Bitcoin Forum

Friday, Saturday and Sunday since start of rally.

http://www.sierrachart.com/userimages/upload_2/1328836447910.png

Looks like an inverse dip, on average

My favorite kind.

Deposit stall?

if you can't buy because you have no more money.... we are defiantly going up

7 weekends down, 6 weekends up...

unambiquous

The Weekend Dip strategy that had seen gains that were better than just maintaining a buy and hold position for much of 2011 is detailed below.  The reason this pattern might exist is because bitcoin exchanges are open 24/7 but bank transfers are only occurring on business days.  Add in the timezone difference between the U.S. and Japan (where Mt. Gox operates) and you get an even narrower window where new funds arrive at Mt. Gox.

When Bitcionica arrived, leverage made this weekend dip less likely to repeat as traders had the ability to move without waiting for cash transfers to clear.  Even so, there seems to be a recurring pattern.  Here's one way to try to trade it:

--------------

From a long position, evaluate late Wednesday evening (U.S.) / Thursday (morning Europe, afternoon east).  If the 7-day high is below the previous 7-day high, then sell some.  If that 7-day high is above the previous (i.e., week-over-week is trending up), then this is not a good weekend to try to play the weekend dip strategy.

So if you sold, then wait and watch.  Put in some buy orders -- e.g., buy back a quarter of what was sold at 5% below where the bitcoins were sold at, another quarter at 10% below, another quarter at 20% and the last quarter at 33% below.

Wait and watch.

Around Saturday evening is generally the low point. Watch closely after that.  If the price just sits, you can wait longer, into Monday, but if the bids start changing the direction close back towards the price where you sold then cancel your bids and repurchase what you sold so that you aren't caught chasing the ball above where you sold.

If a big drop happened on Friday then bank wires from the West would reach Mt. Gox by Sunday evening (U.S) so try to be back in your position fully by then.  If Friday was flat, then if there are significant bank wires from the West they won't be heading to Mt. Gox until Monday evening (U.S.) so you can be more patient, as there could be a drop on Sunday night/Monday as well.   When there is a big drop, you want to be back in your position before those wires hit.

Now if instead the price rises from where you sold, check your emotions.  If there is no reasonable explanation for it to jump 10%, for example, it might just drop back down over the weekend to where you can buy back near even.  Or it might continue zooming up 33%.  It may be weeks before you re-enter your position anywhere near where you sold, or you may not end up with a chance to enter at the level you sold at.  But when trading the weekend dip, your gains over time will more than compensate for the hit taken when the rare occurrance that price had a big run even though conditions were ripe for a normal weekend dip (using the 7-day high test explained above).

---------

p.s., I'm not a financial advisor nor necessarily an active trader either.  You don't want to blindly follow a strategy like this -- I'm just explaining a strategy that seemed to work at certain points in history.  

That said, this strategy kicks off only by selling a long position -- so if you will beat yourself up for missing that 40% rise that happened over the weekend, don't follow this strategy.

Seems like this strategy would be correct for about 90% of that chart.

Which means that it should drop again this weekend.

It worked on the up trend last year - then It stopped working on the down trend and it did not yet reestablish itself.

http://www.sectalk.com/boards/images/imported/2007/02/iraqi_information_minister-1.jpg

 ;D

Edit: Im just glad I've been hanging around here long enough to see numerous weekend dips. I dont care what anyone says. Weekends are notorious for sell offs.

nice thing. i will deposit money and buy into next weekends low.

Interesting isnt it? Still falling. ;D

Oldminer, you don’t care about actual data from the past 12 weekends? OK, then keep up your confirmation bias.

lol

So at the current rate this Sunday evening (PDT) of $5.28 and possibly creeping back up, the strategy recommendation is to cancel the remaining open bids and to buy back the remaining bitcoins needed to fully restore the position to where it was at before the Weekend Dip strategy was employed.

If the strategy was followed this past weekend, then conditions were favorable for a weekend dip.  Selling on Wednesday evening (PDT) would have been at the BTC/USD price of around $5.60.  Then following the strategy there would have been a bid paced at 5% less, at $5.32.  That bid would have been hit and a quarter of the bitcoins sold would have been bought back already.  And then to now get back to the original market position requires buying at market the remaining three-quarters, which would be at $5.28.

So to summarize, by following the weekend strategy the result was with no change in position (as the entire position was repurchased), a gain of about 4% (after subtracting exchange fees) was achieved.

Yes great weekend lol

bitcoin black february weekend+monday drop

this weekend till now:
5.8 -> 4.8
-17%

Last weekend (dates for Thursday through Sunday April 5-8) was slightly profitable for the standard weekend dip strategy (sell on my Wednesday evening, watch closely starting late Saturday and get back in as price rises).  The gain was about 3%, less about 0.5% in fees (thanks to special discount available last week).   The weekend dip "indicator" (week's high is below previous week's high) at the time though was false, so this really doesn't count as a +1 if keeping score.

The week prior (March 29 - April 1) was almost a money loser but then a reversal on a weekend rally brought the price back almost to even.  So that was about a 1% loss after considering fees.  Again, the indicator was flat week over week, so no weekend dip was expected and thus wouldn't be a -1 if keeping score.  Someone with great timing could have picked up about 2% though.

The week prior to that (March 22 - 25) had the classic weekend dip indicator and depending on the timing, gains should have been 5% to 8%.  Solid +1.

The indicator for the week prior (March 15 - 18) was false, and trading the dip strategy would have either broken even or gain a percent or so.  So no +1 though..

Prior to that, (March 1 - 4) the indicator was true but just slightly so.  Regardless the condition was true so it counts.  Trading the weekend dip brought a 5% or so gain.  Going to take the +1 on that as well.

So, for the previous five weekends, trading the weekend dip when conditions were ripe scored two for two, and at least a 5% gain on each.  Trading the weekend dip strategy every weekend regardless of whether or not the indicator pointed true would have you possibly up another couple of percent.

This is being written while looking at conditions for this weekend (April 12 - 15).  The previous week's high is about flat compared to this week's high.  So the indicator is false and this weekend the weekend dip strategy probably shouldn't be traded.  Bitcoins should be held onto throughout the weekend, but keep some cash handy in case there is a buying opportunity if there is a dip.

Of course, that is boring.

So ...  deviating from plan means watching the chart closely.  If the weekend dip starts to occur (e.g., gets down into the $4.80s) then try to sell before it gets below $4.85.  The intention is that at some point over the weekend a better price, maybe $4.60s again or maybe lower, will present itself.   If after selling the price spikes, there will be some resistance at $5 so the worst loss after buying back in probably won't exceed 4% including trading fees.

There is something odd though.  Bitcoin transactions are at high levels (above 8K transactions per day), but no rally or selloff which usually is the reason for seeing higher transaction count levels resulting from bitcoins beng moved to and from the exchanges.      The number of bitcoins (raw output #s) is high ... over 1 million BTC per day.   There aren't a whole lot of BitcoinDays being destroyed either.    Yet Mt. Gox claims they can't keep up with all the cash being withdrawn to Dwolla.

So something interesting is happening, I just can't put my finger on it.  Is it something good for the exchange rate, or bad?  Hard to tell but generally higher transaction counts when not accompanied by either a selloff or rally is a good sign though.

Going to need be quick with the trigger finger to buy back come Saturday.

And that's exactly what was needed  If trading with perfect timing, the tiny little dip on Friday would have allowed a 1% to 2% gain after exchange fees.  By Saturday it was pretty obvious the direction was up so the ability to get back in a break-even levels or a 1% loss after exchange fees was a prudent move.

This current week's high is well above the previous week's high so another weekend to not consider the "weekend dip" strategy as a way to generate some trading profits.

friday rally, then a weekend dip! get em while they're cheap.

Another weekend where conditions are not such that the weekend dip strategy is useful.

The weekend dip strategy involves talking a look on Wedesday evening (western timezones) or Thursday morning (eastern timezones) and finding the BTC/USD high in the previous 7 days.  If that number is below the BTC/USD in the previous 7-day period then a selloff is happening and a weekend dip has historically been the result.  Looking at the previous 7-day high shows a high of almost $5.50, which is above the previous period's 7-day high.  So as a result, don't look to the weekend dip strategy to indicate any action here as far as buy, sell or hold.  

https://i.imgur.com/TMisF.png (https://i.imgur.com/TMisF.png)

 - https://i.imgur.com/TMisF.png

(useful 1-month chart here:
  http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg30zig6-hourztgSzm1g10zm2g25 )


The problem is, they've become even cheaper after you posted that.

