Move up, no leading shake. A bit early for weekend fuckery. Wait and see.

@r0ach please don't make JJG shed salty (margarita) tears, not even out of overwhelming emotion. PLEASE.

And fillippone too!! Celebrating with a pretty haiku

I said as much just a couple days ago - "the last merit I can award to nonlegendary Hairy".
Long overdue if you ask me.
GRATZ!

Shake down, move up.

I do, but I have a nice team  


In you too much emotion I feel. You're not set up for both directions, are you? Better keep them longs running a bit further IMHO.

H4CK3RSP33K? That's not the proper way to spell SOMA.  

Reasonable doubt. In general, it's exactly the uncertainty about future events that is rewarded in investments, so the bigger the doubt, the prettier the lambo in case of success.

As a tentatively reasonable objection to your doubt, it could be said that ltc is well known among the cryptoheads and almost unknown outside that circle. Many bitcoiners have a special place in their hearts for what they consider the mother of all altcoins. However, the normies who barely know the basics about btc have probably no clue what ltc is, so most ltc hodlers/investors are crypto savvy. For this reason, it is possible that the ltc halvening has indeed been front run by a population of investors almost entirely in the know.

Btc is a different beast. Big money guys, including those at GS and JPM, are nearly clueless about geek stuff like halvenings and so aren't likely to have front run the halvening, at least until now. Shhh, let's keep it to ourselves.

It's scary out there. I seldom dare to tread.

I was actually just making it up. These are the thought processes I follow while I trade double positions, but it sounds harder than it is, and I can't actually manage do do it all in reality. This is a hobby, I have a life. It's all very SOMA. I use no bot yet. I make do with a simple calculator and an excel sheet for more complicated calculations: averages (trickier than it seems with inverse derivatives) and projections ("what if she goes up $300?" "what if she plummets $400?")

I don't know the numbers, and each one of us is different, but I'd keep the long open if the entry point is within the current range. With shorts I'm much more draconian. In the mean time, cash out part of the short! If you manage to make them equal you're net green and you can wrap it up if you feel unsure.

Thanks to both

@Dabs, this feels like home doesn't it?

Decisions such as these can't be coded into a bot. Or if they can, I have no clue. Or maybe I have a clue but just can't spill the beans for obvious reasons  

What you can do is program a bot to set up complex conditional orders - which can be a real help as long as your connection to the exchange is steady, which in turn isn't a safe assumption with all the verlakkerij that's going on.

A few examples of complex conditional order:

- if the long suffers more than 10% from here, cash out 20% of the short

- if she goes down >100$, increase the long a bit and tighten its stop loss by 15$ while cashing out the btc equivalent of 200$ from the short (maybe to finance the increased long and keep your staked margin in check)

- if after going down >150$ (but <300$), she heads back up, cancel these 3 orders I put there in case of disaster

Sorry Gyrsur, didn't notice. It's an inside game for WO-ers...

Straight Outta My Ass.

Meaning, I'm not that good at TA - mainly because I don't put a lot of faith in it.  I do have hunches, but they're wrong half of the time. So I plan for both scenarios. If I smell storms, I chicken out. When I think there's a decent chance to make a little profit one way or another, I put my big toe in the water. If it feels OK, I get knee deep. And so on. I never denied it does take a little work. What matters with me is that I can do it with a cool, detached head, without impulse "recovery" trades that would drag me in the abyss. Admittedly, cool comes easier once you manage to sit on a profit buffer AND you only stake all games with the same fixed amount, stashing away the excess into cold storage, with some sensible schedule you find works for you.

If you don't like the idea of having to cut up your grandma and chuck her somewhere after the deed is done, you could try different approaches that only involve trading.

We need more info: the relative size of the 2 sides is the most important. Entry points not that much (their effects near/far from entry also depend on the detailed structure of the relevant derivative(s)).

If they were open at the same time, it would mean the short is ~1.9 times as large as the long. So each step up pays you 1 and costs you 1.9. A simple chicken-out strategy is: try to make the positions equal as much as you can, exploiting any "discount" (that is, dips if it's the short you're trying to reduce). Once they're equal, you are more or less insensitive to price variation because, as many have pointed out, it's equivalent to being flat (IF after that point, you close them together!). When you're there, you can assess your realized P&L and either close the game (no-brainer if you're green overall) or keep it going.

This is what I'd do, at least - but most importantly, I would try not to find myself with the short larger than the long in an uptrend! That's what planning ahead is about.

Kill your grandma!

(Wheew, that was easy.)

Uh ehm, the system saw the light after a... uh... how can I explain... a dream where I saw mammoths in the charts, stampeding on us poor hodlers. It was around the time when most of us agreed we were in bear territory, long before we started talking about capitulation, which became the rage only later. I opened a short, staking most of my play money (which current me, more seasoned and detached, wouldn't do). I cashed it out a little at a time, reconstructing it at every bounce. I doubled my play money (100% btc, no fiat) in a few months, like 4-6. So the system is solidly rooted in pure SOMA practice.

It does require work and planning ahead - planning for both directions! I try to make my plans on a cool head, with no positions open, and mostly stick to them, with occasional tweaks inspired by sentiment, whim, suggestions and of course fresh SOMA results.

It's probably the last sMerit I can award to non-legendary Hairy. It's good to maintain some perspective while we live in this highly informed echo box.

Heya brother-in-corn, this responsibility weighs upon my shoulders like a couple lambos! Close it as soon as it goes green. It's a short after all, better never let them go too far... or open a hedging long just in case  

Well, I've just sold something on the way up. Actually closed the short before loss (really tiny profit) and reopened it higher, a little larger. If she keeps going up, I will close it in loss when the long is near or above parity. As long as the long is larger I'm OK. If she gets back down, I'll cash out half of the short and play a little wait and see.