Bitcoin Forum

I've often heard that to know that you are a successful trader you have to pull profitable trades in a bear market, not just a bull market. 

I've been successful during our bear market this year, by using the Depth Chart, or Micro-analysis of the order book.  I've set a tight stop-loss at 1% risk, with 1-3% profit exit per trade.  I use the principles of compound-interest to grow my btc stack with trades.

What are your bear market strategies?

And if you are new and lurking and looking to learn about daytrading and have no idea where to start or how, swing on by our discord, everyone is really helpful, and it's free with no obligation for anything.  We can help set up that trading plan for you, or even if you don't understand terminology or whatever about trading...we can help.  Swing by and say hi, stay awhile and listen, and learn something!

Voodoo Crypto (https://discord.gg/xJmChfj)

Either that, or you need to play to your strengths. I know some crypto traders that primarily only trade during bull markets (like 2016-2017). After the crash, they pack it up and leave until the market is hospitable again. One reason for that is the lack of safe places to short sell, especially for traders in the US.


That's surprising. I've always found order book analysis to be misleading. People are always playing games on the order book.


I'm all about compounding gains to grow my BTC stack too. But IMO 1:1 reward vs. risk is really low. You also need to beat trading commissions and hedge against a bad stretch of trades. I look for an absolute minimum of 2.5% reward vs. 1% risk. In cryptocurrency, there are opportunities for much better than that too.

This is not always the case. I do not believe in hyping individual trade ability because I have monitored this crypto trade to know that, nothing is perfect about making gains. Even where one makes some profit in bear market, it is not always a guarantee.

You are right where you say that a trader needs to be able to take out the profits in a  bear market in order to be a successful trader.
A bull market is good for a short term trader and I believe that a bear market is good for a day trader. I see people saying that day trading should not be done in a bear market. I see price swings up to 3% and sometimes more on daily basis. I believe this opportunity must be used well for day trading.

My strategy is if  have prediction bull matket of crypto will coming,  i will put the money for crypto trading and after the price of all crypto overbought, and then i will withdraw it and move to the stocks market. In bearish crypto market is very hard to earn profit so its better i quit from the market.

I like this little piece of statement that you have made here. Yes, thats the perfect way to win this market. As long as you staking up the base coin with the profits and compounding of the same then you are always in the profit after certain amount of time and thus no one can take you down in the crypto space itself. The thing that happens here is, you are not actually looking at how much profits you have gotten in terms of USD or your local currency but you are looking at how much base coin you have gotten. This way it keeps rising all the time and thus you can end up having huge coins and thus even with small change you can get lot of money back to you.

When I first started, I used this strategy on Cobinhood, trading for just increasing my COB stack because I believed in the token and exchange a lot...now I trade on binance and try to grow my BTC stack.


2.5% is nice, but sometimes you have to take a 1% gain to avoid taking a 1% loss, and if you set your exit just above 1% it covers the trading fees on binance.  And if I make 3 trades at 1% in a day, which is, most of the time pretty easy using the depth charts.  I like to look at the total BTC on the order book cumulatively of over 100BTC in Bids/Asks.  That way the faking out of the order book isn't as easy, and whales have to dump large or buy large in order to move it much.  Also if the Volume is over 1000BTC/24Hr is another one of my rules for trading a particular coin.  For example the only coins right now on binance for considering a trade in are : ADA, TRX, ZIL, FUN, XRP.
That's how we get around the misleading of the orderbook.

Ugly nested quote response, but bear with me.

1) Not being able to short sell effectively sucks, but there are definitely ways to profit without that particular perk.

2) Order book micro analysis can be misleading, on coins with low order books. This discord only trades on coins with greater than 1,000 BTC 24/h volume and at least 100 BTC on the order books. That makes it expensive, and therefore less frequent, that the books are being manipulated.

3) Trading is all about probabilities, right? If you're profit/stop is 2%/1%, you only need to be right 35% of the time to profit.

My thought as well. I haven't been able to even remotely use any exchange order book in my advantage to obtain useful and potentially profitable data. One or more players can fill up or empty order books in a matter of minutes.

Another thing is that I see a lot people here talk about how well they are doing with trading, but it's pretty difficult for me to believe that this is actually happening. The far majority of the people trading are losers overall.

Funny thing however is that the people pretending to be trading successfully never bother to point out their trades before cashing them out. With that in mind I can make myself look like a solid trader here as well, but I don't.

Its easy to say that one is successful even on a bear market but that is their claim and we cant that away from them. If they got lucky even on a bear market then good for them, but let us also give caution to newbies that trading on a bear market is very risky, let us not make it sound that its easy by using different tools. They might get the idea to just jump in and trade away and loose more money.

Risky for those who has no proper experience on trading mate, but for those who had wiser visions for his/her ability to grab bearish opportunity it's a brilliant strategies to do. Upon checking the prices on the market we tend to be amaze for those cheaper coin price despite of how it behaves in the last few months ago. The predictions was a failure but still people demanded to buy cryptocurrency.

