Bitcoin Forum

I can see that chart analysis is extremely useful for short term traders, but how useful is it for long term investors? By long term, I mean more than two years. I think one has to step back and look at the world economy, and the changes in the banking system, and make decisions based on one's opinion of the future prospects. I'm not sure that short term price movements, or even historic data, are major factors that one should consider.

I will agree that chart analysis can help with the timing of buying, but I don't think this is a major factor in view of the long term potential for Bitcoin.

In the short term it is clear that they are useful but in the long term I don't think prices follow an certain path, many things can change the long term path.

Hard to tell, isn't it? Two years ago, Bitcoin was hovering around the hundreds of dollar range, and yes, a move by several hundred dollars could have meant a doubling or even tripling. Not quite as easy to get that now once Bitcoin has past 10k. I don't see doublings anymore since December last year. As far as I know, I've seen short term traders, or rather, day traders say they get a lot of success, but then you see totally conflicting TA charts, and both sides make money, so really I think in day trading the swings means almost any TA can get "correct" results, depending on how they're seen.

I think it could be, if the miner keeps monitoring the price of the movement, sells and buys appropriately, gets huge profits, yes but it takes extra patience for the long term, nothing is impossible

actually i think charts are best for long term investors not the short term ones, from monthly to 2 years that you are looking for. because when it comes to long term all the drama goes away and becomes ineffective. but in short term the drama is all that matters and it makes using charts nearly impossible.

We've got all these crowd wisdom trading platforms, big data /deep data insight, machine learning, AI, platforms all seemingly happening upon the newfound wisdom of TA... yet not a single one of these can claim to have reliable results with consistent performance. I think even the most astute traders wouldn't dare claim that their charts instil confidence in them.

I'm not saying they're completely useless... but I think they are as useful as the purposes they're built for. As useful as the traders who use them make them out to be. I don't do more than dabble, but it should say something when people start posting charts for as long as they look useful... and then stay remarkably silent when Bitcoin just goes off script.

I still think people get lucky. And they want to see the recipe for luck in charts.

Not very? I mean, maybe you could make an educated guess on where the price will end up in a few years, but that's also exactly what short term traders do, except over a much shorter period lol. If you've basically decided that you're holding for the long term, ignoring price movements, I'm fairly sure charts are useless for you.

Either way, I don't think charts are very useful for Bitcoin. Prices are affected by the most mundane developments, and you can't really predict those. They don't form patterns across time either, so you can't say prices will fall around September 2018, because the same thing happened in 2017 when news of the China bans broke.

It's nice when chart predictions go right, but everyone knows that luck is a big factor -- maybe even the biggest.

Analysing charts can help for short term traders but you have to be a genius to determine the price after one month or more just from reading and analysing charts. It can easilly mislead you.
To predict the price you have to stay update and read all the related news.

I also thinks that charts really helps a lot with those who trade for short to mid term process, as they can review previous movements and predict
or assess what would be the next thing to happen, but for those who are aiming for long term, holding such coins/projects are accompanied by trust
and good understanding, buying or investing for long term doesn't need to have a good basis with the charts as we do believe that keeping the coins
inside our wallet will give us a big fortune after.

Charts are always useful to predict the potential platform but if you invest in longterm you can research the road map of that coin and top trending coins because  majority of the coins are failed in the market so better you should in top 10 Cryptocurrencies. We don't expect the long term investment in cheap altcoins.

It can help, but it's not going to be the deciding factor

If you're investing long term then what you should really be looking at is research. Instead of trying to predict trends off charts which is pretty dumb if you're a long term investor, research about bitcoin, research about the economy, and form your own opinion. Short term price movement like a 30-40% dip here and there shouldn't even affect your strategy long term, if anything, that just means a buying opportunity.

The charts can tell you whether it's a good time to buy/sell in the short run, but it won't tell you whether or not bitcoin is going to go mainstream and get mass adopted in the future. That is up to you to think about and decide.

One problem with charts is that they can be self fulfilling. If a chart says that a drop will happen, then it probably will as people follow the projection. Of course this is short term, but it is one way that fast reacting guys who can understand the charts can make money. The interesting time comes when two chart theories have opposite views.

Long term technical analysis helps to confirm good/bad fundamentals of the coin/company

No, In my opinion such charts and technical analysis are really useless expecially for long-term investors. News are much more effective than any other thing.

In fact throughout my experience as a trader, I have been quite reluctant to the idea that the charts provided by the technical analysis may be of some usefulness when making decisions regarding our long-term investments.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of markets knows that historical data are irrelevant in times of economic crisis, and this is especially true in a market as new as the cryptocurrencies one, so our caution should always prevail when it comes to make our investment decisions,not trusting too much in those supposed "gurus" that prevail in social networks nowadays.

