There is a topic Goomboo's Journal, in the Speculation board - I learned a lot there.

Let me present you a Chrome extension that is able to automatically follow the trading strategy explained by Goomboo in that topic (so people could get some sleep).

How it works

• This is not a high frequency trading bot. It is making decisions to trade, based on H1 historical prices (at most 1 trade every 2 hours, but in practice rather ~1 trade per day)
• The bot executes trades automatically, without a warning, according to the current trend. It does not wait for the EMA lines to cross first! Read also here
• Any SELL executed by the bot will sell all the bitcoins available at the account. Any BUY will spend all the USD you have there, turning them into bitcoins - all at the current market price

Installation

• You can install the extension here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iejmifigokhpcgpmoacllcdiceicmejb
• After installing, wait for it to fetch the historical prices and then (after the "progress bar" turns into a number) go the Options to configure your MtGox API Key (also some other options if you want)
• After you configure the API access, just leave your browser running 24/7 and it will be trading for you, according to the trend

Security
I don't care about any feedback like 'I don't trust you', so don't bother letting me know. In fact if I were you I wouldn't trust myself either.
But here is what you should know to protect yourself from a potential fraud:

• The bot uses the MtGox API and it does not require you to be logged into your MtGox account at any time. So better don't be
• Setup the API key (in your MtGox account settings), to only allow get_info and trade access right - this way the bot cannot do you much harm, even if I wanted to

Warning!
This is an early version.
Until more people test it and the code gets well reviewed, I strongly advise you to try it only with a testing account and a small amount in.


I'm looking forward for any feedback or questions. Otherwise, have fun with it!

While you've been mulling it over... I should have something for you to try by tomorrow.
I will start a separate topic in the Trading forum, to not spoil Goomboo's Journal anymore.
Just want to test it a bit more overnight.

It's an extension for Chrome browser - trivial to install / not so complex to setup / very easy to use.
And relatively easy to review - just a few KB of JS code, with some ajax stuff.

I had already had my bot, quite more advanced, but since I was so bored today and I like coding Chrome extensions... I made it for you
Anyway, will let you know soon - stay tuned.

I tested it many times, in many different combinations, with the historical data.
Basically if you optimize for profit, much less than 50% of your entries are winning ones in such H1 based system.
But in general you profit - from following the trend, because as we all have noticed, when it goes up or down, then it really does enough to compensate the small loses...
At least so far - nobody knows tomorrow. Even with the historical data the optimal values depend on the period you choose - how many days you test and from when...

But my general measures, of a long term data, also show that if you switch from H1 to D1, you might actually get a similar scale of a potential profit - just with fewer swaps.
And also a better percentage of winning bets - if you care

I could have, but you should not be trusting strangers in internet to take care of such stuff.
It's a piece of software, which you run on your PC, that deals with your money - you don't know me, so you shouldn't be taking it from me if you cannot understand what is inside.
Otherwise someone will screw you over one day - and I'm not being cynical here, it's just life that we all need to deal with

What I can do to help you..
You tell me what do you actually need and I can post some simple scripts here, so others could verify if I'm not screwing you over with them.
And then you can run them on your pc, if you want. I can eventually tell you what you need to install first - a software from some trusted source, like google, oracle or microsoft

But basically, as when it comes to bitcoincharts+bitcoinica, I believe all you need is a continuously running web browser - you can afford it, cant you?
For the new mtgox api, which i think is much better, they have a crypto with some weird hmac stuff - I dont know how easy it would be to do it in javascript. Probably php would be best here, since their example actually works - and there is not much more one needs to add over that.

Why bother waking up?
It's actually quite easy to create an own bot. Just don't run it on a Linode VPS - better use your own PC at home

1) Every hour fetch the last 100 or so candles from the bitcoincharts: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.json?m=mtgoxUSD&i=H1&c=1&s=2012-02-20
2) Calculate EMA(long) and EMA(short) from the recent data: http://www.iexplain.org/ema-how-to-calculate/
3) If the lines have just crossed: execute the mtgox or bitcoinica API, according to the changing trend.
As simple as that.

You can basically do it in one relatively simple script; use php, python, bash, javascript, anything that suits you... I personally prefer Go - it's a great language.
Then run the 3 steps every hour (crontab, windows scheduler or whetever) - and you have no need to wake up in a middle of a night. Unless only to check if your bot is doing well...

i don't think the actual market has anything to do with this topic.
i think bitcoin is much bigger than your pity speculation investments and the price much stronger than your consecutive inconsequence to follow any strategy you could think of.

you are definitely to impatient, as for dealing with any possible strategy out there

using this, or any other strategy, of course you will be loosing - the question is 'how much and how often?'
you loose on unnecessary swaps, when the market is still.
but following the trend gives you a great advantage when the market is actually moving...

don't blame the guy for giving you hints.
he doesn't promise you to win anything - nobody knows what the market will do in the nearest future, neither does 'the guru'.

but he doesn't sell a bullshit, and I appreciate anything he's said. thank you goomboo!

I'm guessing this chart has the lowest priority, so they will update it in a few hours or so

yes, but this time the trading was not halted. it was perfectly going on - the price was changing on the market and the transactions were being processed. people were byuing and selling bitcoins for a price that was much, much different from the actual ticker price.
because the tickers were not being updated - for minutes!
and since during these minutes there was such a big spike, it could have been a fraud
dont you think?

i mean, and i know about programming, how hard is it to make sure that the ticker price always represents the latest price?
it's not a lot of data to send through.
so either some developer really screwed it up badly - or it was a fraud
is there a third option?

I was watching this today, and I'm sure many of you as well.
MtGox was processing transactions - someone was buying tons on bitcoins, so obviously there were many database records to process - but the tickers (the so-called API) was not updated in the realtime!
It was like showing 5.60 while the price was already at 6 - for minutes, not seconds.
It's just not right.
If someone had an insight info into the actual ticker - is was a fraud.
And I know some people who did
So I can only hope that this was an accident.
Though, it's still wrong.
Dont you think?

i think somone is trading so many bitcoins that mtgox is just overloaded and is somehow shutting down updating of the recent data - the output of the tickers is just frozen, while the transaction are far far away...
the one who can get the most recent info is the one to win
mtgox - you suck with this!

shit man.
thank you!!!
that was indeed the problem.

Or just try this page: http://websocket.org/echo.html
... using i.e.  ws://socketio.mtgox.com:80/socket.io/1/websocket/14001291971574386363
and tell me that I'm crazy

But which language / websocket library do you use?

I tried with latest Chrome and this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pfdhoblngboilpfeibdedpjgfnlcodoo
.... and also tried with websocket package from Go - and they both disconnect me immediately after sending "7:::1+0"

I don't know guys how you can be using this new socket.io via the websocket interface...

I get my ID nicely from https://socketio.mtgox.com/socket.io/1/ but then after I connect my websocket lib to ws://socketio.mtgox.com:80/socket.io/1/websocket/XXXXX - it just sends me "7:::1+0" and disconnects immediately after that.

Am I the only one who has this problem?

yeah.
i hope you are there

and now look what you've done:


nobody wants to trade against your system anymore

Change it from Daily to Hourly - then you will see it


Thx, @Goomboo - it's a very nice topic!

But what do you do when it looks like this?


It doesn't seem like crossing, yet - does it?
You wait - or you sell?

so i think that's why he used the term  "tune it"
if you want to win more in such game - you might need to tune it with a small risk.
especially if there are other players on the market

Another question is: if you put in twice more money - is it going to stay at 0.6%, or is it going to down twice as well?
I would go for the latter in this choice