Much better if you could mix other indicators to prove your decision together with orderbooks

It could help you out where the market is truly heading and may avoid contradicting whales

I am using orderbooks as confirmations together with other 3 indicators

Making gains is even something that is applicable to how each individual trade or will I say their pattern of trading. Bear market can be traded, but what is there to trade really for someone who is a long term trader, short term trader or a midterm trader.

 The OP categorically stated a day trader pattern and saying that as a successful trader you have to pull profitable trades in a bear market, sounds pretty much absurd to me. Market can come in different ways and your pattern determine how you want to be going ahead with your trade and if the OP trades for real, setting a tight stop loss 1% risk and then looking for a 1% does not sound right for a good risk reward ratio. At least 2 - 3 % when you have a 1% risk is a whole lot better.

I believe considering the bull and bear market is for those who are here for the long term investment strategies. And by long term I really mean more than few years. If you are small investor which always outnumbers in the market, then it wont be much difficulty to trade even when you are in the bear trend. Lets assume that you are holder then it should be concerning factor for you because you have to be patient for the market to recover and wait for the ROI. Now this could be very hard to digest as sometimes it can take up lot of time. So whenever you are in the bear trend then you should be in the position where you are just having the normal swing trades, day trades going on. Because they dont ask for the big bull runs and stuff like that.

Other way to earn profit on the bearish trend is by shorting the price in margin trading,  there are 2 different trading product that offer profit from shorting the price, that is CFDs and futures trading platform. Margin trading is more risky than spot trading,  so its better to trade in this platform only in bear market.

Its nearly the same as you are having. Because the market in the downtrend doesn't move much then it is always good thing to put the smaller profit taking limit for example I will always play around 3% and not more than that. Expecting higher trends in this situation is almost impossible because when crypto enters the bear market then it slows down in the up and down of its prices. Its like it starts getting little much stability because no one is ready to invest during that period (which they should be actually) and thus makes the market crawl for the bull. So getting 3% spikes is possible but expecting higher than that will always lead to loss. Better to stick to this strategy only and try the luck hard.

Doing margin will be dangerous for the traders because they will need a high-skills in analyze besides that, they will need accurate analysis so they can know where the price wants to moves. But the profit will bigger and of course to get a bigger profit, and we need to use a big balance because this is what I see in the past in the poloniex on the margin trading section. We have our strategy, and we cannot say that our strategies are the best than the other because we don't know how much profit that every trader can get with their strategies. It is better to stick with our strategy and keep trying to make a profit even for small profit.

Using order books alone will not even help. I have tried it before, I have seen fake orders several times and the best way to just go about trying to trade a market, is to make use of the indicators and then the price actions on the chart to make a decision, while making stop loss a very important thing to never discard.

Personally, I make use of momentum indicator such as Stock RSI, trend indicator such as Ichimoku cloud and then add this up with price actions on certain supports and that has always worked out fine for me. However, it all balls down on each individual's level of knowledge and experience when it comes to trading both bull or bear market as the case may be.

IMO this kind of profit is extremely insignificant and thus not worth spending time on. And for the trading fees to be less that this 'profit' one needs a really big amount of money, while having that kind of money probably means that this person doesn't actually need to earn it. Anyway, it's nice that people manage to trade even these days, but I think that bearish market is perfect for long-term investments. Buy low and wait for better times. They are probably worth it and there's no need to be constantly involved, as is the case with trading. Trading is a hard thing to do, while investing can end up very successful even without significant experience.

Always stock your funds in USD and hold it after the bull market get away and so far it will also recover in the mean time to avoid lossing money if the cryptocoins will drops it's price.

 As for me when it comes to the phases of the market, bearish or bullish, down or up etc. the great buying of assets is when the price is low and decreasing why? because the chance of gaining from that coins is huge. Buy, buy , buy when it is bear market and sell, sell, sell if it is bull market. Because it is really hard being successful while its bear market, once in a blue moon.

1 to 1 risk to reward ratio ?
I am really trying to look at how that has been playing out for you in a bear market. Even though you said 1 - 3% profit per trade, the fact that you included that 1 baffled me a bit. Nonetheless, I do not agree with the fact that for you to be a good trader, you have to be able to trade different markets, either bear or bull, as that is bullshit as it depends on your style or pattern of trading.

The fact that you are a day trader does not necessarily make every professional trader a day trader. Even for a bear market if I have to trade, I am not looking for anything less than a 2% profit to 1% loss ratio which is more reasonable to me.

I also agree.I still follow the most basic strategy of buy low and sell high.I know i will not lose during bear market if i won't get into panic selling.So i prefer to keep on holding until bull market starts,and sell them to make huge profits for sure.

I agree with you. A good trader must earn profit from both of bull and bear market. And I think that you must apply 1% or 2% to earn a bit profit. Dont be greedy. That's enough

Yes.Grab the chance in buying potential coins while the price market is cheap and hold them after.You can still make good profits in this bear market by not selling them at a negative price.Always learn to be more patient in the bear market.

That's where a lot people go wrong, especially when it comes to altcoins. It's impossible to say whether or not the price of an altcoin is low, regardless of how much it has gone down prior to that.

People kept saying that Bitcoin at $15,000 was low and for that reason a solid dip to buy. Then it was $10,000 where people thought that it wouldn't fall below that psychologically important barrier, but it did.

