Bitcoin Forum

Since the bitcoin recovery I've been trying to day trade.

It's worked fine a couple of times. Made $100 in one go, $200, and $60 another time.

However, it's also worked not so well a few  times, and I've lost $600 in one go, and around $900 in one go, as well as a few smaller losses which could have otherwise been profits due to fees.

I'm so pissed, because when this current spike to 135 happened, I was waiting for the coins to drop a little lower.

I ended up panic buying at 135 thinking that we'd break through the wall.

We didn't.

Fuck me. I'm just so annoyed. I'd have around 20 more coins if I'd just put my coins onto a usb stick an didn't touch it.

Fuck fuck fuck...

I feel like selling all my coins at a loss right now, and never talking about bitcoin again (even though overall I know I'm ahead)

sell and walk away...

1. Keep the coins safe.
2. Forget about them.
3. Come back in 5 years.
4. Profit.

WTF do you try to daytrade based on feelings, with no strategy at all?

Pros are making a profit thanks to you.

Is the bitching about ........ helping?

If you play with fire, things tend to get hot^^

Advice for Today: Treat BTC as a hedge fund next time!

Welcome to capitalism 101:.... no refunds, no playtime (sandbox mode), no chargebacks, once stolen/lost - forever forgotten, no big .gov welfare and so on. Embrace its flaws :P  

So you screwed up a bit, as long as you learned something it wasn't a total loss. You say you are still ahead so you didn't do too badly.

Someone on this forum said 80% of traders lose money, 10% break even, 5% make money, 5% make serious money, 100% think they will make serious money. I can't remember who said that but it's highly insightful.

It's only 1788ish to get through 135, it will probably get through it this week, if not today.  :)

Partly based on feelings... I have a strategy too, but if I'm sitting in front of the computer screen that'll often go out the window when all the green and red arrows start flashing.

I don't doubt it :(

Yeah I think I read that. *sigh*

I certainally think I'm going to make money, but when I work it out the money I could make isn't worth the risk.

There we go, over 135! haha  ;D

Don't daytrade, just hold the coins and come back in a year (or longer). Either they are worthless then or you are rich.

This.

Your choices:
1) Sell all your bitcoins and walk away

2) Put most of your bitcoins, except what you need for upcoming purchases, on a cold wallet, and walk away. Check the price once a week rather than 14x a day.

3) (My approach.) Put a bunch of your coins in a cold wallet. Keep just what you need for regular purchases in a hot wallet. Keep a very small % of your total holdings in several exchanges. This is your "play money." You are not allowed to replenish your play money if you lose it.

Every once in a while, during times of high volatility, I log onto my exchange accounts and play around for a few hours. Usually I gain but when I do lose, it makes such a small dent in my portfolio that it doesn't concern me.

Finally, diversify. If you've already made, say, 5x or 10x ROI from BTC, it is somewhat risky keeping all of it there. Buy PMs with some of your bitcoin holdings (I recommend Amagi metals (http://www.amagimetals.com)), keep a runaway fiat cash stash in case things in your local area go sour (you never know what could happen) and sell to strength - every X price point, sell Y% of your coins into fiat (could be 1%!) and/or use them to buy something nice. This way you aren't shooting yourself for not buying a Volt when we were at $262 as you'd have been selling to strength on the way up.

Lots of people selling to strength on rallies helps slow the rally and stabilize the price. Lots of newbs sitting on MtLag trying to daytrade with 15m lag causes panic sells.

+1

+12.000%

Thank you for daytrading. If everyone allocated a small portion of their initial investment to daytrading in an attempt to benefit off price moves, it would stabilize the price more (assuming MtGox could handle it). Yes, there would be winners and losers, but the average strategy would net about zero. I take about 10% of my coins and buy/sell with 2 different strategies. Some days I'll have a little profit, other days I'll lose a little. The worse case is that I lose 10% by repeatedly selling low and buying high, but I sleep better at night knowing I'm adding some liquidity to the market.

don't day-trade, month-trade

The number one lesson when day trading: Stick to your order, don't try to make it undone!! Just wait, Bitcoin price is all over the place during the course of a week and you will make a profit guaranteed if you muster a little patience.

I can't imagine day trading with the relatively quiet market the last week or two.  I certainly don't have the skills, or balls of steel, to do it.