Personally, I think the ACH fraud issue hitting the exchanges, first reported by Keyur at Camp BX, and something which coincided with changes at Dwolla is something that is having a bigger impact than the market accounted for.  Dwolla wasn't lightning fast for a new account (nearly 10 calendar days between first signing up and having bitcoins in-hand) but it was cheap and reliable.  That onramp to bitcoin has now seen the delay widened to 30 days for new signups, so that will probably cause many to not even bother.  BitInstant can pick up the slack, but the fees are more than Dwolla's $0.25.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a chance to buy under $5 this weekend.  The "weekend dip indicator" isn't useful for every weekend, it simply shows that historically, when conditions are right then more often than not a weekend dip will occur.  This doesn't happen to be one of those weekends where that indicator is useful.   Doesn't mean a dip is any less likely to occur though.

And it wouldn't hurt to have a few USDs, GBPs, or whatever sitting ready to be put to use if a weekend dip does occur though.

And, interestingly enough, last weekend a dip did occur and buying during the weekend saw gains a few days later of three to four percent, if the buying was done at the low and the selling done at current levels.

This upcoming weekend is the first in over a month where conditions indicate we might get a weekend dip.  The last time this indicator held true was March 22 - March 25 and the resulting gain (from having a lower cost basis) after buying back were from 5% to 8%.

https://i.imgur.com/aalMG.png (http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg10zig6-hourzczsg2012-04-18zeg2012-05-04ztgSzm1g10zm2g25)

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg10zig6-hourzczsg2012-04-18zeg2012-05-04ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

The high in the past 7 day was about $5.20ish.  The high in the 7 day period prior to that though was $5.45ish.  So this situation has historically been followed with a dip over the weekend.  The weekend dip strategy then suggests to sell bitcoins heading into this weekend and to then buy them back if a selloff occurs.  The time to buy back will vary.  If there is a quick selloff, then the rally back might be quick as well (usually thanks to arbitrage).

If the selloff is gradual, then the time to buy back is when the price starts to head back up, maybe after a bottom seems to have formed and the exchange rate comes up a third off that low.  Oftentimes, Saturday evening (west) and Sunday morning (east) is about the time to start looking closely at a re-entry point.  But sometimes the selloff continues through Sunday and into Monday even.

Know that other times, a rally happens and this strategy causes you to lose money after buying back so keep that in mind as well.

There is one factor that is unique for this weekend.  Mt. Gox has not been processing international bank wires all week due to Golden Week in Japan.  This means there are three things to consider.

Firstly, on Sunday evening (west) / Monday morning (east) there will be a lot of new money being made available once Mt. Gox starts processing the pending wires.  So a ramp up could be sharp -- it seems that those sending new, incoming funds are oftentimes impatient and as soon as the funds are available, bitcoins get purchased.

Another other impact of this means that if certain prospective sellers have been holding off on their selling this week, preferring to wait until just before funds could be wired out, then any downtrend could prompt those sellers to try to beat the crowd and all together trigger a selloff (one that is unusually steep even as the first to sell gets the higher exchange rates in a selloff).

Oftentimes lately there have been plenty of traders with funds at the ready to catch a sharp selloff, particularly ones fueled by forced margin selling at Bitcoinica.  But this weekend comes following this Golden Week wire transfer stoppage, so it could be possible that traders are just fresh out of funds to place bids.  Thus a selloff this weekend would be unusually sharp.  Nobody knows as this is the first year that this Golden Week work stoppage occurred with Mt. Gox.

As of this writing, Friday 6:44pm PDT (1:44am UTC) the last trades are at $5.084 so let's see if this is yet one more time where following the weekend dip strategy pays off.

This analysis makes way more sense than randomly drawn lines on a chart, and I don't even have to pay for it!

Cool, so who's ready for under $5 bitcoins again.  This is getting too easy.

$3.82 tomorrow.  Get ready.

~$5 for another 3 months ;D

Well, that was a pretty weak dip.  Traders who pay the lowest fees (e.g., 0.3% of each trade) could have made a tiny amount on this weekend dip, others only broke even at best, or lose a fraction of a percent on the fees.)

Without knowing the impact of the Golden Week backlog of wired funds to Mt. Gox, it is probably wise to re-enter now rather than waiting this dip out much further hoping for a drop below $5.

So for scorekeeping purposes the weekend dip strategy gets a a big fat goose egg (0) (which is like a tie.  as -1 is for when following the weekend dip strategy causes losses to occur, and +1 is for when gains are the result.  This caused neither).

Told ya.

Well, the dip did come, below $5 as proudhon predicted.

So here we are, once again.  Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east).  Time to apply the test.

The high in the past week was a little under $5.20 (last week about this time) and the high in the 7 day period prior to that was just a tiny bit higher but also was just under $5.20.  So overall it looks like a downtrend does continue.  And as a result then, for the second week in aA row, the Weekend Dip indicator is flashing green.


https://i.imgur.com/cKDX5.png

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2012-04-18zeg2012-05-11ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

This situation has historically been followed with a dip over the weekend.  The weekend dip strategy then suggests to sell bitcoins heading into this weekend and to then buy them back if a selloff occurs.  The time to buy back will vary.  If there is a quick selloff, then the rally back might be quick as well (usually thanks to arbitrage).

Last week selling at $5.084 and then buying back Sunday afternoon (west) at about $5.035 caused the trade to basically break even after considering the exchange fees.  Perfect timing with waiting and seeing the drop below $5 would have garnered a bit over a 1% gain.

As of this writing, the exchange rate is bouncing between $5.02 and $5.07 but it appears to be headed down.  Being the first to sell as it goes down further gets the best price, so there's no gain from being patient here.  So, here goes ... selling at $5.05 into the weekend, hoping for a dip.



Factors that might cause selling at $5.05 to end up being a dumb move?

Well, there's a few things going on in Europe, for one.  Bitcoin is probably seeing some demand as a result.  BitcoinNordic writes:

"Demand has lately been too high for us to keep up. Expect a refill of Bitcoins in a day or two. Also, we're acquiring more liquidity soon."
 - http://twitter.com/#!/BitcoinNordic/status/200356315401433088 (http://twitter.com/#!/BitcoinNordic/status/200356315401433088)

Additionally, the novelty among first-time players of SatoshiDICE should be wearing off soon but their daily transaction counts are holding up, meaning here's another area where Bitcoin serves a need very well.  And the weekend dip strategy had never been tested with this scenario of a runaway success afoot.  As the currency finds wider and wider use elsewhere as well, the demand will go up.

As a result of a promising future, fewer parties are willing to sell aggressively.  They and others look to buy more with anything that looks like a dip.

If a new rally up is to start could it come between now and Monday?   It has happened before.  

Whatever the chances though they probably pale in comparison to the weekend dip strategy's success ratio.

And for that reason, selling at $5.05 might not end up being a mistake after all.

Cool, again.

Hope you guys are ready. 

I'm ready  :P

Its not going to happen.

We are stable forever!

Where is the panic?  8) I missed something?  ::)

Bears these days are the patient kind, the buying opportunity will come.

For how many more weeks is it going to be this easy to profit off this sell above $5 and buy below $5 strategy.  This is getting a bit ridiculous.  But, hey, I'll keep playing.

how much profit can you really take from 10cent swings

I think one is better off accumulating at 4.90ish  and or  be prepared to go all in at 3.99

Well, that scores another +1.  The gain wasn't that significant, particularly considering the Bitcoinica security incident, after which little additional trading action was the result.  As of this writing trading is at $4.95.

A rising price is what would normally be the trigger event to cause the weekend dip follower to buy back those bitcoins that were sold before the weekend.

But this is not a normal weekend however.  The Bitcoinica situation will result in liquidation of all open positions there and refund of funds from each account.

Those who were long will get back some USDs and some BTCs and will likely hold them, maybe setting up bids at lower prices.  Many of those who were short might have used BTCs as the method to fund the accounts and thus would be getting back some USDs but BTCs as well.  Being short already means they are likely to sell their bitcoins as soon as they can move them to an exchange.

