I'd phrase it slightly different than Raystonn: none (or almost none) of the traditional techniques work without segmenting the data in such a way.

That's perhaps the main difference between TA and quantitative forecasting. The former, as a first step, always breaks down the continuous-looking* data into "human digestible" chunks.


* just "continuous looking" because there is a discrete, atomic element after all, a single trade.

Nah, kinda doubt that.

I think for once, traders and holders are united in their hatred of the idiocy that is posting this chart over and over again.

Arbitrary: yes. Uninformative: no.

Maybe open/close doesn't have quite the same importance as in a market that actually closes, but it still seems to carry some information. Also, note that the cutoff time is arbitrary, but consistent.

As an example of relevant information: closing above a line of resistance appears to be a meaningful signal, even in this 24/7 market. Note that, on average, the extrema of a period (high, low) are more thinly traded, and the actual mass of trading happens near H+L/2, to which (except for uncommon candles) open and close are much nearer. In my experience, a candle with a wick/low below some price, that closes above this price, contains the additional information that, within the time period considered, the market moved upwards such that the mass of trading towards the end of the period took place above the resistance.

And my point is that those "100s of million USD" are not guaranteed to buy in, although I assume that, long term, there's at least a fair chance they will.

I see your point. As in: only X coins were at stake, but a multiple of X was actually at stake because of frozen bids.

This chart... one day it'll break me.

That, and the 'Guys! Why are we going {up, down} by $2? Some news I missed? Guys?!' threads.

Complete agreement. It still, kind of, fits my point: they are 'opportunistic', in the sense that they will jump in once price is conclusively on the rise again, probably when approaching the previous ATH. But they won't jump in _now_, driving up the price in the first place.

So, if the point is that there's money sitting on the sidelines, waiting to buy in: I agree. Just not expecting it to happen before we're more securely in a bull market again.

It means what it means: one more (momentum based) sign that we are leaving the correction-slash-bear market behind.

Immediate 'liftoff' is not guaranteed. You only need to go back to September last year to find 2 green MACD weeks, followed by another drop.

But as I pointed out in another post yesterday, what is special about the current situation is the confluence of momentum signals across time scales: weekly, 3 daily, daily MACD are all positive right now, which rather strongly points to an upwards breakout from the recent slump.

I agree that Tera's claim that "the auction doesn't matter" was kind of naive. His point is, and it's a valid one, that the amount of coins auctioned is simply too small to be significant, when compared to what is mined, but what he ignores is that there is a very obvious psychological effect of the auction. In simple terms: the fact that he felt the need to post "stop talking about X, it doesn't matter" conclusively shows that X matters a lot, after all.

I don't buy the "losing bidders will now buy at market", though. If anything, the losing bids we know about seemed highly opportunistic to me. If price drops to $400, sure, they'll jump in, but at least from their bidding behavior I personally conclude that they're not in a hurry to buy more at market price at the exchanges.

That's not what 'closed' means, at least not in the common terminology.

EDIT: and you see two green candles because, as Raystonn pointed out, we closed last week's candle in green, and the current week's candle (not closed yet) is green as well.

@BitchicksHusband

Okay, I'll jump to let_me_backtest_that's defense one more time... I'm starting to feel I'm whiteknighting here :D

Anyway. Your points are all absolutely valid questions.

However, let_me_backtest_that said clearly, that he doesn't provide a fully developed strategy. Call it "a hypothetical strategy based on a single signal", if you want.

This is not just a semantic difference. Understanding the difference between a single indicators's signal and a strategy is the difference between making profitable trades and incurring losses in the long run. I learned that lesson the last year.

The backtest is just the evaluation of a single indicator signal, and it potentially invites the interested trader to continue investigating it. Since the signal all by itself slightly outperforms b&h (in this very theoretical, non-practical setting), it is a somewhat interesting invitation.

6h, 12h, 1d, 3d and 1w MACD, all positive as of now. The 3d is declining and somewhat close to zero perhaps, and technically there's no closed green 1w candle yet, but you get the idea: confluence of momentum across all relevant time scales is overwhelmingly pointing towards another decisive move up.

Exceptions are always possible of course, but I personally wouldn't dare shorting right now.

ITT people complaining about the futility of price speculation on the... speculation subforum.

You saw my 'EDIT', right? I consider the practical outcome of the auction better than I'd ever hoped for.


That said, I'm simply playing the near term/mid term/long term price prediction game here, so I'll ask: what would you consider the most likely reasons NOT to disclose the price you paid.

(in no particular order, I can come up with)

1- privacy reasons (unlikely, imo. he's an investor.)