During the crash I tried my hand at it (largely because even if I bet wrong, I was still picking up relatively cheap coins so I justified it in my mind).  I traded over the friday/saturday after the crash, and had a really fun time doing it.

But, that was with regular (every 2-4 hours) $20-30 price movements.  You almost had to be an idiot to lose money doing so, if you followed any sort of non-emotional trading strategy.

I made a decent amount, but it really is nothing more than gambling.  Very fun, addictive, gambling - but pretty much on par with poker as far as I can tell.  Sure, you can increase your odds considerably by knowing the game, but you're in the end at the mercy of factors outside of your control.

So - my very naive advice is treat it like a trip to Vegas.  Set your loss limits, and make sure you get out if you ever reach those.  That way you can think of it as cheap entertainment vs. losing money with a financial instrument.  Makes a lot more sense to me that way, and it's a whole lot less stressful :)

I kind of hope to see volatility again (not really - I think it's bad for Bitcoin as a whole) during a weekend so I can sit down with a glass of whiskey, do some trading, and talk shit in chat with the other day traders :)  Fun times!

This.

Panic market orders based on feelings/emotions is ridiculous. Doing that you will be loosing money in the long term, it can go well for 5, 10, even 15 trades, but as soon as it goes bad you will destroy the profit you did in all the other trades.

My rule of thumb is, if the price isn't where you want it to be, just wait a few days.

Would be nice to have a day-trading simulator, based on historic trading data. Might teach many traders a lesson before they try their luck.

Active trading is worth a try on markets that mostrly go sideways, but with an asset like Bitcoin that can raise for weeks without falling, it is very hard to beat "buy & hold".

Yep, I think of it as poker too, and poker is the only gambling game I play.

Problem is I lose poker too.

Who doesn't lose though is the house.

The house always takes their cut. Notice how Gox fees are surprisingly similar to a blackjack table...

Day trader here and up 1600% so far on Bitcoin.  Buy low, sell high.  Use logic, fuck emotion.  Good luck!

THX, i knew i missed something :)

Oh, please. You haven't seen nothing yet, if you think that is a failure. You haven't even lost anything yet, just not played optimal (which absolutely no one does).

It will definitively go over 140, the question is only will it do it straight away, or will it take a dip first? If you believe in the dip then there is money to be earned from selling at a small loss now and then buying in later at a larger profit.

But day trading is a remarkably slippery activity. It's easy to win a few coins here and there on the small movements but then there tends to be larger movements that can quickly erase all your profits. In the larger picture it is indeed a zero-sum activity. One person's winnings is another person's loss.

Chill

the

fuck

out

I have made good movement till now day trading.. Anyway, the sell at 27$ waiting for a correction to 20$ to buy again.  :'(
That one took out all the profits made, and I understimated the increase of price.. Never thought It would go to 266$. Anyway, I'm in the game again, making money.
Lose at bitcoins, gains in fiat. Hope to be able to have the same number of coins as I had 4 months ago anyway, now holding coins, but I expect (hope) a crash in the few weeks at least to the near seventies.
If I go near 100-200BTC again, 10% to daytrading and all the others to cold wallet, and lets wait a few years. How stupid I was daytrading with my whole stack into one movement. What a fucking bad bet I made. At least I learnt a lot of things during this 4 months.

Buy and hold. Bitcoins is on a long term uptrend, theres no reason to think thats over, just think a bit longer term.

I think a lot of people are using last months model to invest in bitcoin. Those days are gone imho. It took the crash to bring bitcoin to a new level of public knowledge, and with that came a new wave of investors. I think we are starting to see the beginning of the 'stability' we all crave. I know of a few people who walked away during the insane 260's spike we saw, but anybody with half a brain could see that that rate of upward movement was not sustainable. So we lost a few early adopters, some heavy investors out for profit, and a gang of retards. I myself made a decent chunk of usd in that spike, but I see BTC as a long-term investment that I use multiple accounts with different purposes to make the most of it. I have a day trading wallet that I am willing to lose all of if I make bad decisions, I have a gambling/free coin account(my sig wallet), and I have my vault, where I am putting the majority of my coin while this whole introduction phase takes place. When Bitcoin becomes the, for lack of a better term, facebook of online currency, and we see the true value of bitcoin emerge, then I will know that I made the right decisions. The trick is to stop looking at the micro-movements and to just let it ride. I consider all of the coins I have to be nothing more any other code in my computer....a means to an end. A way for me to get done what I need to get done. And until bitcoin becomes as frequently used a term as mac, pc, android...etc, I am going to hold onto what I have because I see a future where bitcoin is more than just a ticker figure.