Graphics remain useful for long-term investors. They may at any time want to see sharp price movements happening on the market after they heard the panic rumors, how strongly this and that news can affect market prices.

I think the main aspect of long term charts for the early adopters is to focus on bottom development. While peaks only represent speculation and hype, and thus incorrectly portrays a different overall picture, the bottoms indicate a more 'conservative' form of long term growth development. For me personally that has been a solid indicator of growth, and as long as bottoms are being set on top of each other, the market remains strong. If this pattern gets broken through at some point in the future, that will be a clear sign of a much lower form of long term demand, and even result in a bear market phase that might hold on for years potentially. This market grows because of how tiny it still is, but when the big guns entered the game, and the market has matured, a longer term bear market might be something we will go through. Every market goes through such a phase, and Bitcoin will definitely not be an exception. The charts will speak for themselves.

Yes, there are many other factors which may affect your long term investment which charts would not account for. Anything may happen which cannot be seen in the charts such as an unforeseen financial crash or crisis.

For a long term investor, the charts may not do so much but instead perhaps would show the bitcoin price behaves over the past years. Some long term investors get cold feet when the price drops to about 30-40% but if they were to judge the charts, they would be able to see that it is the price of trend of btc. But when it comes to making long term investment decisions, the charts don't have that much contribution.

Definitely correct, charts or graph is applicable only for short term or daily trading, if you want to take long term investment, try to find a coin that is really pump up after a couple of months or years,  XVG, OKCASH and  XRP is good for long term of investment.

yups,still the latest issues and news will decide what would be the price of every coin specially bitcoin,how would a old chart help the recent price,this is the reason why more of us fails,becauseof lots on analysis that in the end conflicting each others

One aspect of this is that there is a huge industry selling TA tools, indicators blah blah to noob traders along with a huge trading education industry. As you say none of these can actually produce any results to back up their claims. Show me a trader using one of these systems or techniques and proof of a positive track record then I might take them seriously.

Charts tell you a few simple things that's all. Is the market in a trend or a consolidation phase. The location of the points it changed direction last time. These are useful to know but they are not a prediction.

To address Jet Cash's question charts do have a limited use for traders. I think long-term investors should only consider fundamentals and forget all about charts.

I am a long-term investor and don’t care about charts, as I buy when I can, averaging the cost. It is more important to do deep research on what you are buying and to decide why you are going to buy it. Once you buy an asset because you strongly believe in its fundamentals and future projection, the ups and downs of the market don’t matter.

My guess would be that the charts are useful for micro trading, but perhaps you want to glance at the chart over the course of years for macro trading/investing. Of course there's also cross-overs between the two and at the end of the day it may just do whatever the f it wants.

Analyst charts are indeed more suitable for trading or short-term investments, but some people also there are using chart analysts for a consideration for a long term investment. Anyhow the predictions or opinions there will be different, the people are certainly vary in responses to everything.
All the factors that can affect to the price movements., indeed do need to be known, and sometimes it's not as we expected, but however with a price charts., it can be a consideration in taking steps, choosing a coin and determining term hold, a short term or long term it's definitely very useful.

One chart that I haven't seen, and that I think might be useful, is a chart of the number of coins that are moving into wallets with no record of spending. I think this could be useful as a guide to the increasing use of Bitcoin as a long term store of wealth.

That would be difficult as now HD wallets are the norm and many people have adopted the practice of using new addresses every time. Addresses can only be linked together as belonging to the same wallet if outputs are combined in a sent transaction. Any chart of UTXOs in an address that has never spent would also include all these plus change addresses.

It can only be useful if you are updated with everyday trends and news. More useful to long term investment because of the historical data.

The problem with long term charts for me is always that they have extremely limited historical data to feed from. I mean, barely ten years of trading, and a lot less with significant volume and global trading, it's unreliable as a predictive tool as you say, even if you might draw some learning from them (but then, you learn from any form of analysis!).

I look at the longest possible timeframe on a chart and of course, it shows solid growth as you said, but negate any number of the early years and it's missing some of the most explosive early trends, but then again, doesn't take remove what takeaways you can get.

There is comfort to be drawn from bull runs after bearish periods, like you said, but there's no guarantee it'll repeat... something the charts might deceive you to think otherwise.

Charts acts as a guide for everyone else who wants to know what happen with cryptos or a certain crypto in a specific range. It is very helpful because it will show a quick differentiation of the prices that will help and guide in making decisions of whether it is good to buy and invest again, or if it is time to sell now. As a trader, I used it as a quick reference and estimation if I am earning or getting a good profit from my investments.

