC falls a lot, I buy. If it rises a lot, I sell. Generally, this has done me pretty well....

Hello,
I dont get it. Price at Bitstamp is always like 10+$ more then BTC-E. If you buy from BTC-E and sell on Bitstamp even with the taxes is profitable. Right now the price of BTC is around 620-630 for a long time. Isnt that going to be really profitable if you do this a lot of times doing the same and the same again. Buy from BTC-E sell to Bitstamp, withdraw USD from Bitstamp and Deposit to BTC-E?

1. For selling your bitcoin on bitstamp, you need to pay 0.2% to 0.5% trading fee.
2. For withdrawing your fiat from bitstamp, you need to pay a withdrawal fee.
3. For wiring your fiat to btc-e, you need to pay some fee as well.
4. For buying bitcoin on btc-e, you need to pay 0.2% trading fee.
5. For withdrawing your bitcoin from btc-e to bitstamp, you need to pay 0.001 btc as fee.

Not sure if I missed anything. :)

It takes time and headache to complete the arbitrage process. Wiring money into BTC-E is apparently not easy and people often face delays in getting credited properly. In that time, the price could go up considerably.

Inter-exchange arbitrage is a waste of time and sometimes money 98% of the time. Inter-market arbitrage is where it is at.

It's just not that easy -- if it were, most traders would make money. But they don't. 80% on average would lose, statistically, so I'd say the catch is that you will probably end up losing. Your mileage may vary, though. :D

A dumb question to I`m new at this, whats inter-market arbitrage?

So like you can buy BTC using one currency, and sell instantly within a BTC market for another currency. Some of the non-dollar BTC and LTC markets on BTC-E have thin order books, that means that you can set a low buy order and occasionally people will dump into it. Meanwhile the price is still strong in the dollar market so you can get huge returns instantly.

Occasionally, people will dump into it, sure. But they are very low volume markets. You may be stuck in another fiat currency you do not want, in an illiquid market, when BTC makes a big move.

So basically being stuck with EUR or something.

I personally don't dabble with EUR, fortunately for me my local currency is listed :D It's a safe way to trade! :)

I always lose money when trying to daytrade, its too much luck.

when you say buy and hold, what coins are the ones to go for that will be good for that?

I think people underestimate the skill and discipline that it takes to be a successful trader. Often people say it's luck, but I tend to think it takes a lot more work than that.

Reading the speculation forum -- TOTALLY. Traders don't get no respect there.

I've profited in $ and in BTC during the time I've been trading, and I've worked really hard on my analysis, and on being rigorous with it.

It's not easy, and it's stressful waiting out positions.

Where did you lean to trade

Let's put your skills to use :p
Im holding 40 XMR, when should i say regarding ur graph analysis?

Well, I started out watching analysts like masterluc in the Speculation forum, read up on common chart patterns and indicators and how to correctly interpret them on Stockcharts.com .... watch other chartists on Tradingview.com and use their analysis to question or confirm my own analysis..... this sort of thing.

only best control of your emotions can make u profit in day trading

I have never daytrade but I am sure there is a huge profit as I see many people involved in the game.The volatility of the BTC

Day-trading is a zero-sum game (before all kinds of fees).
So when someone wins a lot in it, it means someone loses a lot at the same time.

I wouldnt recommend it, besides buying btc and holding onto it.

Are you talking about day-trading, meaning selling multiple times a day and using even slight price swings, or are you talking about arbitrage, and using the different prices on different exchanges? The catch is that you can't get the BTC or even money fast enough from one exchange to the other. And day-trading is difficult since you never know that your trades are the right ones...

Judging from his description, I guess he was thinking about arbitraging rather than day-trading.

Anyway, he has disappeared from bitcointalk the next day after creating this thread...

I think bitcoin follows patterns similar to any other market. Market psychology at play, just as with any instrument.