About the only buying pressure might come from the apparent need by Bitcoinica to replenish the 18,000 or so bitcoins that were stolen in order to accommodate withdrawals.

This is a dilemma for the weekend dipper.   The word "dip" generally is used to refer to a valley where the exit is at the same height as the entrance.  The weekend dip only suggests that buying back in the valley, while the dip is still intact, is the goal.   It does not suggest that come Monday morning the price will rise back up above the valley floor.

A prudent move would be to buy back at $4.95, book a half a percent gain (after fees) and be happy the weekend dip strategy worked yet one more time.

A more risky option is to hold back, sit on the cash and watch for a selloff if those Bitcoinica shorts make a run for the exit.  That option would be even more enticing if there weren't a banking crisis heating up in Europe in response to the increased likelihood of Greece exiting the Euro.  A non-reversible, low-cost, immediately spendable digital currency might just do very well in that scenario.

This is the third week in a row where the Weekend Dip indicator is flashing green.

https://i.imgur.com/saog2.png (http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2012-04-20zeg2012-05-18ztgSzm1g10zm2g25)

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2012-04-20zeg2012-05-18ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

There was one minor detail though ... the chart shows a level a couple cents higher than had actually occurred.  Mt. Gox acknowledged a "trade execution glitch" which they followed up with by cancelling those trades.  So there may be a tinge of doubt if this truly is another "down week" which often results in a weekend dip.  The chart says the week had trades that were higher than showed for the previous week, the exchange itself says those weren't real.  Who knows, and does such a minor detail make a difference?

The uncertainty as to what and when would be happening at Bitcoinica after their security breach had caused me to hold off on buying back last weekend.  So personally, the long position I would normally have for selling before the weekend when the indicator flashes green like this has already been sold and thus I'll not be doing any more selling into this next weekend.

But for keeping tabs on the weekend dip, the last trades as of this post are at about $5.055.   The better time to have done this is Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east) and had this post been written then a better exit price of about $5.09 would have existed.

Either way, with the indicator green, let's see if the weekend dip truly occurs for the third week in a row (and extend the winning streak to five out of the last five when the indicator is green).

The wildcard here is Bitcoinica and their speed and handling of customer account recovery.  There will likely be a little volatility once processing on those begins.

 Time cycles come and go, and if they are correct too often, this is typically the time when it does not work any more.

I bet it works this weekend.

Someone just spent over $76k to disagree with you.

People have made costlier mistakes.

I'm not disagreeing with you.  It's likely just a long term investor who doesn't give a shit what happens this weekend.  In a year they should be sitting on a nice profit.  It's just the timing was ironic.  It was within minutes of your post.

So, while we're all waiting around for something to happen...Anyone else have a few bitcoins for sale at ridiculous prices on MtGox or anywhere else just in case some crazy ass billionaire does something, eh, crazy?

+1. I agree with you: Just one investor could easily break resistance at 5.15 - 5.20 $ with 100 k$ and then the market moves...
Just look at what happened in Dec 2010 / Jan 2011. I watched this live. There seemed to be big resistance but a big investor (I knew the guy) bought all coins just a little below 0.3 $ and then pushed it above that level.

I bet we go under $5 again.

How much you putting up on that bet?

Not telling.

no weekend dip this weekend

Should I buy now?  I had put 90% in USD in anticipation of a dip...

Tough call.  The exchange rate is creeping up, so buying back now would cause like a 2.0 or 2.5% loss, including fees versus having stayed long.

At the same time, the Bitcoinica claims could start getting sent out.  That is the event that has the potential to send a bunch of bitcoins to the market.

Of course, looking at the blockchain volume, there are reasons there that might convince speculators to enter or add to their positions.

So, the weekend dip indicator is NOT flashing green (previous 7 day high is above the prior 7-day period's high).  Thus the strategy doesn't sugget any specific course of action to take.

Last week the bitcoins sold at $5.055 when following the weekend dip strategy were never bought back.  Thus if there happens to be a selloff, cash is waiting at various levels under $5.

I think it is entirely possible that this weekend might be the one to put the weekend dip myth to rest forever. It doesn't look like Bitcoinica's MtGox bot has purchased enough coin to properly do the refunds. I'm just speculating of course, but I'm doing it in the right forum.

Ya, there are a lot of funds held by shorts locked up.  So there may be a rally with the buying, and a selloff once the refunds start arriving.  Or not.  Who knows.

Weekend dip indicator- off

Definitely not looking like a selloff  (which would be when the current week's high for the 7-day period is lower than the previous week's 7-day high).  So the indicator won't give any help this week with a signal, third one in a row that it didn't apply.

https://i.imgur.com/s8cqh.png

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg10zczsg2012-05-12zeg2012-06-07ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

Again, this doesn't mean there won't be a selloff, just that the indicator isn't flashing green.  When it does flash green, there's a greater than 50% chance, historically, of there being profit by selling Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday (east) and buying back over the weekend as the prices start to rise following a selloff.

Maybe next week.

Will we see a dip this weekend?

My guess is a dip down to $5.70, and back to > $6.00 on monday.

I wouldn't count on it

this a good time for miners to sell off coins, not a good time to try and back back lower.

I'm going to get $500 or $600 ready for a dip.  I'll probably put bids in a ~$5.50, just in case, and work my way up as that looks less and less likely.  I don't mind chasing the price a bit, if I have to.

Alright everyone, weigh in. Dip this weekend?

Yes. I know this with 100% certainty.

Know why? Because I won't be trying to cash in on it.  Whenever I don't try, dip happens. When I do try...no dip.

SO DIP AWAY!

I hope so

theirs 0 chance of a dip on virtex its still at 7.05....

but ya i could see a dip to 7.59 7.50 on GOX  ;)



... hmmm looks at chart....

looks back a bitcoin wallet

thinks for a second....

ooooH FUCK  :-\

here we go

With a 17K order wall on the ask side I don't think it will be going much higher until it's removed....

ya i have to agree but we wont be going lower either.. we are 60cents off of mtgox price

its not like the ask wall will move down

I'm out, I think we'll dip. Not sure to where though.

@veken0m

Virtex 7.05$ 14K wall was removed

we can look forward to a slow grind up as long as mtgox prices holds

Yeah, but in previous days that wall would have been eaten already.

The pressure just isn't there it seems. Might just be a reaction to Bitcoinica news.

+1

Wow I actually learned something important here. Thanks!

What about manipulators creating this "organic" line shape at the bid side (maybe via some script)?

then they would have to be selling/buying in the trenches because they would have no wall to manipulate people into undercutting (which protects their wall, so they would have no protection). so their agenda would be to actually sell/buy coins. so this is what manipulators do AFTER a switch, or if they are predicting another manipulator's switch by essentially "calling their bluff".

bottom line is: no matter if its a bot or a bunch real traders, Linear diagonal lines are signs that they actually want to buy/sell. Walls are signs that they don't.

i see a great chance for a weekend dip. going test ~7.2
most important: 7.2 is finally broken, now it's a support line what makes me a strong bull:

http://image-upload.de/image/xnyqJK/de3174b6a5.jpg

That's what it is. The way that line structure pops up all at once sometimes, leads me to believe it's not created by humans. It's some kind of trading bot mixed in with regular buyers.

plz delete that post. i was drunk when i posted that and that nonsense should be taking with a grain of salt.
P.S. get ready for the switch tonight when everyone is sleeping ;)

Thank goodness I had my $$ ready..  ::)

Have* 

the switch is happening tonight when everyone is asleep

I spent half of it so had is grammatically accepted, or not?  ;D

at what price did u buy? either way, if u bought at any time today it was a good investment imo.

When it dipped below 7.5. I'm fairly confident that the price will stabilize above 7.8 in the coming week so it's a really good investment. Get them now while you can.  ;)

yea, even though the wall never switched sides, I still believe we are headed up. I'm guessing that ask wall belongs to pirateat40. He kinda changes the game when it comes to ask walls. His only agenda is to keep the price low. He would be losing money if he takes the profit from doing a switch.

looks like someone is trying to hold the price down until the bank opens. I doubt he will be able to do it

There goes 1.7k of the wall. It's down to 3k from the ~8k I saw 4 hours ago.  Better grab your coins while they're cheap. ;)

+1

we may rise and come back near here but I dont believe we will stay in this range for months. Time to get on or get left in the dust buying in at much higher prices.

12$
 here we fucking go man!

