... to what? i post the conclusions of my analysis here. if you have any questions or special requests i'll be more than happy to elaborate.

both of these are very good points, and have been brought up elsewhere as well.

as for an update for this thread -- anyone seen the btc price lately? this is exactly what i was expecting. i want to wait for the candle to close before i post any more analysis though. have fun trading the swings and i hope someone out their heeded my call and made some money off of the latest knife!

as always, if you used my analysis to your benefit in any way, please contribute and i will continue to post publicly, free of charge. i do put a lot of effort into my work and subscription-only analysis leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

arepo
18N9md2G1oA89kdBuiyJFrtJShuL5iDWDz

holy hindsight bias, batman!

-facepalm-

@OP


i just want to thank you for the spectacular timing of this post. i can now add my most recent call to the above list. even if technical analysis is bullshit -- which it is not -- you really put your foot in your mouth with this one.

im impressed. creating proprietary indicators that work is indeed an accomplishment.

i wasn't trying to get bites, but you made a blanket statement that was just incorrect. lagging indicators are not useless just because they represent an echo.

the whole point of indicators is simply to visualize data that isn't accessible through conventional means. a price figure and historical graph and volume bars by period hide so much information.

if you don't like the MACD, that's fine. i don't like a lot of indicators that are "tried and true".

and anyway, i, too am enjoying watching BTC trade. mainly because i feel vindicated after all the flaming and derision about my bearish predictions...

this is a terrible misconception that just about everyone has. charts are not meant to predict the influence of news, but rather make observations about market forces like the behavior of an asset that is overbought.

as price goes up, the incentive to take profit goes up. if an asset were incredibly overbought and an influx of new money began flowing into it, market forces may prevent the 'obvious' rally from happening because selling pressure would increase in proportion.

kind of like what is happening right now, in spite of the reddit announcement.

charts will never predict single movements by large actors, or anything like that, and no one is claiming that they have the power to.

trendlines are subjective and are not superior to charting but should be taken on equal footing for a more complete picture.

by your definition, all indicators are lagging indicators. the MACD goes 'up and down' as an echo to price but there's more to it. sometimes the price makes new highs but the MACD fails to. other times, the opposite happens. the crossovers of the slower and faster moving averages also represent information about the rate of change in price compared to its historical rate of change. these are all very important observations. indicators do much, much more than mimic price movement. have you checked out chart school? i don't mean to be condescending, but you don't seem to know much about the MACD.

technical analysis works in ways other than simple herd behavior. this point has been addressed in this thread already. in fact, the most objective comment is by far this one:


i also added my own 2 cents about the relationship between technical analysis and calculus, which i believe is why it is effective.

i'm not saying anything about how long you've 'been around'. there is inherent risk in purchasing or even holding an asset that has made 500% gains in under a year. you seem adamant in ignoring this fact. the incentive to take profit grows with the price.

also, i'm annoyed that you assume i'm just some troll who's sold off and is trying to herd some lemmings. if that were the case i'd have a subscription service so that i could literally control a bloc of speculators. i post my analysis publicly for everyone's benefit. i called the knife and i hope at least one other person also profited off of it.

and i'm seeing what's happening right now. i'm not trying to be standoffish here, i'm just responding to the dismissive attitude i've been faced with since i started seeing divergences. like i said, if nobody wants a bearish perspective ever, fine. i'll stop wasting my time. i post publicly to try to help newer investors hear something other than moon-trajectories, so maybe they'd be able to respond properly to the correction that i've been forecasting that is happening as we speak.

FTFY. you continue to respond to a point that i'm not making, and ignore the one that i am. i don't really know what more to say to this.

try again? reread the post i linked last. seriously. i don't even mention the words deflationary spiral. it's all about bad behavior. please, please, please put the effort in if you're going to post again. otherwise just don't bother.


i know the OP is about this. but the discussion has moved way past this dead horse. no one is arguing that the economy will grind to a halt... i didn't even say that in the OP. i referenced the mechanism of the deflationary spiral as a way to explain recent price rises. i feel it's also an example of predatory speculation, which will lead to newcomers having a bad time.

