Nice work on this site, I like it more than just about every other charting site so far.

Can you change your shortcut keys? Every time I type my password it ends up changing the + to / next to the tools button. Better to make your shortcuts ctrl/shift plus a letter to avoid this.

Also: why cant we see more depth levels on bitstamp? I can only see 4 or 5 at one time it seems, yet gox fills up the entire column with rows.

Can you replace that darth vader sound clip forever? or at least have an option for what sounds to play on price alerts?

That sound clip is creepy as hell and not something I want to listen to when there's a crash to wake me up at 3am in the morning...

Is it discipline to continue trading after 14 consecutive losing trades or is it a lack of self-awareness? Is the losing due to "randomness" or due to changing market conditions that erode system edge? Trading isn't like poker or gambling where the probability is fixed (for example: knowing that there are 52 cards, 13 of each suit, therefore you have X in the deck to make a flush, etc). The game can change the next day.

If you lose a coin flip by calling tails 100 times after 100 attempts, you're probably a sucker if you still think it's a fair coin.

Just something to think about. No right answers...

Who are the idiots selling 1500 coins between 130 and 131 (1/3rd of avg exchange volume) on bitstamp at a 3.3% discount while gox prices trickle higher?

Even BTC-E trades at a lower discount to gox than bitstamp now.

yeah, because it's so efficient to demand liquidity til the point where the price impact is 5-10% in a few minutes right? what other market actually does that, do tell?

my perception is not off. i am not talking about the number of levels, i am talking about POINTS, as in DOLLARS.... i have seen the stock rip 10+ points on all offer prints and drop 10+ points on all bid prints in 1 minute.

thanks for the stating the obvious anyway, not sure what point you were trying to make that i didnt already kind of make in my original post.

Question about stops:

Do stops trigger based on mtgox's last print? or its level I (best bid/best offer)?

if i had a stop below 90  (say 89.99) and someone routed to BFX at 86 even though the mtgox best bid is 90, does my stop get triggered?

This is true but everyone has to deal with that. If you navigate those waters better than others, there is money to be made. There are distortions in the short-term price movement that don't occur in any other market and it's specifically due to these crappy exchanges handling all the orders.

have you ever visited yahoo finance forums for any speculative stock, like a $5 biotech or a random otcbb stock?

there are plenty of people like that.

and who knows who's really telling the truth most of the time.

Greed and fear is in every market. I don't think bitcoin traders or investors are inherently more "greedy/fearful" than those who trade stocks or oil.

I think the market structure itself makes people more reactive than they should be. It's an unnatural level of volatility for humans to deal with. There is so little "work to be done", so to speak, to create pain. Whether it be pain of loss or pain of missing out the next move.

In my experience, I don't find a lot of people who can simultaneously be "married" to a position (if you're dreaming about 4-5 digits in 3 years, to me, that's being married to the bitcoin long position) and yet still maintain the agility/flexibility needed to be a good trader. It'll always cloud their judgment.

On a personal note, I like the bitcoin technology/concept a lot. I trade to make cash though.

The most important advice you'll get in this topic:

1) 80-90% of all day traders lose money. It's a well-known figure amongst stock traders. I highly recommend against it. And btw, I say that and I love day trading more than anything. But it's not for everyone and it takes a long time to master.

2) Discipline/patience/risk management is more important than anything, no matter what your method is.

3) Execution will be a huge edge in this market because of how illiquid the market is, the risk of the primary exchange shutting down, the risk of lagging data feeds (from which your trading signals will come from, assuming you trade based on prices), and the lack of direct access trading. How do you handle all these risks? Nobody is going to teach you that, you have to learn that on your own when you're in the driver's seat. One second too late on a breakout and you might be paying up 2-4 points higher and that's huge since it could be 5% of the trade. If your plan is to buy when it gets above 65, and the offer jumps to 69 in 2 minutes, do you send a market order? Do you bid 66-67? Do you pass on the trade? Day trading is higher frequency trading and the more trades you make, the more it matters to save every $1 per coin.