Of course, we cannot expect a chart to have all the information we need because a chart can only contain specific data and results for comparison, and not all. We cannot fully depend on it but it will still be helpful in making quick analysis.

Graphics are very useful for short-term traders as well as long-term investors, because when buying a coin or investing, you must see the progress of the chart and read to find the right time to buy. and most importantly for long-term investor charts it's important to see future progress instead of just relying on news.

The charts may not show you trends. This is only a visual indicator of price behavior. Analysis and its own forecast of prices traders are doing traditional methods. So my answer is no. Charts do not help in trading. They only visualize the information.

I think charts can be missleading at any rate. Tone Vays for instance, once again failed with his prediction. He said that his technical analysis pointed to a big fall if $7500 was lost, and we dipped to $7200, then he was expecting the price to go lower, only to wake up with a monster pump to $8000+ territory, now we've hit almost $10000.

He said he didn't expect the g20 news to be relevant... this shows you can't be guided by TA alone. Any news, even the ones that may not seen relevant to you, can destroy your TA planning.

Charts for me are good to draw resistance lines but fundamentals will always crush any TA. I also look at long term charts to try to guess if we are in bubble mode or in desperation mode (time to buy a ton of BTC), but that can be missleading too. A lot of people saw a bubble at $4000 and missed the FOMO to $20000.

Only if the coin has been out for longer than a year, that is the only way charts of 1D, 1W can be reliable. Otherwise the data is too small and you will have inconsistent results. Out of the 3 analysis' though I would argue TA is the least important in long term, the most important however would be the fundamentals. Therefore, TA is useful for long term analysis but understanding the fundamentals is even better.

They do play an important role for investors. Investors can use the charts to analyse data and can somewhat predict how the market is going to be affected soon or in the long term. There are some patterns which crypto currencies always follow. The charts help investors to find those patterns and invest  accordingly.

Honestly in terms of trading cryptos whether long term or short term and future decision to my actions or plans, Im not relying on chart readings. I don't even spend time learning those deep technical charting terms although I have a knowledge of those a bit because for me, why should I? Price fluctuates everyday without even a reason. Whales are everywhere and influential persons are always at stake of saying something whether good or not to bitcoin or any cryptos.

Chart is always a good "reference" for future decision but this must not take as mandatory tools to be learned when dealing on cryptos. There are successful traders today who didn't rely on chart readings but rather playing with the risks with some own set of considerations and factors before taking an action. Also, a good and well detailed chart readings and analyzations will be spoiled once panic started meaning cryptos are really out of control during that phase.

Yes charts do give a idea for future movement of cryto or stock prices. It helps to understand the trend movement and by understanding various pattern formation, you can predict the future price movement.

Most times, I have this feelings that most chart are manipulated by whale and heavy investors to bend the market to their own interest. That is why sometimes you  see the market going according  to a particular prediction. Nevertheless, there are charts which seems not to be manipulated and can still be trusted. But every traders should be skeptical of the charts that directions their trades.

Through charts,investors are able to update their trading. There are a lot of differences from time to time when trading bitcoin. So to minimize sudden issues regarding trading,they will just recap what happened to the chart.

Using charts it can tell you the story. They cut through all the rumors, headlines and hype to paint an objective picture of what is really going on with the stock market. Also, using charts you'll see the daily or even in weekly the spot specific buy and sell signals. We cannot just use it in shorterm also it is very important in long term.

Yes for the investors charts are very important and through charts they can check the financial position of the different coins and current growth rate and we have the actual position of the coin then the charts plays important role for investors to invest in the crypto currency and if we have used the strategy for the crypto then sure the people will love to buy this for the long term.

I believe that graphics are useless because certain lines can not give us a guess. I was following the traders who draw straight lines looking at the graphics, I think they are not successful.

In the long term, charts are still very useful. I have always been a long term trader and I trade candle patterns, more like price actions on daily charts. I can decide to hold for as long as I can, but at the same time, I always need the chart to know the activities going on the charts and when exactly to buy or sell based on whatever analysis I am doing.

Yes, some traders may not bother with this, since they end up buy low in margins and selling the same way, but for someone who may want to make at least close to accurate decision, it is necessary.

Charts analysis on a higher timeframes, speaking about monthly here, can still be very usefel. But as you said, you have to watch the fundamentals and what the situation in the space has been 2-3 years ago. For instance I think it's not good to compare the actual BTC situtation with the bear market we saw in 2014/2015.
Bitcoin and the whole ecosystem was much much smaller and technology wise a lot has changed.
So for a long term outlook it's all about following fundamentals ( read twitter news for instance) and try to ignore the daily noise! And maybe check the chart every 2-3 months.

