Bitcoin Forum

Everything gone in the blink of an eye.
Weeks worth of hard work up in smoke...
Or worse.
 
If it's so easy to lose everything, why bother?
 
I've shared countless horror stories of making all kinds of stupid mistakes while trading.
It's embarrassing to admit... but some of those mistakes I've made over.. and over.. and over again...
 
I have always had a thick skull and been stubborn as hell.
All that pain…
Has taught me valuable lessons in how to keep myself - and my money - safe.
 
Trading is no different than anything else in life.
 
When I step into a car...
The first thing I do is put on my seat belt.
I've been doing that for so long, I don't think about it… It just happens.
 
Wearing a seat belt was a rule growing up.
My parents wouldn't start the car until they heard me click it.
That rule has saved my life.

Thankfully crypto isn't that dramatic.
This is only my bankroll we're talking about.
 
But protecting my bankroll is damn important to me.
So I wear my seat belt when I trade, too.
 
My top two most important day trading rules are:
- No trading session may exceed 4% loss
- No individual trade may exceed 2% loss
 
Those rules address my personal weaknesses, and are tailored for my strategy.
They won’t stop me from getting a trade wrong and losing money…
 
But they will help me prevent massive damage to my bankroll.

What trading rules do you swear by?

Proper risk control. I had been a massive idiot in the past. If a certain coin/token is going to pump based on my research, I put 30-50% of my bankroll on that coin/token like a mighty degenerate. Now, I only do a maximum of 5% when I'm really really certain, even thought I think 5% is too big of a risk.

Go for trading when you see profits,don't wait for more profits which also can harm your bankroll.

Don't trust any signals which is not going to be benefitable to us.

I think the most important rules are psychology and follow the trading rules that you set out.
There were many people breaking the rules when trading, most of them failed.
Trading is an interesting job and you have to follow what you set out to do. When you go wrong, you will have to pay a high price. That's my experience in 2 years of trading.

You have to fully understand that cryptocurrency market is too volatile and this is why trading through it is quite difficult, but as volatile as it may look, that is exactly what makes it more profitable than other trading market, and if you are to trade in this crypto market, you have to first ensure that you have the patience and then also keep greed at home, or else, no matter the skill or strategy you have, impatience and greed will knock them off. And like you said, trading is so fragile, and you have to just handle it like an egg.

Handling trading is to ensure that all the necessary risk tools that is needed to properly manage the risk is activated for your trade to eliminate any form of risk that may be present in the market while trading. I checked through your rules and they are still quite fair to me, I think you just need to work on more strategies.

For me, the rule that I like the most is to keep calm and follow the plan.
It is really very difficult for many people. The absence of attractive price indices is one of the most difficult things in trading.
If we can get used to it, we can trade better.

yeah your trading rules are very good and it's not much different from mine. I determine TP & SL in each of my trades with an accumulated loss of no more than 5% of all my money. Of course, I'm not only trading on one coin, but I'm dividing it into several coins in the portfolio.

And not just losses that must be managed but also with profit. Profits also need to be managed to avoid greed in ourselves. People will forget when they feel they continue to profit until finally they lose everything.


Psychology is indeed very important, but without clear rules it is useless. Psychology begins with the rules that are made, then we only need to practice in terms of psychology to remain consistent in the rules that we make. Trading rules are also able to keep our money management stable.

I've seen the worst projects pump to the moon so it doesn't always pay off to do the logical move.  You never know what coin/token will get a mega pump just be ready to dump it because they always crash after it happens.

You know why it worths so much when it can also go in blink of and eye? You an actually retire if the tides go in your favor.
In early 2019 ethereum price was 9 dollars, someone may have gotten a bit from some work they did, maybe a thousand dollars work or whatever, then they may have just forgot about it, late 2017 they would have so much money that it would be insane.

Now that didn't happen only once, there was bitcoin both during that time plus there was bitcoin at couple bucks vs 1400 it happened in 2014. Same with many many small altcoins too.

Hence, people are investing money into crypto knowing that it could drop %80 in a year but they also know that there is a chance of making 1000x return from your investment as well. That is why people who take the risk/reward ratio seriously and say rewards outweight decides to go with it.

Psychology is one of the most important factors that should really be controlled and this cant be achieved so easily yet this would require countless failures and mistakes before you would able to realize that you should need to step up to avoid on next times engagement.It do really matters also with risk management but as said we cant control this thing if our mind and emotion isnt really that prepared or dedicated enough.

I typically risk only 2-3% of the money I've got set aside for trading, and I size every trade different by risk (one trade I might trade 20,000 contracts, another 50,000) but still keep the first rule in play at the same time to ensure I'm minimizing risks and maximizing profits. Things obviously don't work perfectly every time, but this sort of system is miles better than when I didn't have a risk management system/had an ineffective risk management system. I also don't trade when I'm emotional or going through emotional times, because I just don't have good decisionmaking during those times and I'd rather just sit out and not make profits rather than risk money trading when I know I'm not at peak performance.