4) Although I do trade based on price action/charts, most technical analysis out there is just junk. Be careful what you learn because it will take even more time to unlearn it. If you want to learn charts, I'd recommend these 3 guys:
http://www.alphatrends.net/    
http://adamhgrimes.com/blog/
http://thepatternsite.com/

I don't recommend "just watching" the prices right off the bat to learn. I think you need to learn some kind of theory about how markets work and how other participants think, otherwise you won't be able to form any noteworthy observations, you'll just be stargazing.

That's what I find to be the toughest aspect of daytrading bitcoins. It's a 24/7 currency. You can't force opportunity, it has to come to you... and sometimes the major breakouts occur when you're sleeping in the night. And it takes so long to develop you might have to be at your computer for several hours. It'll be a problem no matter where you live. I don't think there are stop orders on most major bitcoin exchanges (and if there were, i would not trust using them) so you have to get out by watching the prices yourself.

I am new here. Been trading bitcoin for a month now. I am young but I have studied markets seriously for about 4 years now. Not just technical analysis but also financial history and a little known subject known as market microstructure -- which is basically the study of "how" trade occurs in any market. I have never seen a market trade quite like bitcoin and probably never will again. It makes silver's runup 3 years ago look like child's play.

You can attribute bitcoin's crazy runup to news, value, or mania, and every answer has validity to it but I have another answer that's just in front of everyone's eyes. It's an extremely illiquid and thus extremely volatile market. It's that simple. My theory is that it's a unique combination of bitcoin's low float, the ineptitude of the primary exchange mtgox, and a young market (only 3 years old) that lacks sophisticated liquidity provision (i figure most of the supply probably belongs to the major miners, whom have more expertise in technology than being efficient market makers). Along with that, it is also difficult to move a lot of cash around to all the major exchanges, and to short sell, creating barriers to entry for bigger money players who could add a little liquidity. There are one hour bars that represent 50% and 100% moves... in BOTH DIRECTIONS! When I watch it trade on clarkmoody, it just strikes me as so inefficient. Like the people who are making the biggest decisions probably never traded their entire lives. They send market orders down for 20 straight points, and then the other direction for 15 points within the next 5 minutes! Who trades like that? Or maybe something else can explain that phenomenon? Another crazy anomaly to me was the lack of volume increase while the price kept soaring... usually bubbles require increased participation until there is nobody left to buy, or total short seller capitulation (which isnt possible in this market). Almost every parabolic chart has increased volume towards the peak.

The only market that I have ever seen comparable to bitcoins in terms of how fast it can rise and how easily it can fall, are OTCBB bulletin board stocks. Pump and dumps, basically (though not all of them, see FNMA, FMCC both which recently had a parabolic rise and fall but are real companies). Not saying bitcoin is a pump job, but there are some apt comparisons. For one, the OTCBB is highly illiquid. They are not like their NASDAQ/NYSE counterparts where you just click a button and get out of a position within milliseconds. 95% of the time you can out reasonably well, but when there is a panic (or a squeeze), your fill is at the mercy of the market.... kinda similar to getting out of bitcoin near its highs with all the lag on mtgox and all the bids disappearing.

I am not a bull or bear, just someone who wants to make money. I really do think this is the frontier of trading right now. If anyone else shares the same line of thought with me, as opposed to say, being obsessed about where bitcoin will be in 3 years (which frankly, I don't care about), send me a PM.

I just installed bitfinex+ and everything seems to be working fine except the order book feature -- I click the price/quantity and it doesn't do anything for me.

id like to get out of here. i want to post on the economics and speculation forum.

i trade bitcoins on bitfinex and i watch the clarkmoody level II data every day. i actually keep an evernote journal about my bitcoin trades, if you desire to see it.

i think this is my 5th post anyway though.

do you guys think this redundancy is a good thing, since the technology provides no new features?

too many other coins makes virtual currency sound kind of gimmicky, although i guess some people already think this is a gimmick no matter what

anyone here interesting in day trading or arbing bitcoin?

yeah it's been rather crazy....

but volatility = opportunity imho

Hello all. I want to post on the speculation forum. I'm just posting here because of restrictions.