Ah, shame, I had such a good feeling about it

Oh well, thanks for designing and trying it out anyhow! Just emailed you guys, so hopefully I can get started with devising funky strategies as soon as possible. I'm still of the conviction that the MACD+MA combo has great merit, just need to alter it some to adjust for "noise" signals resulting in the whipsaw trades. Maybe change the short SMAs to DEMAs since, as you say in the OP, they're supposedly better.

Heh, excellent name! I'd greatly appreciate the code if it turns out to be profitable. Actually, I'd greatly appreciate the code regardless, as then I could have a look at it to get a basic gist of whatever scripting/programming language you use, download BitConnector and start playing around with different strategies myself.

Enter/Exit if any one of those conditions are met independently. I looked at charts and noticed that sometimes MACD gave better timed buy and sell signals, and sometimes the moving averages, and so got the gut feeling that a combination would get me the best of both worlds

The timing sure seems a bit suspicious, what with the whole ghash.io situation.

edit: Oh. If that's the case, could it be they decided to fix the page due to growing concern about a 51% attack?

Ah, interesting and good points. Luckily, according to your chart, the decrease seems to be very slow, so it would indeed seem we, at the very least, have a few more bubble cycles to go.

Though an alternative scenario could be a fractal 3-bubble cycle, where (if 2012 is excluded) the last bubble was wave 3 of 5, and the next bubble will be akin to the 2011 one, breaking the pattern of decreasing volatility, which would also be a repeat of history as the two bubbles before the big one in 2011 saw slightly decreasing BBW and ROC peaks, just like the 2013 bubbles.

But again this is all just more wishful thinking I guess we'll have to wait and see if Bitcoin will defy expectations and explode in extreme volatile glory, or (more likely I guess) if it's slowly becoming stable and boring.

Out of curiosity, could you backtest a combination strategy, giving buy and sell signals both at SMA10/7, DEMA33/18 and MACD 21, 28 crossings?

Summer 2012 would like to have a word with you

My own gut feeling tells me we're far from a "stable growth phase" yet, which can also be seen in these past few weeks/months of volatility on charts, which so far hasn't strayed from normal BTC behavior. If the anticipated "big investors" (wall street etc) are in fact beginning/going to buy in, I could definitely see bubble rises to at least $10k levels (though maybe not in the upcoming bubble, which imo (again based purely on gut feeling) is more likely to be like the 2012 one).

But as you say bett, this pattern can't hold forever. Unless we get a wonderfully drawn-out and bloody bear market somewhere in-between, taking us to fresh lows and giving the rocket some much-needed refuel time. Possibly coinciding with the more general upcoming markets crash luc and others keep going on about.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking though. Would be utterly shite for the rollercoaster-ride to end just as I was beginning to enjoy myself

It's also possible we'll continue to consolidate here for another week or two. My longest triangle count ends at the 22nd.



There also seems to be hidden bearish div on 30m MACD, though at that timescale I'm not sure what significance it has, if any. Yet that, and price being so close to the support lines, does make me a bit wary. It could further be argued that the real triangle (red support line in chart above) was already broken down on the 9th, although I'm hesitant to go with that idea and would rather await confirmation of the short-term bear scenario by the breaking of lower supports.

As for daily MACD about to go negative, that could mean two things in my view. It could "bounce", as it did it November 2013 where, just as it was about to cross down, the market resolved to shoot up instead. But that was within the bubble, and a fairer comparison could be September 2013 where it did cross down, which was followed by a month long consolidation period.

Also, the "magic" pre-bubble RSI level I noticed in my previous post has again seemingly been met (84.5), and now it's crossed down from being in overbought territory.

If that historic pattern continues to hold, it would support the longer consolidation/sideways movement scenario before the big rally can begin (which could be achieved by either a short-term price drop and formation of a much larger triangle pattern, a short spike (to $750-ish?) and the same, or just continuing within the longer triangle formation(s) at this level).

But then again lucif seems confident that it will (eventually?) go up from here, and I make it a habit to preemptively pack my bags when the clown prophet says we're going to the moon

Furthermore, I imagine Moving Average-based trading can be made far more accurate by using clever combinations of different MA crossings, as well as MACD and price-MA crossings, to get earlier signals and confirmations (very important for twitchy exponential moving averages which can sometimes give false signals). For example, price crossing daily SMA50 on May 20th in addition to the DEMA crossing would've served as stronger buy confirmation and allowed one to buy at 460-ish, at the same time of the bear trendline breakout, and the decision (to hold) would've been further reinforced by daily MACD shooting up.

Of course as you say it's still largely reactive trading and personally I prefer other methods to (primarily) base my decisions on. But MA-strategies/momentum trading have the advantage of being fairly easy and straight-forward (and also easily automated for the more lazy traders ).

Fairly sure he means a continuation of the upwards move as, if I understand it correctly, a continuation pattern of the bear market would need to be much larger and comprise the entirety of the uptrend.

$670

Fair enough, yeah makes sense.