Down to 1.8k...

Well?  Will we see one this weekend?

I guess no... we pre-dipped this time  :)

I see weekend dip. Theory is holding.  :)

Yeah it was huge!! Why we started at 8.50, and now we are at 8.50.  And between those two we even dipped to 9!

http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg2ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv (http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg2ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv)

The "official" weekend dip theory (at least the one I ascribe to) only is used during a selloff trend.  i.e., because currently the high for the previous seven days (as-of Wednesday evening west / Thursday morning east)  exceeded the highs in the seven days prior, then there was no prediction of a dip or no dip.

That being said, there is a clear pattern lately that buying on a Saturday or Sunday, particularly after a little mini selloff like where we are at right now, is something that pays off a day o two later.  As new money (wire transfers, Dwollas, cash deposits during banking hours, etc.) arrives, the impatient buyers buy the coins at whatever the price happens to be it seems.

I've no idea if this pattern will happen yet again, and no idea what the price will be on Monday or Tuesday, but seeing all the ways people are using bitcoin today and seeing the variety of stuff being built for Bitcoin, tells me that a month or three from now there are going to be a whole lot more people finding bitcoins useful to them.  So a weekend dip or not is really not something relevant looking even just weeks down the road.

I do recommend, however, that Da Dip should be watched at least once every weekend!
 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZPQdZLyHYE#t=221s

The weekend dip, although its premise is disputable, is supported by data. Prices have dropped more on weekends than on weekdays. Sunday is the most severe "day of the dip", Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday are the only other days that demonstrate a drop.

https://i.imgur.com/HAx0D.png

Which time zone did you use?
Can you please label the y axis?

Only coincidence that Due Day for pirate's BS&T is 12:00 pm CST (UTC-6 hours)?

The time zone is UTC. The y-axis has units of days, as in [days risen - days dropped]. The orange line represents 0. The grey lines are, in order from top to bottom:

• 12
• 8
• 3
• -2
• -7
• -12

Thanks. It seems to be almost a continual curve. Did you try to make finer grained diagram? Maybe hour of the week?

6-hourly, from Mon-Sun:
https://i.imgur.com/wrsdn.png

Interesting, apart from the weekend overall down, I would say the Wednesday first 12h up is the most significant one (16weeks and 18weeks up).  How much weeks of data do you actually use for those charts?

Didn't you get the memo? Weekend dip moved to friday in anticipation.

Reminds me of the unanticipatable hanging paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox

They are computed from all of Mt. Gox USD history. "Boring" data points, that fit into almost no movement (i.e. between 33rd and 67th percentiles), are excluded from calculation.

Well, whats gonna happen this Saturday and Sunday I wonder?

If enough ppl believe in the dip, they gonna sell now and buy back on Monday so the dip gonna happen.

Here's a prediction from another thread:

while a 10% dip can always happen, the above quotes are typical of a bullrun. still, many people don't believe that it can go much higher and then run behind the curve

and even if that misguided prediction were to occur do you really want to risk ending up like Adam, left behind in the dust?  your timing would have to be perfect.

So when does the weekend dip happen sat? sun?

lately it's been friday, thursday, wednesday, and sometimes even as early as tuesday.

It's been theorized that at one point the weekend dip will be up to 1 week earlier than expected and therefore there will be twice as hard a dip.

No, Wed-Fri are all strongly up. Mon-Tue are down. This is because people fail to anticipate the weekend dip, possibly the most reliable indicator of price-time correlation. In fact, the weekend dip has been delayed because so many people believe that it is a myth.

https://i.imgur.com/ZnzG2.png

Or that someone or some group artificially stabilize the price to make it look like a myth.  Nice valley formed this weekend.

My bet goes on sunday.

So many people are waiting for the weekend, that it is now the mid-week dip. It goes great with potato chips.

I just debunked this myth... I'm sure it's because so many people believe in the "mid-week dip" that the weekend dip has been delayed. The price now goes down on Monday and Tuesday, and shoots up Wednesday to Friday.

How is it misguided when no one can predict the future?

When I sat down on Friday night to finally decide if I was going to dump another $1500 into BTC, at $11.40, or wait for the weekend dip, I considered the following -

Three very large and obviously false walls - $12, $12.20 and $13, all of which disappeared as expected, so big players are trying to get a lower buy-in.
The weekend dip for the last month has been shallower and shallower only to be followed by growth the next week. Everyone else has noticed that by now, and expects the price to continue rising.
Large support on the buy side, outweighing the sell side about three-to-one. Even with weekend sales and bank-deposit limited new buys, the demand would hold.

With all the nervous holdouts that were waiting for the dip that hasn't come buying back in, along with new deposits, along with left-behind buy orders brought to market, I'm expecting panic buys to hit the roof this monday-tuesday. $15 doesn't look outlandish.

The June $30 bubble happened within a day. That day might be coming again sooner than you think - except with volume an order of magnitude higher than it was then, it's much more likely to reach that point and then stay.

Just my two satoshis. ;D Happy trading.

Great post, and this is in line with our forecast and it is also in line with my experience in 2011.
Most of the biggest advances actually happened over the weekend or close to the weekend as bears were caught off guard.

In June 2011, prices tripled in just 8 days and the second strongest advance within that was on a weekend (Jun 4+5).

What I find interesting about false walls is that they can become very real if a long term investor who does not mind paying say 2% or 3% over market simply buys the thing out. If the purpose of the false wall was to induce selling so that a "big player" who is short can cover his short position then the real fun begins.

The Weekend Dip Myth My Ass!

looks like it still holds...

The original weekend dip strategy refers to when there is a downtrend is occurring.     We are not in a downtrend.  

The weekend dip strategy said that: "On Wednesday evening (west)/Thursday morning (east) if the 7-day high for the exchange rate is lower then the 7-day high from the previous week, then more likely than not, a weekend dip will result and gains of three to five percent are likely.  So the recommended practice was to sell at that time, and buy those bitcoins back over the weekend when the selloff starts to reverse."

The weekend dip indicator hasn't flashed green since May.   That doesn't mean there haven't been dips during the weekend, it just means they original strategy didn't suggest to sell mid-week and buy back over the weekend.    Now there appears to be another pattern where buying on Saturday and selling on Tuesday or so, and do that week after week, seems to be a winning strategy.  So there isn't necessarily a dip occurring over the weekend, but that a rally happens early in the week.

There is always a battle between greed and fear and the weekend dips were oftentimes where fear had the upper hand.  Ever since cash deposit methods have been available even on the weekends now, a weekend decline just doesn't snowball into 10%+ selloffs anymore like they used to.

Prices are highest on Fridays, and now the disease is catching on to Saturday. Buy after the weekend dip on Tuesday and sell before it on Friday/Saturday.

Using volume-weighted adjusted price.

Buy Tues Jul 17 ($8.34) Sell Friday Jul 20 ($8.20).  Lose 2% (after fees)
Buy Tues Jul 24 ($8.63) Sell Friday Jul 27 ($8.89)   Gain 2.5% (after fees)
Buy Tues Jul 31 ($9.21) Sell Friday Aug 3 ($10.73)  Gain 16.1% (after fees)
Buy Tues Aug 7 ($10.85) Sell Friday Aug 10 ($11.41) Gain 4.7% (after fees)

All total, about a 25% gain.

versus

Buy Tues Jul 17 ($8.34) And Sit On Them.  If sold right now, the current price ($11.45) gives a Gain 36.8% (after fees).

Buy and hold is such an underrated strategy, isn't it?

edit:
Probably sounding like a broken record about false walls by now, but I'm betting the sell back at $12 will be coming down too. $12.67 looks real enough. Here's what the depth chart should really look like:

http://i48.tinypic.com/16knn0y.jpg

For scorekeeping purposes, this is the first weekend since mid-May that The Weekend Dip Indicator has flashed GREEN.

Not only does it show that we are in a 7-day downtrend versus the previous 7-day period (as-of Wednesday evening in the west, Thursday a.m. in the east) but this is a 3-day weekend in the U.S., so there's an extra day to dip.

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg10zigDailyzczsg2012-08-16zeg2012-08-31ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

So, at this moment the BTC/USD is about $10.70.   Applied properly over the past 18 hours maybe the level was a few cents higher, but $10.70 is a good spot to mark.  Let's see if the pattern repeats where selling now and waiting through Saturday afternoon (west) or Sunday am (east) with cash ready to buy those coins back at better prices ends up being a profitably strategy.