 ;D sometimes when I get a signal for pump, I don't even bother much because, it could also be opposite. You put money in such and you cry later because of dump. Live is about risk though.

They get out of that trading pump group.  ;D

I don't risk that much as all when I do trades, around 5-7% is too big for me already and if my order falls around that category I immediately push the panic button and call it a day.

I'm no longer the gung-ho type that I used to be. Maybe I can maturity and doesn't want to gambler more because we all know that this market is very unpredictable and most of the time it doesn't go on our favour.

Our mistakes should be a lesson to us and as you said, if there is no one improving trough the mistakes, then I guess that the person is just not ready to learn, or trade is not for the person, everyone cannot be a trader and we have so many people that does not have the strength to trade, so they just prefer to do more of holding.

The risk in trading is the volatility and if we don’t know how to work with the volatility which is also the reason why we make money more in cryptocurrency tan Forex, there is no way we can ever get it right, we need to learn how to manage risk, and we also need to stop being too stubborn in activating our trading tools, I know that a lot of people would say that they are gurus and does not need stop loss, but no matter how pro we are, we need it.

There is not really much i would add to your text. trading is 90% about risk and trade management. have lost so much by not setting a stop loss...

Dont get greedy after some good trades, this is what i have learned  ::)

A profit is a profit no matter how small it is. I've been always a greedy scum during my first days as a trader. Partly because I have gained a lot on pump and dumps back then that's why I always believe that I can always make 100% or more gains in a single go. As time passed and as the market became more and more matured and regulated, I started to realize that gone are the days of insane profits. I started to realize that in order to make money, I have to claim the pennies before it gets to dollars and so on. I have worked on this principle for a few years now and thankfully made a decent stack of my own coins.

Being greedy on our earlier days is common which we do believe on things that we shouldn't gonna do like on too confident on making big profits or returns on a short period of time basing on our experience.

Sooner or later we would able to realize that the market wont really be similar anytime.You profit now and you do lose later on,this do depend on how you gonna pursue your career as a trader.

it is not "all" fragile. there are solid things that people can follow even in trading. for example buying solid stocks instead of throwing money at penny stocks. or basically to use their head instead of following the hype.
in cryptocurrency market things are also the same. bitcoin is the only solid thing we have which we can speculate about. the rest are extremely "fragile" and people should never enter the altcoin market if they don't know about the level of altcoin manipulation that the market has.

Nice poem about trading, lol. The four most important things I always integrate in trading:

• Tear down bad Emotions like greed, regrets, etc.
• Risk management- trade only amount that you can afford to lose.
• Stop loss- every trade I always put stop loss about 5% loss.
• Trust your own TA (Technical Analysis).

So far so good, just incorporate those and you'll ended up gaining enough profits.

Probably the two most important rules about trading are, create a set of rules and then follow those rules, this may seem like common sense but you will be surprised by the amount of traders that have no clear strategy and without that how is it possible to evaluate their performance? And then there are those that do have a system but then when confronted with the realities of trading they refuse to follow their strategy and instead of cutting their losses they keep holding hoping the price goes in the other direction, and by doing that they damage their capital to the point that not even the best trader in the world could recover all the money they have lost.

I hope we all see that trading is real and  there is no manipulation in it, it is the way life itself also worked! Trading like the game of life really needs patience and perseverance in other to succeed. It is not a game for children but for the matured mind. Remember, if you lose all your capital in a single trade, it doesn't worth it.

There is a whole lot of manipulation going on, it is not even a secret anymore. When you look at the margin traders and see the shorts going up in number for a while afterwards bitcoin price goes down, then you see the longs going up in numbers for a while and then price of bitcoin goes up. It is quite obvious nowadays because they do not feel the need to hide anymore, manipulation is nature of bitcoin price and it has always been, it is just more obvious now.

However, what were we expecting, a coin that the price is not regulated will of course have a lot of manipulation and speculation in a world even stuff that have a ton of regulation gets manipulation and speculation, it is just a regular life deal that everything else is having and it was common sense that bitcoin would eventually get it too.

You are right! Manipulation is just a typical stuff into these kind of markets and due to decentralized and pseudonymous aspect of crypto.Theres no doubt that it is really prone to manipulation.What matters here is that us traders or investors should really be wise or utilize these movements for us to make profits.Expect the unexpected because anytime this crypto market will surprise you.

Bitcoin will never be regulated. The centralized exchanges where the market making happens can be and are already regulated. Coinbase is the center of the crypto world and one of the most regulated exchanges.

It's an exchange where price discovery happens and there is no manipulation happening over there. I'm sure that Coinbase as prestigious as they are monitor trading activity closely every single second they are operational.

If there is any manipulation (which is very difficult to actually prove), it's likely happening on non regulated shitcoin exchanges that do not have much weight in terms of price discovery.

The pumps and dumps we see are normal considering that there isn't much that backs up Bitcoin and other cryptos value wise. It's all speculation where making money is the main incentive for people to be here.