Naturally I won't be basing any trade decisions solely on RSI (particularly not when I'm such a noob with it ) but rather in combination with other analysis. Though it should be noted that the October and November cases you mention were all during the bubble, when (I assume) overbought RSI should be the rule rather than exception, and the example I mentioned (August 2013) was well before the bubble, so from this one might infer that RSI being overbought outside of bubbles acts as a stronger sell-indicator. But then of course there is the problem with knowing how long it will stay overbought, and how high it will go, which (as previously mentioned) necessitates one using other indicators in combination to make any hard decisions.

Though, looking at historic timescale on Stamp, I just noticed an interesting pattern: For every case of (daily) RSI being overbought outside of bubbles, the RSI top has been extremely consistent before price went down/consolidated: 83-85 (what do you even call that, RSI level?). Currently we're on 79, which according to this would give us some more room to go before the hypothesized correction (also assuming this is not the start of a bubble, which I doubt). Curious to see if this pattern holds again.

Ah, good points, especially regarding Huobi. Just took a look and there doesn't even seem to be any wedge formation(s) on that exchange, so maybe they can keep dragging Bearstamp along (if the wedges are valid in the first place, that is).

Nevertheless, daily RSI is still overbought on both exchanges, although this doesn't necessarily have to signify a very huge drop I realized, as during 2013 it also got into overbought territory once before the bubble, and this was only followed by a correction of $130-115 (as well as a longer period of consolidation) before resuming the rise (disregarding the SR flashcrash).

Beached whale?

I agree. The rising wedge(s?) in particular does not seem to support the bull run going much farther. Not to mention the fact that daily MACD is at approximately the same level as the peak of the post-bubble bulltrap (379-998), and daily RSI shows we're overbought atm (at least I think so, still a noob to these indicators so someone correct me if I'm wrong).



Also, an interesting fact is that the (initial, at least) wedge closes at $647, which is just a few dollars above SMA200. Coincidence?

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I do wonder how the lack of artificial buying pressure will affect the future market (and indeed, as jl2012 pointed out, how much of an actual effect it had to begin with, especially considering Bitcoin is seemingly driven by an exchange ecosystem and not Gox alone).

While the author of the article claims that the exponential growth trend is now void, I wonder if perhaps Willy activity set enough of a precedent/historic pattern of growth to be resumed by more natural natural market forces. Or, as the author implies, we will be seeing less dramatic bubble rises and more stability from now on.

According to my favorite techniques (fibhorn and ratio analysis), 605 or 615~ seem like reasonable targets for either local tops or major ones for the rally from the triangle breakout, though an experimental resistance line at 620 or daily SMA200 (currently at 640) could also be it.
Long-term support line currently at $470, if it's tested and holds I guess the trend reversal will be confirmed 100% (not making this just a bulltrap or Wave B of C (same thing I suppose)).

Fair point, though it's important to keep in mind that walls can (and regularly do) get pulled.

I am not as certain. We broke through short-term support pretty heavily, and are currently below hourly SMA50. I suppose the hidden bullish divergence could signal a final local spike up (possibly to the support-line (assumingly) gone resistance), but I have a feeling we'll break through hourly SMA200 and test long-term support (currently at $462) before we can break daily SMA200 and take off. Certainly doesn't help that it's weekend = whale dump time, and market looks fragile enough atm to be significantly moved by a whale.



But then again I'm a noobish sheep, so for all I know you could be right Just throwing out possibilities.

Time for more divergence games! I'm still attempting to learn it, so I would appreciate clarification here.



Is this correct divergence analysis? As Oda asked in a similar case, which takes precedence, the hidden bullish or regular bearish?
Regular bearish because, as Blitz said (if I interpret his words correctly), in a bull market one should look more at highs, or the hidden bullish because it is more recent and thus more relevant to the situation at the moment?

Indeed, I suspect the bulls are getting over-excited over the exit of the long bear market and we'll soon see more heavy retraces and periods of consolidation before any real bubble-like growth can begin. Parallels might be drawn to 2013, where the bottom ($62) was followed by a sharp move to $100, followed by the first major drop.



Interestingly, applying the ratio of this on our presumed bottom (340) returns 548, so that might just be a local top followed by the expected heavier pullback (unless we go all the way to daily SMA200 in one shot).

Furthermore, I am paying close attention to hourly SMA200 (which lucif dubbed as "the holy grail of all bubbles" and so, by default, must be significant ) to get a sense of possible supports and whatnot. For now it is positioned very close to the long-term log support line, and during the aforementioned 2013 post-bottom drop it was pierced pretty heavily, so it's possible the support line will be tested before taking off properly.



However, I'm not entirely sure 2013 patterns are anything to go by in this case, as we never even crossed daily SMA200 then, so obviously the situation is (to some extent, at least) different. Then again, experience has taught me that ratios in particular tend to be consistent and static, defying common sense, so who knows.

edit: Another interesting thing I just noticed; applying the ratio of the local top (100) and bottom (76) for the above 2013 drop on daily SMA200 (currently around 630) results in 478, which is extremely close to the support line, which (judging by super-fringe and nooby ratio (over)analysis) would seem to support the notion of us going that far before the hypothetical major drop to test the line.