Banks in the U.S. are closed Monday so even if there is a rise on Sunday (west) it might still pay to wait a bit before committing all funds back in.  The sellers will be selling on Monday too and they don't need the banks to be open, but the (bigger) buyers who wire in new funds do!

Because BitInstant accepts cash over the weekend (available in U.S., Brazil and Russia), it is possible that a sharp dip will have a sharp recovery as well, but there's only so much in reserves at BitInstant -- probably not enough alone to worry about.  Let the sellers come to you.

Good luck, fellow Weekend Dippers!

Disclaimer: There are no guarantees.  You may lose money following this strategy.

Score one more for the Weekend Dip strategy!   (again, this is not something that occurs every weekend, but specifically when a downtrend exists and follows the specific criteria defining when the GREEN light should be flashing on or not.)  It has been profitable for like seven out of the eight times it has occurred so far in 2012.

After selling at $10.70 on Thursday when the weekend dip indicator flashed GREEN, there have been plenty of chances this weekend to get back in at under $10.


The exchange rate is over $10 now, and I'm locking in my gains here ($10.10) just to guarantee a roughly 5% gain (after subtracting trading fees).  While getting back in without waiting until Monday (bank holiday in the U.S.) might cause me to miss an even lower re-entry point, I'm looking at the absolutely pathetic trading volume and don't see sellers as being anxious to sell at these levels.  So I'm going to take a smaller, certain gain here rather than risk possibly having to chase a rally when I was instead hoping for another dip.

Those following the weekend dip strategy and who happened to have had perfect timing when buying their coins back at the weekend bottom (so far) of $9.75 saw an 8% gain (after subtracting for trading fees).

Well played.  I keep toying with the idea of getting back into trading, but I worry that I'll be sloppy because I was able to so easily collect so many coins in the fall from $32 to $2.  In a sense, that sloppiness is why I lost 150-170 coins in Bitcoinica.  It didn't feel like I was risking anything, but I don't want to fall into that trap again, which is why I moved everything offline for a while.

buy sell hold

good move

In the days of the run-up to $15.xx I was convinced a crash was coming and wanted to move everything to MtGox to take advantage of it, but (1) all my coins were offline without any digital copies, and (2) I was out of town and had no way to access my paper wallets.  That's the trade-off I consciously made, of course.  And there's no way to know that if I hadn't done that I wouldn't have lost a bunch in trading throughout the year.  But my certainty of the impending crash this go around has me feeling a measure of regret in getting so protective.

ya same here

but i did have a bunch on hand, which i sold and i'm buying back now :P

i thought about redeeming my paper wallets too

On IRC I was asked how I can refer to this weekend dip trade as a gain when really what I did was close a prior position when selling last Thursday and then opening a new position today.

I had explained that if you are still of the mindset that your wealth is measured in dollars (or whatever form of fiat you generally use), then that would be correct -- the weekend dip trade closes a previous trade and opens a new one.  If instead you think of bitcoins as being your base currency, then this weekend's dip trade resulted in a gain on an investment held just over the weekend.

But I'm debating on whether or not to phrase the trade using the right terms.  Instead of saying I was selling coins on Thursday what I should have said was that I was buying dollars.

Then today, I sold those dollars and as a result of that trade I got back about 5% more bitcoins versus the amount I had spent on Thursday.  Thus using the term "5% gain on the weekend dip trade' is the correct way to phrase it.

It gets confusing switching back and forth on what is referred to as the base currency though.

+1. You got it right. BTC is the default, having USD is a position.

I must say that in the first case you gain +25% of your capital, when in the second case you gain +36% on the value of thoose bitcoins.
Wich is not the same.
The best is to think in term of bitcoin capital
Case 1 : +25%
Case 2 : +0%

In the case 1 you would have make around +60% in USD wich is pretty nice :)

EDIT But i'm not so sure if this post was a joke or not ...

EDIT 2 my mistake ...

Weekend dip indicator is GREEN:

Will the weekend dip strategy pay off a second week in a row?  

The high for the previous seven days was yesterday's  ... $11-ish print.   The high in the previous seven day period was above $12.  So we are in a week-to-week downtrend, and the weekend dip strategy says that when this occurs, doing a SELL on Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east) has historically given the opportunity to buy those coins back at a cheaper rate over the weekend (check the chart starting on Saturday, and if the prices start rising to buy back in -- otherwise can wait until early Monday even to buy back.).

The concern for this weekend might be that lots of USDs were withdrawn from BitFloor today.  If those USDs clear tomorrow and then get deposited elsewhere for credit to another exchange, they might represent pending purchases that were held-up due to the BitFloor security breach.  Personally, I doubt that is going to be a significant amount of funds for that purpose, so ... GREEN light, sell!    The current price is $11, but I'm a little late on posting this, the proper amount should have been at a level a little lower, about $10.80, so that's the amount I'll use in determining if the weekend dip strategy succeeded yet again at generating profit.

https://i.imgur.com/IlJvO.png

Are you trying to make it a self fulfilling prophecy?

Well, game theory shows that never works.  Nope, just surprised at how accurate that signal historically has been.   Maybe it is like rolling the same number five times in a row -- doesn't mean roll number six is any more likely or any more unlikely to be the same number.

But it isn't like some obscure concept.  It is a pattern that occurs what appears to be simply because bank wires don't clear on weekend days.

I have an alternate theory: it's a pattern that occurs because too many people think it is a myth. That explains why the weekend dip tends to delay to Sun-Mon.

Doh!  

Well, that was a disappointment (to those holding dollars over the weekend) -- as the expected dip didn't dip!

My reference trade on Thursday followed by the reverse trade just a bit ago ended up seeing a nearly 3.5% loss as a result.

These patterns work until they don't.

Now there's no denying one thing -- a whole lot of people just learned of Bitcoin (or heard of it before but this is now the third time perhaps they hear it) due to the Romney tax blackmailing and as a result that might have resulted in either new buyers and/or sellers simply being less willing to sell seeing the web traffic.  Or it may have had little effect and no dip would have occurred anyway.  Who knows.

Here's the Google trends 30-day for Bitcoin.  This isn't just a spike and quick drop, ...  this has been high since the Bitfloor debit card news, then the rally to $15 and then the pirate mess, and has stayed high since.

https://i.imgur.com/jrmAy.png

 - http://www.google.com/trends/?q=Bitcoin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0

[Edit: The link showing the first burst of media attention in late August:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=102713.0 ]

I think weekend dip effect might be connected to manipulation strategies when some parties want to slope weekly candle to desired figure when candle is about to close.

Bump!  ;)

Maybe the weekend dip has a fair place in other securities, but doesnt apply for bitcoin. It would have to be for some difference, that is not present in the bitcoin market that causes the weekend dip in other markets. E.g. the 24/7 trading of bitcoin opposed to 24/5 trading in traditional forex.

Though this weekend didn't have a Weekend Dip GREEN light, going short into this weekend would have given a couple percent or four gain (after subtracting exchange fees), if the timing were perfect:

https://i.imgur.com/nDj9Q.png

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#ig2-hourzczsg2012-09-21zeg2012-09-23ztgSzm1g10zm2g25


But when there's no green light, this doesn't always play out.  There would have been nearly a 5% loss trying the weekend dip trade last week (heading into the Bitcoin 2012 conference weekend):

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#ig2-hourzczsg2012-09-14zeg2012-09-16ztgSzm1g10zm2g25


So there isn't that great of a pattern except during downtrends -- which is the only time when the GREEN light will go on, and has resulted in a profit well more than 50% of the time when it does go green.  The profits in following the strategy (only when GREEN is on) have more than offset the losses from weekends where it was on but gave an incorrect signal.

Maybe this weekend dip is just coincidence, who knows.

Just an update .. another weekend dip decision, but there is probably NO green light.  

I say probably because it comes down the the exact timing.  Last Thursday the high was $12.66, which is below last Wednesday's $12.68666.

Technically, there could be a green light.  As of now the high for the last 7-day period was lower than the high for the 7-day period prior to that.  But the difference is less than two pennies.

And right now the exchange rate is in an uptrend by a few percent, from just under $12.  So I can't say there is an apparent week-to-week downtrend, which is when the "weekend dip" green light would show on.  So this weekend isn't one that I'll be selling into, hoping to buy back at a lower rate.