2. competitive advantage (possible. doesn't want to give his strategy away in case of future auctions)

3. price was way above market and he doesn't want to look like he overbid (unlikely, it's not like he has shareholders to please on this decision)

4. price was around market on the 27th, which makes it somewhat below market of today. (quite likely, imo)

5. doesn't want to drive price up by announcing his above market buy price, because he's still accumulating. (also possible)

I personally consider 4. and 5. to be the most likely reasons. Comments?

Alright, the Tim Draper/Vaurum news looks legit enough:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/sns-rt-us-usa-bitcoin-20140701,0,4038036.story


Still, he didn't mention the price, despite informing Reuters that he won the auction.

My conclusion: Either he's trying to build suspense, waiting some more before releasing the price he paid. If no such thing happens, I'll suspect that the price per coin was perhaps somewhat above market that day (~600), but below current market, and he'd rather not disclose the exact number to not cause a crash.

Not necessarily bearish, btw. A ~600 floor would be pretty great long term. OTOH, if it turns out we're ~$50 above auction price right now, we might see a small-ish correction near term.

EDIT: Also, to be clear, the actual purpose for which the coins were bought presumably, the Vaurum emerging markets angle, is _extremely_ good news. Here, I'll quote myself on that:

Great thread, RyNinDaCleM.

I continue to be rather skeptical of EW theory, but admit that this could be largely due to my own lack of working knowledge of it.

Okay, for some actual input: I half expect another re-test of the daily SMA200 in the coming weeks. Currently at $611, but it'll continue to be declining for another month or so because of the inherent lag, which means the further that re-test lies in the future, the more drastic it might be (possibly going to high 500s again).

On the other hand, because of a (so far) rather reliable pattern of local peaks, I think it's likely we will see an intermediate high in late July, above the previous $683 top. I'm wondering now if there's enough time (3 to 4 weeks left) to go through both: a drop to (sub?) $600, and breaking $700.

No, very much not. The prediction is more or less over for now, but a few days ago, my RI predicted we'd go up. As of today, MACD agrees.

Could you let me know where you got that idea from, so I can work on improving my way of presenting the results?

Thanks as well.

It's probably too early to really trust the signal with any significant amount of money, at least before testing it some more. As I wrote a few posts above, I tuned it to be a lot more "sensitive" to an impending reversal, so the question is now whether it'll give too many false positives.

Apart from that, I don't think it'll ever become as accurate and profitable as a good trader who goes bottom fishing. My goal is not to beat discretionary trading, but to get an automated (or almost automated) signal that is *slightly* better than, say, daily MACD. If I can get there, I'd be pretty happy. I still wouldn't trade based on the RI alone, but I would be able to include it in my inventory of indicators that I use to make decisions.

Not my choice. The only "manual" choice is the starting point, which is June 1st @$683.

So I guess when and if we go above that value, and stay there for a bit.


EDIT: though I admit, it might make more sense to set a new starting point once the RI signaled reversal. As you can tell, I haven't fully thought this through yet

2014-07-01

trend: down

intraday median daily price: $648
intraday daily MACD hist: 8.4

RI1 (2) = 99
RI1 (3) = 99

RI2 (1) = 99
RI2 (2) = 99

comment: um, yes... Not much point anymore reporting the RI values during this swing, unless it turns around again, they're all at max anyway.

MACD signal would have, according to the common interpretation, signaled a buy today, because yesterday MACD hist went positive again.

So... buying signal MACD at ~$640 (today's opening price) vs. RI signal at $581 (on the 27th, the "risky" choice) or $598 (a day later, the "safer" choice).

Haha, amusing discussion. Here's how I see it:

Fact 1: The price of the party was _defined_ as 1 BTC.

Fact 2: The party will take place iff 1 BTC is valued $1000 or more.


You have two options now: You can "refuse to think in fiat", which seems to be what wachtwoord aims to do. Then the only way for him value the price of the party is thinking of it as costing 1 out of 21M of the total BTC supply ever. Quite pricey, agreed.

More reasonable though (this is the speculation forum, after all, and we like to contemplate the BTC/USD pair), is appraising the value of the ticket in fiat terms. I'm going to assume for simplicity that 1 BTC will eventually reach 1k USD, so that the question whether the party ever takes place, is not an issue.

There's a delay between purchase of the ticket and the actual party, which includes the payment of the external services at the party, in USD. Which means you can reasonably expect that your share of the USD value of the party _at the time of the party_ will be equal to the USD valuation per coin, because the organizers are planning to spend [total amount of btc] x [btc/usd at time of party execution].

If you buy a ticket now, at sub-$1000 prices per coin, you are NOT buying "at a rebate", because you need to think of the value of the party in terms of opportunity costs: if you wouldn't have bought the ticket, at any point, but kept your 1 btc instead, you could cash out at the time of the party for more than $1000, so the effective cost of the party for you is $1000 (or more, depends on the price) regardless of when you bought the ticket.

Still worth it