With crypto you should be ready to see prices tank up to 90% from their highs, especially when it comes to altcoins. People thinking that prices are low because they went down with 50% already will be burned hard.

50% down will turn into 70% down and soon after 90% down.

I agree to your plan that you will have to wait if the market will starts to pump because of bull run but at this rate of bearish market does it really change the fact even if you switch to stock market? Holding is the only way to get your profit back but if you are a day trader then it must be very a difficult task for your daily life routine.

I suppose people will go back their money in bitcoin and the price will continue as soon as however it's going to take a horrible time, it isn't always advantageous. Many buyers have misplaced their cash because of a mistake in bitcoin due to the fact now they may be afraid to make investments their cash once more. that is due to the fact the rate is not rising. i am hoping this recession will near quickly.

Yes usually a good trader able to make profit even when the market condition is not too good, and the percentage of making profit in any market is usually high, trade in bear market is not suitable for beginners, and day trade is also not recommended in bear market, I usually used depth chart, macd and moving average indicators, when the result is not good I don't trade at all

my strategy is almost the same, getting 1-5% per day is enough in the bear market, but for stop loss I stop at 0.5%
sometimes if lucky if the market becomes bull, it can get 5-20%

Both in bullish and bearish we have the same strategies we have learned which are the rules of trading so if you know these rules then you will survive in any market conditions either bull or bear. You will have maximum profit only if you buy on low price that will result in saving as well as you will have greater benefit of it in bull market after selling coins on high price.

Buying at the bear rund and selling at the bull run is the best strategy to make more profits but it is impossible to find the bull and bear run until it happens so trading strategies need to be learned through our experience only.

Usually, any strategy someone tends to have eventually is based on the knowledge they have. You cannot naturally thrive in anything without even knowing how to make very good decisions. That is what is lacking for a lot of traders who want to trade and make profit but they are too lazy and unready to learn. In my experience one single strategy will be capable enough to handle both bull and bear market, there will be no need of 2 strategies for these two types of markets.

Most of the time, how you approach a market depends on the strategy you have and usually, even if those strategies may be the same across board, there are some principles you will have to apply most especially when it comes to taking profit and setting stop losses when it comes to either a bear or a bull market.

Experience is teaching everything in crypto trading. But buy low and sell high is a common strategies of trading platform so I recommend to monitor the top 100 altcoins then only we will find the best one because no one is getting easily so we must take effort in trading surely we will get profit and stop the losses in anytime. Number of investors are ready to invest in crypto the only problem is how to pick the best one so small scale trading is the good choice for all the time.

For trading both bull and bear are not good and for market trading i think crypto price are not stable so predicting the right value of crypto is very difficult for us and now the market is bear the demand is not rising trading is very low and people are waiting for the market to become bull so they will easily trade their coins for good price.

Buy today.  Assuming it is bull market; the price will move upwards.  Then you need to sell at some higher rates.  The difference you earn.  e.g. bought on 1st of the month @10$ per coin.  and the price on 15th is 12$.  So you sell and earn 2$.
Sell in the morning.  Assuming it is bear market the price will fall in the evening or few days later.  Then buy will lesser cost.  The difference is your gain.  e.g. you sold your coins   e.g. you sold on 1st of the month @4$ per coin and it being bear phase the price falls to 3$.  And you then purchase to keep stock with you.  that means the coin you sold at 4 now you buy @3$; you gain 1$.

In a bull market one can actually trade btc to alts and vice versa but once it is the bears, the market momentum and strategy should be btc to fiat and alts to fiat, fiat may be usdt, Tusd and others, that way one can still protect the value of the coins as market drops

But it still difficult to trade because we need to detect which coins to buy and sell, we need to analyze in the hard situations. But I am sure that we can do this especially if we can make a good analysis or at least, we can analyze the coin before we decide. It's fine if somehow, we only make a little profit but if we can do this over and over, then it means we can collect a big profit.

I have the same thinking with you ,dude. Personally, there is no fixed strategy that can help us pass  through bear market. In fact, each person took part in the market with their own different capital, and it depends on some major factors such as knowledge, experience, skills and the like  in order that they can manage better in bear trends. When we have enough effort to do own strategy with high efficiency, it would be a good  way to solve your problem instead use  strategy of other people.

Do you think in all conditions when the market is weakening is the right time to buy? I don't think so, because every coin has its own reason why their exchange rate decreases, you cannot generalize that all coins when prices are weak are the right time to buy. many coins are weakened and cannot recover, you should be selective in choosing coins and not forever Declining price is the right time to buy

My strategy now is to invest in new altcoins or invest in potential ICO projects. Because this is a good time to have the small altcoins pumped easily. You can see the daily market has more than 10 powerful pumping altcoins but most of them are outside the top 300. This is a new way of making my money.

I do believe that many of us may not like to share our trading views or strategies here as it will be like a miner exposed were he find gold!  I just like the way you minimize risk and that is the deepest secrets you need to know and make money from the market.  The bearish and the bullish trend give us equal opportunity to make profits and loses.  If you desire to trade successfully you have to know how to make money from every conditions of the market.