Also, tomorrow is the last Friday of the month, which possibly will start becoming important.  MPEx appears to have sold over a hundred thousand option contracts, and they expire tomorrow.  When the month closes at or near its high (e.g., when the month ends in rally mode), those who sold [Edit: bought] PUTs generally lost money.  So they may be motivated to buy more BTCs to be able to open new PUT (short) positions.  The option contract holders that might have made money are those holding CALL options.  That is a long position, and those holding them then are generally going to be bulls (i.e.  unlikely to be dumping their BTC profits earned and trading them for USDs.)

MPEx option volume was much higher than last month's volume and last month was by far a record in terms of option volume as well.   That means this is a monthly event that is new and speculators might not already be considering its impact.

How can selling or writing a put option loose money in a rising market? Do you mean those who bought a put option in a rising market lost money?

Heh, yes -- that's what I meant.  

I might need to go back to reading the beginner's guide    :D:

Using MPOE - A beginner's guide.
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67302.0

And good thing for that, because doing so would have been a bad move.


In addition to the "Weekend Dip" pattern is the "New Money Monday" pattern.  This is where if large amounts of funds do arrive at the largest exchange, they start hitting around Monday evening (west) / Tuesday morning (east).  This is because during Monday banking hours in much or Europe and all North America timezones, Mt. Gox is already closed for the day and thus those transfers aren't made available for trading until Tuesday morning (Japan timezone), And because when there is panic buying, it pays to panic first, those funds result in some nice gains in the exchange rate for those wishing to sell.

https://i.imgur.com/Om9UL.png

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zig12-hourzczsg2012-09-27zeg2012-10-03ztgTzm1g10zm2g25


Now what would be nice to learn would be a good way to predict, during the weekend, the degree of increase, if any, that New Money Monday will bring.

This past weekend was nearly absent of any significant news or media attention, really.  Volume was quite low -- that oftentimes precedes a breakout heading north.  

I'm always prepared for NEW MONEY MONDAY  ;D

It is Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east) ... Weekend Dip decision time!

So we definitely aren't in a downtrend, where at the moment the exchange rate is at the highest level since the pirate rally/selloff in mid-August.  So there is NO green light indicating a Weekend Dip strategy should be attempted.  

And while these little weekend bounces that occur can sometimes juice the value of your account, the following chart shows how there's never been turns without first there being a parabolic rise blowoff top that happens first.  i.e.., maybe there will still be little dips, but they probably aren't worth chasing when in an uptrend.

https://i.imgur.com/L7WVr.png

And if you look at the 60-day chart, we aren't in a parabolic rise but pretty steady along a nice linear one (since the mid-august mini-crash).

https://i.imgur.com/xirSb.png

 - https://ferroh.com/charts


But who knows though.  Without any decent methods to short bitcoin, the exchange rate rises to some level and all of a sudden the market gets spooked, the herd runs for the exits and nobody wants to be the last out.  

It can't be ignored that Bitcoin has had quite a run:

https://i.imgur.com/Pb9TK.png

 - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/oimg?key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdEgxb0lEb1h1M2htM05sY0pXd3FXQ2c&oid=3&zx=k0euet1rgp0i

If the weekend indicator continues being accurate, then now would be a good time to dump some coins!

https://i.imgur.com/qysDN.png

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2012-10-03zeg2012-10-19ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

That shows a clear week-over-week downtrend (measured Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east),  ... and yes, I'm a little late looking at this ... sorry) and thus there is a GREEN LIGHT.

Now all this says is that historically when this condition occurs, more often than not the price drops into the weekend, where the coins can be bought back at a lower level.

Timed properly, this trade should have begun about 18 hours ago (when the exchange rate was around $11.75-ish).   I'm late in looking at this, and actually benefit by selling at a higher level, ... just under $12. 

For scoring the Weekend Dip indicator's success though, $11.75 will be the amount used.  Looking for a dip by a couple percent below that for this weekend dip indicator to ring true.

We'll see!

Well, that was an exercise in futility.   There wasn't much of a dip and there's nothing indicating one is forthcoming before New Money Monday arrives.

So buying back at the current market rate of $11.62 means about a 1% gain, which got eaten up by trading fees.  Following the weekend dip strategy this past weekend resulted in a wash, financially.

Perhaps there will be some who made out a little better thanks to having perfect timining, trading out of some coins on Thursday closer to $12 and at least took a percent-and-a-half gain, but for scorekeeping, there was no benefit (nor harm) from doing the weekend dip trade this weekend.  

Now the weekend isn't over, and there still could be a little further dip, however trading volume is at a pathetically low level, just 10K BTC traded in the past 24 hours at Mt. Gox for example.  When that happens, all that needs to happen is for the tiniest bit of buying to propel the exchange rate up three percent, or five percent in a short amount of time.

That doesn't often happen in the middle of a weekend, but sometimes a rally will appear out of nowhere once Monday banking begins at Mt. Gox (which is in Japan, thus Sunday evening in U.S. timezones).

And the only protection against that when playing the weekend dip is to get back in before others speculating on the dip do the same.  And that time is now.

In my experience the end of the weekend dip is usually a bit later than what you propose.
About 6 to 8 hours from now.

This is something.

https://i.imgur.com/m8etK.png

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2012-10-11zeg2012-10-26ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

That shows a clear week-over-week downtrend (measured Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east)).  Looking at it at the correct time, on Wednesday evening / Thursday morning, the GREEN LIGHT was definitely on (i.e., in a downtrend, current 7-day period versus previous week's 7-day period).

So anyone following the weekend dip strategy verbatim would have done the trade hours ago (again, Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east)) when the exchange rate was $11.50-ish.

Anyone who did that currently can buy those back at $11.10, and see a several percent gain even after trading fees.

So technically, this Weekend Dip indicator yielded a +1 already, regardless what it does for the rest of the weekend.

Now for those who, like me, were only observers rather than sellers -- the question now is .. "is it too late"?

The weekend dip strategy isn't useful for indicating patterns within a weekend.  It simply says when there is a green light on Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east) then historically sometime over the next two or three days (or so) the exchange rate will drop.  It doesn't suggest how much it will drop, or when.   But following the strategy when the green light if flashing has historically been profitable more often than not.

This 5% drop in the exchange rate occurred without there being real heavy selling.   Because this dip happened pretty early, there will be new funds arriving in Japan on Friday morning (Thursday evening / west), so the "New Monday Monday" may come early ... on Friday, so fellow weekend dip followers, keep that in mind.  But if there's no spike back up, then there could be more dipping (resulting in a bigger gain), yet to come.

Didn't Mt.Gox have an issue with their European banks? Right now, isn't it more difficult to deposit/withdrawl from the EU? Its the only news that I've heard that would cause such a sell off.. This is a great time to buy.. I wonder where it will bottom out?...

SEPA is fine, but for those in the UK it's been a rough number of weeks.  Mt. Gox has no support currently from their UK bank Barclay's, and Intersango has lost the ability to use its UK bank, Metro.  

Fortunately, Blockchain.info added Barclay's Pingit and Bitcoin-Central just this week launched its BTC/GBP marketplace, so those in the UK are regaining service through exchanges (in addition to using local traders who have gained activity and grew their client base).

Whether that type of activity alone is enough to sway the exchange rate much though is doubtful.  I'm not even going to try and speculate as to why this selloff is underway.

Well, looks like 9.74 was that point, but there were plenty of chances under $10.

I have a feeling though there are a few new approaches for handling the "Weekend Dip".

1.) Coinbase, instant sign-up, instant purchases.    When linking a bank account to a Coinbase account (available just for those in the U.S., for now), bitcoins can be purchased with a bank transfer 24/7.

The coins aren't added to the account's wallet until the bank transfer completes (two or so business days) but the exchange rate is locked in at the time of purchase.   This is the first time this capability has ever existed for buying bitcoins.


2.) MPOE options.   The exchange just saw what appears to be its biggest single-day volume of its options contracts.   There were over 20,000 PUT option contracts sold nearly all at once over the weekend.  (Someone is counting on a rebound in price!)

