Much of the advice here is to not keep the majority of your bitcoins in an online wallet or exchange like Coinbase and Mt Gox. A potential problem is that (to my understanding) it takes up to 7 days to transfer coins from one system to the next. So if I have a cold wallet and I see that bitcoins are beginning to average a decline, it will take 7 days to move my bitcoins from my wallet to my exchange in order to sell them? Is this accurate? Isn't this detrimental to keeping up with the ups and downs of the price; by the time I move them from my wallet to an online exchange the price may have dropped over 15%.
If this is true, what type of workflow do you suggest to go from wallet to exchange and back to wallet in order to offset the time delay when it comes to buying and selling bitcoin at the proper low/high times?
It takes 7 days if the exchange has some kind of restriction or if you are transferring cash. Otherwise, BTC should transfer very quickly. In the end, if you are doing any kind of currency trading, you are going to have to keep coins on the exchange and risk it.