it's not charting, the charts reflect knowledge that traders should have. you joined these forums when prices were already on their way towards $10. i first started following bitcoin at around $2.50 / btc. i'm sure there are some people who are still holding onto these cheap coins. at some price-point or another, they're going to figure the risk of someone else selling first is too great for the profit opportunity and sell themselves. this is what drives corrections. we haven't had a green weekly candle in almost two months. take the bulls out of your ears.


the MACD tracks moving averages. the fact that these averages have peaked recently, and that the shorter-term moving average is now BELOW the longer term moving average are both really important pieces of information about the rate of change in price compared to its historical rate of change. right now, we're underperforming the growth that we've seen the the past month. how isn't this important?

seriously, just because you're a bull and i'm showing you bear tracks on the charts doesn't mean that charts are worthless... sometimes charts give false signals, you know. you should probably argue for that instead.

this is a healthy and realistic target.

it's a zero-sum game regardless.

say bitcoin were a closed system. no more fiat influx, constant market cap. any gains any trader makes will be another traders' loss. someone selling coins they bought for $5 last summer for $27 picks $22 out of every pocket which bought coins at higher prices.

however -- and this is niko's point as well -- since the market cap is small compared to the potential market cap, there is an influx of fiat which might allow for huge amounts of deflation on the long term which means anyone holding btc now who is still holding btc then will get a really, really good return on that investment.

but even in this case, everyone will not become rich. if you mean everyone who has btc now, then sure, but that's a pitifully small number compared to the amount of people and fiat required to really blow the price that high, and the last ones to 'convert to bitcoin' will be the ones whose money we're taking.

this is true only under certain circumstances. be careful.

i dont want to derail the thread. but let me clarify:

you suggested a formulation that might take a parameter like "number of large players". i am more in favor of a (mental) model of the price that looks like a taylor expansion and which acts like a polynomial with local minima and maxima that can be anticipated by tracking the derivative, or rate of change (price 'momentum' in trader terms). it wouldn't actually be a good method to try to model price as far as fitting of a curve.

in other words, it was merely an example to show that the idea of tracking the derivative of a much simpler polynomial can be applied to tracking the momentum of the 'price function'. a thought experiment, if you will.

i wouldn't. i was contrasting a taylor expansion-style price estimator with a function that takes multiple parameters.

you can't rule out a downwards breakout just because it hasn't happened yet... the market depth isn't that asymmetrical. the market is still unsure. if it doesn't happen for a long enough time, the market depth will begin to reflect the support you mentioned above. it's still too soon to call.

i'm glad we agree on something

im not sure if your formulation would work though. i'm talking about a function that traces the actual path of the price, which could be estimated by a function of only one variable with a really, really large taylor expansion (c1 x^n + c2 x^(n-1) + c3 x^(n-3) ... + cn x + C) rather than one which solves for price given multiple parameters f(n, V, N) where n= number of large players, V=daily volume, n=good news or something like that.

the beauty of taylor approximations is that they're possible. any differentiable function of one variable can be estimated by a polynomial to any arbitrary precision.

but that's besides the point. the original example was a mixed cubic. its derivative was a mixed quadratic. good on you that you know that it has a basic cup-shaped graph but you wouldn't be able to, for instance, immediately tell me what its intercepts and minimum value were without a little bit of math. if you have the graph in front of you, these things are immediately obvious.

but this explanation is mostly for other readers anyway, as it seems we are in agreement as to why representing the data graphically is advantageous.

there is an ask wall at $27.50. have you any usd left? this is your last chance for sub-$50 coins!!!111!!

but of course you don't have usd left. no one does.

anyway, this is normal market depth for a deeply consolidating market after a large move. it's what keeps the price within such a tight range and builds pressure for a breakout.

whoa, are you going to let me try to prove it or are you going to stick stubbornly to your assumptions? if nothing i say will change your mind, i'm not going to waste my time. but since my reputation is on the line...

this was a good one,

and this bearish divergence predicted the flattening of prices (=trading within a range, as opposed to continuing the trend).

and i may be wrong in my new call. but that doesn't disprove TA either. it obviously can't predict the future because markets are anti-inductive and some irrational or large players or big news events can add additional pressures to the underlying market forces. but the fact is, we're overdue for a correction. the indicators all agree.

and it's certainly better than 50/50 though, i can tell you that. you do need to understand stochastic calculus for that point, though.

also, are you going to respond to any of my points? do you understand the basic principle that momentum changes before price, at least?