The reason that a "weekend dip" occurs is generally attributed to the imbalance where selling can occur 24/7 and there are no new, incoming funds arriving through banks (which are closed on the weekend) and any wires to Mt. Gox aren't seen until arrival on their Tuesday morning.   But options contracts aren't bought as the result of a conversion from cash thus these transactions can occur on the weekend as much as at any other time.  So options purchases on the weekend can help counter the price swing that occurs during a "weekend dip"

Though this exchange has been offering options for over a year now, their trading volume has just recently become significant.

3.) ICBIT.se  - similar to MPOE, ICBIT futures contracts on the BTC?USD are purchased with bitcoins, so that too isn't something that needs to
"wait for Tuesday" to trade either.   While ICBIT's volume isn't quite yet enough to impact the exchange rate much, it does offer 10:1 leverage -- giving anyone caught with not enough USDs on a weekend to lock in so that if the exchange rate rises the upside can be captured.

For these three reasons, the Weekend Dip's days may be numbered.

I inquire, why hasn't ICBIT.se achieved the success of Bitcoinica, given its superior feature set? At its apex, Bitcoinica's power was so far-reaching it became the scapegoat for virtually any price fluctuation.

These forums, especially, have become quiet. No threads asserting "LONG SQUEEZE", "STARFISH ON SELL", and the like seem to be popping up anymore.

can you answer where icbit is located?  the track record for exchanges and other businesses run anonymously is horrible, so not many people are willing to risk many bitcoins.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85687

Some user in that thread is shouting either PLUNGE or SQUEEZE all the time, depending on the drugs he has taken. Sometimes I even agree with him.

Lol  :D

right: the burnt don't play with fire and trust takes time

yet the question hasn't been sufficiently answered: where are the shorts?

the shorts are on Gox, in the form of sold bitcoins

I've still got my buy orders set for $2 a piece :)

i was wondering why anyone would have bids so low.

that wouldn't be called a "short squeeze" then, though. no forced liquidations.

if they want to stay in the game they will buy back.

i got squeezed  a few months ago, on the way up to 15 i had sold at 9.xx, price kept moving up, so i bought back in.

The chart shows the weekend dip green light is (barely) on:

https://i.imgur.com/O2GzA.png
 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zig30-minzczsg2012-10-31zeg2012-11-16ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzcv

But I'm going to sit this one out.  We're now less than two weeks from the "halving" event, which has never occurred before and drops the daily amount of new coins introduced into circulation by 50% in an instant.  So I'm wary of there being a spark that ignites a rally -- we haven't had that over a weekend for a few months, but when a weekend spike happens, it is sometimes brutal.

Additionally, from another thread:

Fortunately, I did sit that out.  That would have resulted in a loss as right after that post that the exchange rate shot up about 7%.

So that is a definite goose egg as far as the tally for successful trading when there is a Green Light.   I was wondering if an improvement to the Weekend Dip strategy would be to require some threshold of downturn before the "green light" would pop.  The last couple ones that were in a downtrend but by just a narrow degree (e.g,. under just a percent or two drop week-to-week) didn't pan out that well for those trying to profit from a Weekend Dip.   But ones where the degree is wider (i.e., a downtrend is more obvious) then trading the Weekend Dip strategy has been more profitable.

This weekend the Green Light is ON, however this too is one that I won't be jumping on.

The degree of downtrend is pretty small ($13.90 on Dec 14th, then $13.72 on Dec 20th., so just a 1.2% drop from one week's high to the next).   Not a visibly significant downtrend week-to-week.  The following chart makes is look like a downtrend but remember the granularity is the weekly high, and that drop, week-to-week, was just a bit over 1%.

https://i.imgur.com/ZUzWu.png

- http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg30zigDailyzczsg2012-12-12zeg2012-12-27ztgOzm1g10zm2g25

Now this is a special weekend though.   The banks in Japan (where Mt. Gox receives its international wire transfers) are closed Monday and Tuesday.  So there is very little new money that will be arriving at Mt. Gox for what is essentially a four-day holiday weekend.   Could this give a reason for sellers to take out the bids (and thus with no inflows of new funds, leave buyers with no cash left to pick off the sell orders?)   It could.  Who knows.

Volume has been pretty low while at the same time the exchange rate has been slowly climbing.  We've seen this before and it oftentimes is followed by some big buys that cause a spike up in the exchange rate.

I'm just not confident that this Green Light really means go, so I'm going to stay on the sidelines as far as trying to profit from a weekend dip trade.

Overall, I like your perspectives in this thread a lot. I am still not 100% sure if the weekend dip is really something consistent that is useful to trade it.
Particularly the bank opening hours do not play a big role any more (I think). There is so much cash in the exchange. Look at the MtGox order book: The bids  down to 10 $ are almost 1,000,000 USD strong. So, it is just a matter of "buying appetite". People COULD, if they wanted, buy a lot of bitcoins with the cash they have on the exchange. But they don't do it. Perhaps weekend volume is low because people relax and do other things more than trading bitcoins?

lets see what the price will be after the weekend  ;D

The "weekend dip" isn't universal for every weekend.  At least not the winning pattern that had been recurring over and over.  The weekend dip "green light" would occur when there appears a downturn occurring into the weekend (i.e., at Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east) grab the 7-day high.  If that is below the previous week's 7-day high, then a downtrend was occurring and selling was more often than not a profitable move as during the weekend an opportunity to buy back would usually be possible.

That trend had a nearly perfect run.  Then it kind of fizzled,

This weekend did not get a weekend dip "green light" as on Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east) we were seeing a rising exchange rate, when comparing the two week's of 7-day highs.  That doesn't mean it won't dip, it just means the pattern that seemed to repeat isn't being predicted.

LOL at this strategy.  It says to sell on wednesday and buy back on Saturday right?  -14%

There were no indicators for a dip!
The strategy isn't half bad when you follow the rules.

Not if you read the post one above yours.

Sometimes I feel like most people treat this forum as write-only.

Inoticed the weekend dip recently.  So I've been calculating, and thinking and starring at graphs etc.

the last 3 weekends could have netted anywhere from 10% to 28% (if you bought/sold at EXACTLY the right times)

So this weekend I tried it out.  Lucky I'm only toying with 10BTC while I get a feel for this, cuz this weekend has been a mindfuck!

Steady up for several days then the first increase I jump the first sign of a dip (at $22.50) then the fkn thing went back up too fast.  Now it looks like it's trying to compensate, but it's just fucking with me by bouncing between $23.00 & $23.80.

Anyhoo, I'm not really losing money if I fuck up while this upward trend continues.  I just don't have the same ammount of bitcoins I started with!

 8)

You didn't read the theory or even any of the previous posts, did you?

But the title says it all... weekend dip myth... what more can there possibly be to it?  ;D

there are 2 kinds of things we don't know: things we know we don't know and things we don't know we don't know.

Heh... Weekend dip is starting to acquire a whole new meaning, no?

I think this one is caused by a problem at coinbase. Hopefully, they get it sorted.

can you explain or link a thread?

- http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/18g02v

That appears to have occurred at about the same time as a 15% selloff was underway, ... in which if there had been a green light and selling occurred Wednesday evening (West) / Thursday morning (East) then timing of the weekend dip strategy would have been perfect!
 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2013-2-14zeg2013-02-16ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

At least I'm assuming that's what cbeast was referring to.

Yet one more weekend where the Green Light is NOT green.  

However, if there is a "top", and a decline trend returns this is what the start of that very well could look like:

https://i.imgur.com/uLNhd1M.png

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg10zig2-hourzczsg2013-03-05zeg2013-03-08ztgTzm1g10zm2g25

So, while the green light doesn't shine right now, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't another 10% dip awaiting before the New Money Monday rise.

Why the light is red this weekend?

Here is an example of a similar setup: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#igHourlyzczsg2012-08-18zeg2012-08-20ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zi1gRSI
and the drop from 32 in 2011 also started on a thursday: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zigHourlyzczsg2011-06-01zeg2011-06-20ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

Update some recent ones:

14th of February also was Thursday: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zigHourlyzczsg2013-02-08zeg2013-02-20ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv - this one failed, because it bounced back even higher very quickly, but still there was another dip on Monday.  And this one was between Thursday and Friday: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zigHourlyzczsg2013-01-24zeg2013-01-31ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv and it was also just one dip with no second one on the weekend.

So the evidence goes both ways.  Still the price seems crazy high.

