Neat ~100$ spike up. This smells like stop hunting on the way down. My short got just a tad bigger.

I will fear no evil?

I don't feel you are invading, as long as you don't start to spread alt gospels among the faithful  

Drown people in dark wells? We never do these nasty things. Now come with me, please, I'm going to show you the restroom in case you need... what? Downstairs? Ah, well yes, the guest bathroom is in the dun... ehm, dunstairs area  

Of course we won't mind, BUT... official hats are xhomerx brand only. Talk to him, maybe send him an image you like. He's probably willing to help 

Keen haiku spotter!!

+1 WOsMerit

Not promising a boring one, though. I don't want unsustainable (merit) debt.

A great writer and an untiring herald of science, Isaac Asimov. But kinkiness never was his strong point.

Two hat haikus in a row. She must oblige! 

She's drifting downwards
we try to figure out why
swear I didn't poke



#haiku

Feeling a bit bored
taking the stick to poke her
guess I'd better not



#haiku

We make different assumptions.

Yes, assuming both legs are closed at the same time (constraint that doesn't apply to me).


@fillippone, as usual your posts are instructive, thought-provoking or both. (That's how you amassed that disgusting mountain of merits in no time.) Even if in an amusing way, I was making a point. It took me a bit to digest your input and articulate a reply, so here I'm back.

When I said that unrealized P&L is, well, unreal, I failed to add "until you hit the wall": the wall of nonlinearity at liquidation. If you manage to avoid that wall, you statistically win the game.

I don't have formal training in economy or finance, but the mathematical advantage of playing both sides can be seen by integrating P&L over time along random walks with reasonable properties.  (Perfect absence of memory in the Markov chain sense is not even required. More something like ergodicity in the sense "the graph will eventually get back here, for sure!")


You assume P&L is instantly real, since current price is the best possible estimate of future price. Which it could be if there were a universal way to price risk and opportunity cost. Which I assume there isn't.

My own assumptions? "I'll never hit that wall because I keep my gameplay far from the sidelines." Taken to extremes: if I had infinite capital, I would not worry a bit. In other words: my bankroll is finite so I do worry of course, but I have low (negative?) opportunity cost for my play stash - it's better for me to use it to get moar btc at good odds than to collect dust in the freezer. As for the risk, I can't quantify it precisely, but it's bounded by the play stash amount if I stick to my rules.


Play money has an exclusive set of rules, such as "move excess play money to the cold stash when the amount reaches X", or every 2 months, or some combination that works for me. Another way to see it is: never let fiat enter the equation. Fiat for me is only relevant when I need it, and it comes from the main stash anyway. Once you've put away excess totaling 100% of your play stash, you're playing with house money. Once it's 200%, your risk still doesn't go to 0 (ergodicity hits both ways), but you have one "free" round where you can be wrong about never hitting the wall and still remain in overall profit.


I subscribe to your point about options. Most of my games are played with futures or swaps. Swaps are nice for the short side, since in a bull market they usually collect funding interest. I would love to have options available too! They would lower the cost of "insurance" a lot, if settled in kind. At the moment, options involve fiat unless I jump through hoops, so I do the best I can without them.

Numerical disclosure of sorts. Over the last week, I just gained 1% of the play stash with my short position by repeatedly closing it in small profit and reopening it higher. Last trade was 0.2% profit, new entry point just 10$ higher and 8% larger. Present short leg size a little over half the long (which is losing ~8% atm). A few more weeks like this and I will get even. If it goes down, I'm 8% better placed to profit again, while the margin buffer for the long has grown a tiny bit. My liquidation is well below 4k, and if I close the ultra-winning short before that happens, I'll gain about $500-$600 more breathing space, pushing it below 3.5k.

Yes, it is a bit of work actually. So what? A nice little hobby that pays out - an additional way to grow my HODLstash without forgoing, for example, a fancy restaurant or some other cozy reward. And I get to discuss it with some fine gentlemen too, which is a pleasure in itself.

Sorry this was a long post, and terribly OT at that - almost as if this discussion was about bitcoin!

-savage snips everywhere-


Don't know if it's true or fake, but it's too cute not to merit.



Of course you're right. "Damage" is limited to 2016 blocks, not two weeks.

You are an asset on certain occasions (when we're far from religion).

+1 WOsMerit



If we were machines
But death also defines life
No feelings, no life

+1 WOsMerit

I owe you one. Lambie snatched it first.

It must have been quite a lot easier for your friend to leave knowing his wife and child's asses were covered. Well-off or not might he have been. You were the perfect steward.

I see now. If you count unrealized P&L as real, then it's just as you say. I still think it's called UNreal - ized for a reason.

Right, in about two weeks (how long is the average difficulty change interval?) they could break havoc.
IF they manage to pull it off while coins are still being mined  

The spike in the inflation rate couldn't last beyond the next difficulty adjustment.
It would "just" be the end for all the old (non quantum) miners thrown out of the market overnight.

Try to look at it another way:

You are long 10 BTC. You short sell 1.

BTC goes down. You close the short and 10% of your virtual losses on the long are recovered.

Then, EITHER

- BTC goes back up. When it gets back where you started, you still have the (real) profit made on the short.

OR

- BTC goes down some more. You're losing, but you're losing somewhat less. You have more margin - whether you want to risk some more, or you're just glad your liquidation is that little bit further away.

That's how I have used my contrarian positions until today, and I am glad I did.

No need to be humble, since you probably know better than I.

In support of my stance:

- Mark to Market is a worse metric when the asset has strong volatility or is subject to the whim of sentiment. Which is the case for bitcoin.

- I let my long live because she will get back up there eventually! This might not be 100% rational, all right  

This system can and does pay off. A couple ways it can:

- No need to close both positions at the same time! You could taper the losing one or close it abruptly if you're sure of the trend.

- Different size/different leverage for the two positions.

EDIT As an actual example, I have a long position still suffering. Alive, but not kicking. I opened a short and scalped it down, cashing out little bits and refreshing the short when the price bounced up. So my losses on the long are mitigated. In this case the short is smaller than the long, but it hasn't been like this every time.


You could sell all your coins, so you'd stop wasting your time here.

Hm, on second though what if you become like r0ach and end up wasting even more time? As as added insult, you'd probably feel very very bad as a noob nocoiner.

Summing up, I have to admit I have no useful rehab suggestions. Sorry.

Some small fish also do this.

Indeed.

I'm no expert either, but the system does pay off with a little caution.

Have my last merit!

The air carries an unpleasant scent... bad dildos coming?