Just my 2 pennies.

Nice...I started a week ago and am up 10% on my investment. Somebody tell me what other investments can return 10% in one week? ;D

The way I see it is it's more fun, active and potentially higher return than than if you leave your money in the bank.

Also my number one rule is I don't sleep with bitcoins, sure I have some fun with them during the day but I don't want to take them to bed with me or I will be checking on them throughout the night.

I made the same today.. I expect more a crash into the low 100s than a rally into the high 100s. So better take out my 94 eur at 109 eur.

I've only made money. Stop being greedy. When you can make 50-60% profit then take it. When you refuse to take a sure profit thats when you risk it all for nothing. Take the small profits of 20-50%, they add up over time. Only bet long when you know it's under valued.

If you bought one week ago you should have made much more than 10%. Heck, you should have made almost +80%, last week BTC/USD was at $80ish and now at +$140

If you only made 10% then you really suck at trading my friend.

this is a good observation. game theory is very important in speculation.

When you see a profit you weigh the risk of not taking a sure profit vs the risk of losing the profit. Most of the time taking many small nibbles is smarter than taking large bites.

People who trade on greed tend to lose money. People who trade by numbers tend to make money. Have faith in the numbers, and feel that instead of feeling yourself.

 HOOOOOOOOOOOLD for the longest time  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG1qooBzE2w)

haha yeah maybe but 80% would have been with a buy and hold policy.

Also it would be more like 20% if I didn't make a couple of panic sells like the OP.

Most of people registered in this forums for 4 or more months have made a return between 300% and +1000% with "buy and hold" policy.

It looks like a good policy for BTC

If you're a long-term bear, this only works like 0.01% of the time.

 8)

Speculation is sin. But when sometimes I have filthy intention to do that, my goal always is to increase amount of BTC, not USD.

If you want to day trade right, trade on margin somewhere like BitFinex.

Screw buying low and selling high. Buy low at your money times 10 and sell high at your money times 10.

And be sure to short when you think the price will fall. Shorting on Bitfinex is cheaper because the loan rates are lower.

Go do it now!

Good luck trading in this market. The brain is hard wired to NOT THINK in times of emotional stress such as caused by price movements when trading. It's evolutionary, survival mode - instant decision needs to be made, no time for rational consideration. Flee, fight, or freeze. This is essentially why most traders lose.

$900 loss? ;D Get a grip friend, you lost nothing, just 1s and 0s on internet, unless of course you used your CC then it's a loss + interest.

If you gonna trade anything do some reading first, there are few post in this section that are very helpful.

Art

PS: A loss is not a loss if you learned something, consider it your educational fund.

oi i kinda missed the train expecting it to drop back to 80ish again.. im not sure if i should buy in now or not.

now or never i dont see uslooking back till the high hundreds. you could put in a buy order for 130 ish and get lucky or get bunned by the up  up up  up up. maybe talk half your fiat and buy now take half and put in a lowish buy order. idk my best advise

If you're losing money in a bull market you are DEFINITELY doing it wrong.

Give up day-trading, I honestly mean it.

The value of my coins is almost at what it was at the peak of $266 thanks to stepping out of the worst of the fall but trading the last couple of days has been fruitless and I pay a LOT of attention to the BTC price and charts.

The market confounds even the best traders a lot of the time, what makes you think you can beat them or just get lucky?

You got lucky by knowing about Bitcoin, you got lucky by having some as the value went up.

Now make sure you don't miss out on any more luck: buy coins with all your cash, hold and watch the rise.

Even after we bounce back down from a new all-time-high, HOLD.

Eventually you will be wiser and richer ;)

Maybe I should have waited the weekend for a dip...  :-X Noup, happy with my decision.. waiting to the low 100s at least!  :D

It sounds like you are being very emotional about your trading. I've done it before - guilty - but consider it tuition. If you allow your emotions to affect your buying and selling, you will almost certainly lose. Try just holding for now. And paper trade for a while. Keep in mind, that almost everyone would have done better just buying and holding bitcoins. Many would just be breaking even after say six months or more. However, those that bought/held coins are ten times over their original cost - without the headache of running a rig.