The Weekend Dip strategy was to take advantage of a recurring pattern in which when there was a downtrend (defined very specifically) where way more often than not you could consistently earn a profit from doing trades by selling on a specific day and buying back after certain moves occurred.  There was this pattern where something like out of eight or nine weekends where the Green Light was lit, all but one resulted in gains.  Of course the timing on buying back made the difference between nice gains versus very nice gains.

The very specific definition is to wait until Wednesday night (West) / Thursday morning (East) and check the high for the previous seven days.  Then compare that to the high for the seven day period prior to that.   If the most recent 7-day high was lower than the previous period's 7-day high, then a week-to-week downtrend was occurring.  When that happens the Green Light goes on.  Following the "Weekend Dip strategy" meant selling coins at that time (Wednesday evening in the West, Thursday in the East) and waiting for a selloff.  Then hold on until the drop starts to inch its way back up, maybe recovering to about a third or a half of the drop.  If there is no recovery happening, then let it ride further into Monday if the selloff continues.   Oftentimes the best time to buy back was late Saturday evening (West)/Sunday afternoon (East), or later.

Following that strategy when the Green Light was on would pretty consistently return like 5% or more (sometimes a LOT more, sometimes approaching 30% with perfect timing).

What kind of killed off the trend is that it became a trend.  And more people traded it ... to where even a 5% drop was getting snapped up by buyers with funds ready and waiting.   The trend worked consistently way back when nearly all funding to Mt. Gox occurred with wire transfers.  So if you are in the Europe or the U.S., any wire sent on Friday arrived too late for Mt. Gox in Japan to process it until Monday.  And any wire sent on Monday wouldn't get processed until Tuesday.  And the combination between U.S. bank holidays and bank holidays in Japan often left many three-day weekends as far as no effective transfer between the U.S. and Mt. Gox for several days.     But it seemed miners, many of whom were over-invested in GPUs and with electric bills would sell 24x7, regardless of the price.   When Bitcoin currency was inflating at an annual rate of 50% or 33%, and 50 BTC per block, that meant a ton of coins were selling on Friday, Saturday and Sunday -- and no bank wires were being credited during that time.    Trader's were still leery of keeping lots of funds at the exchanges so there just wasn't many USDs sitting there ready to be put to use, at least not for just a simple 10% or 15% weekend dip.   (because if you used up your powder on a 10% gain you might miss the more attractive 35% rollercoaster ride.)  

Those days look to be behind us, but just like this past week's $49-ish to $34-ish dip, big swings still can occur.  More often than not they occur over the weekends.   But big rises can occur on the weekend as well.  So waiting for the Green Light basically was a way to lessen the chance of a big rise occurring as rallies with huge spikes up didn't usually emerge during the middle of a week-to-week downtrend.

GREEN LIGHT?    

Seriously ...  we got our first GREEN LIGHT for the weekend dip strategy in many months.

https://i.imgur.com/NRcG1MC.png

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1zczsg2013-02-27zeg2013-03-14ztgOzm1g10zm2g25

The high in the past seven day period was $48.469.   The high in the seven day period prior to that was $49.099.

That's not much of a drop but technically it makes it a week-to-week drop, ... which means we're in a short-term down trend.

The weekend dip strategy says to sell at this level, with the anticipation of a drop.  Then to buy bitcoins back over the weekend at a lower price.

While we've had wild swings over the weekend before, they've been narrowing in degree.

But if the drop is down 5%-ish (quite common on GREEN LIGHT weekends), that would be a price around $45.

This weekend dip theory may be something that cannot be traded reliably anymore.  Who knows.  We'll see.

Unfortunately whatever happens on this weekend will make us none the wiser regarding reliability of this strategy. Just one more datapoint in a long series that is and will keep allowing statistically rather insignificant conclusions only.

There was a lot of buying volume to push the exchange rate up to this level.  That buying volume is petering out.   Right now the 24H volume is an amount showing a relatively low 20K BTC  (relative to volume over the past two months).  

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg30zig6-hourztgTzm1g10zm2g25zvzcv

Combine that with an exchange rate drifting lower means buyers are not anxious to buy more at this slightly lower price.

But right now there are 48 hours before the next wire transfers will be credited at Mt. Gox.    This isn't anything new, but if there is a further dip, it can be pressed a bit because there's no new wires that will be credited for a couple days.  That's a property that only happens on the weekends, and this weekend could very well be one where a dip happens again.

right now, some "wall movers" seem to try to push the rates slowly down. Will be interesting to watch if a Weekend Dip also works when it is staged

Selling at the top to buy lower, parabolic rise will case a serious crash lets just hope we just have a nice correction  ;D

So it seems this time weekend dippers turned out to be weekend hikers and will have to buy for more then they have sold for.

Well, the weekend isn't over but it looks to be about a break even to buy back right now, then less fees for a sub 1% loss.    At the time of the post (late Wednesday (West), mid-day Thursday (East)) the exchange rate was something like $47.80.  The last trade at this very moment was $47.52.

There was a dip, down to $46.05 and many opportunities to buy back at a small profit when it was under $47 and was looking quite apparent that this weekend was not going to see a big selloff.  The thing the weekend dip strategy couldn't have seen in advance was the IMF going batshit crazy like they did.  Now I gotta figure out how to reverse some other positions where I'm on the wrong side before Europeans rush the exits and discover bitcoin as a new home for their money.

Imf going crazy?

Didn't keep up-to-date. What's that about?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153773

I didn't saw that...  But at the other thread say, I'll just say wow!  Good time for Bitcoins!

I still believe that in a downtrend the weekend dip strategy can still be profitable, but we haven't seen any decent downtrends in many months.  This last one resulted essentially in a wash unless perfect timing allowed a tiny profit.

Needless to say, this weekend we are not in a downtrend (specifically we are up more than 40% week-to-week), so there's no green light.

Having burst through the previous weekly high, Ditto.

What is interesting is that last weekend even without a green light, there was a dip -- from $74.90 to $52.35, a 30% dip from peak to bottom, but sure enough the exchange rate came right back up.

This weekend there is a unique situation.  It is a FOUR DAY weekend (i.e., banks closed) in the EU due to the Easter holiday:
 - http://www.ecb.int/home/html/holidays.en.html

Whether that is enough to trigger a dip I have no idea.   I only describe when there is a green light indicating when the Weekend Dip Strategy has historically resulting in profitable trades. This weekend there is no green light.

Indeed. Quite incredible is it not? Even I thought... damn... I should start daytrading and keep some bids around 30 day moving average.

Ok, GREEN LIGHT!  We have the most pronounced Weekend Dip opportunity since the weekend following the Pirate mess in August 2012.

https://i.imgur.com/v1Dby6E.png
 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2013-04-3zeg2013-04-18ztgCzm1g10zm2g25

The current 7 day high is dramatically below the previous 7-day high a week ago today.   We are, in the short term, in a downtrend.

The Weekend Dip Strategy, when there is a green light, has had a track record of producing profits more often than not. 

The strategy is to sell at this point in time, Wednesday evening (western timezones) / Thursday morning (eastern timezones) with the intention of buying back at a lower level at some point over the weekend. 

This pattern originated long ago when there was essentially no funds moving to the exchanges during the weekend, however selling would continue unabated. During a downtrend, this selling would, pretty consistently, be stronger than the buying.   As a result frequently there would be gains of a few percent, or really large gains like 30%.   Now with Bitcoin volatility that level of rise or drop is something that frequently occurs, but with a green light the pattern seems to very rarely incur a loss, and then other weekends had gains ranging from moderate (couple percent) to really decent levels. 

The right time to buy back is after a selloff seems to be reversing, pulling back up about half from the bottom of the selloff from when the starting mark occurred.  Right now at this moment the "starting mark" is $93 on Mt. Gox. 

Remember, this is just a post about a pattern that has repeated in the past, and is not a suggestion that the pattern will continue this particular weekend.  There have been a few times where there never was a dip and instead the exchange rate rallied throughout the weekend.

Bah.  I think this myth is BUSTED.  It used to work.  There still might be conditions where it works.   It is not working now.

Buying back at over a 10% higher price sucks!

This week was a perfect example of how we had a pretty clear Weekend Dip green light, and following the Weekend Dip strategy would have yielded a nice gain.   
https://i.imgur.com/0P9UfG9.png
 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg10zczsg2013-05-21zeg2013-06-08ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

Oh well, it's not reliable for trading anymore but I'll keep an eye out to see if the pattern returns.