I do not think it is not much useful, we see every second the charts on a number of markets show changes. And that means, if it will invest in the long run, it would be better to see the routine of price movements every year in certain months. Meanwhile, unexpected estimates also need to be considered, sometimes the above routines do not apply if the unexpected events that concern the price is quite a big effect.

It's just that I hope to stick to your long-term investment mission, when you see a very high price when you're still halfway through the mission. and not tempted by high prices.  ;D

I'm still holding off on claiming my Bitcoin. I still believe that the price will increase in the latter part of this year, but at the moment there seems to be a lot of turbulance. I'm not convinced that we are out of the bear market yet, although prices seem to be moving sideways more than anything. There seem to be quite a lot of political issues, and a bit of market manipulation, so one has to be careful when looking at the charts at the moment.

For a dormant investors chat is not useful, but if someone is an active investor chats are very useful to them because it will make them to know more about the market whether the price is going up or not
 So it's depends on the type of the investor.

Short answer: No :)
In a centralized system, plans can benefit and I can define my long-term investment plans.
bitcoin and others are decentralized, making it difficult to predict in the short term and impossible in the long term.
Investment without prior planning is a high risk investment and closer to be gambling.
I do not use these schemes/charts in the case of long term investment and better to be an unaccountable risk.

Most traders has a different strategy but i know they use chart also to determine the pattern of growth rate 'cause  it give clues and idea so it doesn't mean it's not useful ,,rather than relying on others predictions so much better to review the chart 'cause chart tells what are the specific movement of coins and indeed we can build our own strategy on it so its very useful .

Chart is as useful for a long term trader as it is for a short term trader or day trader. Long term traders actually combine fundamental analysis mostly with theirs, but they also do some little bit of analysis on the charts with longer time frame to know the decision to make at any point in time and we all know there is no way you can make any good decision without at least making use of the charts.

If I am a long term investor, there is still what they call trend following and I basically cannot do trend following without still making use of the charts. I always believe some few indicators such as MA, MACD and RSI are basically all that a long term investor will need but not even necessarily all of them. As long as you a trading and you are not just holding, either long term, short or day, you will always need to be able to analyze the chart, just the time frame that differs and you do not have to check every time as a long term investor.

Not even hard to tell. Every long term investor needs chart to be able to read how things are faring for whatever they are holding and to be able to make good decisions to know when to buy or sell. As long as you are not the HODL kind of person, then chart is always the best friend of every trader. How the different category of traders now analyzes is totally what differs. Long term is all about patience, and there are some indicators that work perfectly well for long term holders.

In my own opinion, I feel charts are useful to some extend because one get to have clue (forecast) what might happen(when to invest) in a particular period of the year.

Two months later there is still not much of a movement in the price and i was expecting some improvement in price during the consensus and that did not happen, i really think that charts are useless in this market because the way Mt Gox is selling off the coins when ever the market increases is an event that we cannot foresee in any charts, i really hope that we will see some institutional investment coming into bitcoin later this year or next year which will take the market to new all time high valuation.

the graph does not always show the right results. Sometimes a chart only looks at some sides, but does not think of anything else. So it is best to choose to make a decision at that time. It is very difficult to predict a thing in the world of crypto so doing the action quickly and precisely at that moment is also the most careful choice.

Chart is helpful but not that much. You can tell and predict the value using charts but there are a lot of ups and down charts happening for a long term. Maybe if you want to sell your coins for the next month after holding it for years,it would become helpful.

Its a big Yes for me. Tracking chart for bitcoin price can really help longterm investors. Though there are many ups and downs it made at a certain month but in longterm investments, only the big spikes of increase are their bases when to buy, to hold and when to sell off their coins.

I personally think most charts were made to be used in real markets. People think those are great reference ARE wrong. I am long term investor and I only look at market caps. If it drops its okay to buy for me.

I think charts are working well for short-term traders although it works well for long-term investors too because they can see and make the estimation how long they want to hold. besides that, long-term investors don't need to check the charts too often but maybe once in a month to see where the price wants to go. and if the price suddenly goes down too deep, the long-term investors can make a decision related to their coin investment so they could save their money.

I think it's basically useful.. but maybe more guesswork with that, from the graph I think we can only see the price developments from the previous years and then compare them up to now, and it can't be sure to make a profit for the long term, due anyhow it all depends on various things that can affect the development of price such as news in particular.

Very useful because is with the of chart that one can take a look into history of the market and predict what will in the future and probably make a long term decision, I strongly believe chart is useful in trading decision making.

useful but it will not be too important, we are holding for long periods of time and if you do not see the market even in a few days it will not be a problem, so chart is not important to watch every day but chart is also useful to see market development, and maybe from the chart you can decide when to sell