If trading:
1. Have a plan on when to buy (this is the easier part).
2. Have a plan on when to sell (this is the harder part).

Buying:
Typically people enter a trade on breakouts or bottoms. Choose one, or make your own new plan. Paper trade it to test it.
Before you buy, know that losses happen. So, don't freak out if you lose.
Before you buy, know the price below your purchase price that will prove your entry wrong, and take the loss - no exceptions.
Before you buy, know your stop plan (e.g. trailing stop).
Avoid trading in choppy markets.

Selling:
Never buy unless you already know the price that your going to stop out (sell) at for a loss.
Let gainers gain, and keep a trailing stop. Don't let a gainer turn into a loss, so keep your stops moving up.
If the price hits your stop, then take it. Don't jump back in if it reverses - you weren't wrong to take the stop - plan a new trade.
If you are stopped out for a loss, you were right to take the stop, but your entry time was wrong. Again, plan a new trade.
You need to accept that losses will happen. So, take them, and consider it a good trade in the sense that you stuck to the plan.


Technicals:
The most valuable indicator are where prices reacted in the past. Support and Resistance.
New all time highs are when you should probably be holding.
New all time lows, are when you should be staying out of the market.

Don't trade on margin or borrowed property. You need a money management plan. Without one, you'll regret it and probably end up owing people property.

Stop trading if you feel emotional. It isn't a dishonor, because it really isn't for most people. I still think buying and holding are going to be smarter and better way in the long run.

Don't listen to anyone's trading advice, including mine.  8)

You did the right thing by complaining here, though.  Lots of people would be too ashamed to admit that they lost money, but these stories help keep people aware of the risks.  It's like the guy who talked about his SatoshiDice addiction; sure, some people made fun of him, but I bet more than a few people saw themselves going down that path, and avoided it.

Sorry for your loss!

I gotta admit I think it's an addiction

Even when now the price seems to be climbing, I keep trying to pick the highs, and sell out.

Then I kick myself for doing it, then try to buy back in a a little lower.

Thank god managed to pass it off this time, but for what?

less than  $100 profit and a nice donation to the Gox foundation?

Heck, my trading rate is almost down to 0.4%, I can't believe I've traded anywhere near enough... But the numbers don't lie.

This is really a gambling problem in disguise.

I'm going to put 20 of my coins on a USB, and put it in a safe somewhere at least then I can't trade them

Can anyone suggest some stickers I can buy to put on my Bitcoin USBs?

Consider getting this USB stick. You may even bury it into the ground for future generations :)

CORSAIR SURVIVOR CMFSS3-32GB
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31%2BDoFgOSGL.jpg

The average day trading income does not have to be 0, since there are other people in the market. People who are investing for the long term will just do a market buy, or people who are taking out their savings will do a market sell. The spread between the buy and sell prices allows the market makers to make money while holding the price relatively steady. Basically, the speculators are earning some profit for providing liquidity to the market for the other market participants.

to the op. you need a different mind frame when you start trading again. pretend that you are trading play money and you dont care if you win or lose. you cant bet scared or you already lost. you might have just got in at a bad time when you had your losses. i am not trading coins because there are no rules. no short selling, horrible liquidity, gox going down, having 100 coins being bought or sold impact the price sometimes a dollar or two, ddos etc. I liken the bitcoin trading markets like a big poker game, and the majority of the people that get in have $500 in their pocket and they are at the $100 minimum table.

If I wanted to look around for such a solution, then I'd go to Office Depot or some other office supplies store and look around.

Maybe you use an online email account (e.g. hotmail, yahoo..etc..) to store it. First encrypt your wallet and then email it to yourself at one of those accounts and keep it in archive. Of course, you will need to keep track of your password somewhere else, and don't let anyone know you have done that. Maybe, create a secret email account nobody knows about, but don't neglect it or else the host might delete your account for inactivity.

My thinking on it is if someone actually wants to be a professional trader, then they should not be thinking in terms like "bet" and "win". If there is an actual decent business plan - one with tested strategies & smart money management - then the terms should be 'profit' and 'loss', not 'win' and 'lose'.  If it can't be treated like a serious business, then it's just gambling and therefore should be avoided like a bad virus- imo.