TLDR:In general I think any trade in profit is a win. Consistency in strategy is more important than min-maxing technical analysis perfectly. I've written a couple of responses in the past that may could help.. I'm not sure if when saying trade signals if you mean specifically technical analysis indicator that now is time to sell, or in general people giving trade signals.. I assume you mean purely on a technical analysis point of view but just in case, I included this post. It's also useful because one of the youtube videos teaches how to draw fibonacci retracements properly which imo is one of the most powerful technical analysis tools.
I'm brand new to this and excited to get started but also don't know where to begin. I've been looking into services that offer education as well as give you alerts on specific trades they see as potentially profitable. Anyone have any suggestions on a reputable, affordable service? I've been looking specifically at Crypto Investing Insider. The reviews I've seen have been good. Can anybody give me some direction, it would be much appreciated. Thanks!
The problem with any sort of paid service or even free ones when it comes to following trades, is the information is gonna be heavily biased towards the person offering it to you over helping you.. here are some examples.
1) Could be selling a class for crypto noobies... the class offers overly generic information that could be found anywhere for free but could be useful information for someone who is just starting out.
2) The information could be offering one way to trade, but that strategy might not be appropriate for your portfolio size or risk level. You definitely would trade differently with 1 million dollars compared to 1 thousand.
3) Signal groups for trades can be a self-fulfilling prophecy but you never really know the person offering the information is being legit. They may know some sort of news.. but they could just as easily be trying to pump the price because they are bag holding. Since everyone makes mistakes and no ones perfect, they could just write this off as a mistake later with really no harm coming from shilling you their bags.
4) The information is somewhat useful but leaves out important info that is necessary for applying it. You may get information on arbitrage for example but if you're only intent on working with one exchange, this information no matter how useful won't apply for you.
So here's a couple I suggest, they don't talk anything about specific trades.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvQ12D5GqyW1qtM0a3Qpwcw - this guy's training videos are very basic, but some useful information on how to setup charts correctly (color, gridlines, basic trend lines, fibonacci extensions, etc)
https://www.babypips.com/ - this site is super useful for learning about candle patterns on charts
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbcxHiowf0TSNKn3xVpGTiQ - I don't really use this guy's method, but the way he relates to support/resistance can be incredibly useful for beginners. Sometimes information you don't use can open your mind to a different way of thinking.
The absolute most important thing in trading is buying low and selling high. It sounds so crazy but almost no one follows this. You have to buy when things are red and you have to let go of them when things are green, without worry of missing out or fear of it going to zero. How you go about your entries and exits you can work on through technical analysis and understanding all the cause and effect things in the market (like how btc price affects altcoins in every possible scenario), but if you aren't willing to buy low and sell high, you will never make it in this game, emotion has to stay out of it. Emotional people who follow others will get rekt by whales in this market and scared to death by noobs who panic sell and want others to follow them. Learn the right principles of trading and start slow, if you don't have much money, just paper trade all day long. When I first started I was scared to death, so I started doing 100 paper trades a day and until I was breaking over 50% I didn't invest any real money. Not trying to scare you I just want to make sure you are getting the right information quickly enough (because people just starting out are willing to accept advice more than those who have done it a long time, you just aren't as defensive of criticism) for it to make the largest amount of difference.
Good luck.
Also here is an article I created about what sort indicators I use what I think is useful....remember consistancy is important.. try not to change the variables too much until you have enough data to what is specifically working well.. as long as you win more than you lose, overtime your portfolio will dramatically grow.
Do you believe in the reliability of information obtained by technical analysis on crypto-currency market?
TL:DR Yes and No.. it depends on the coin..and even if it helps.. common sense and avoiding emotional trading like fomo/fud/greed will take you alot further, especially as a noobie.
I do believe fundamental technical analysis works but only when other traders use it as a basis too... I think BTC/USD for example has high enough volume and enough millionaires/professionals where'd they'd all basically see the same indicators and tools giving them buy and sell signals so it becomes sort of a self fulfilling prophecy.. If you day trade BTC or ETH/USD, fibonacci levels or "just under" seem to play out very well with entry and exit points.. larger broader trades using moving averages and ichi cloud seem to follow stock indicators atleast in a general sense.
The problem with alt coins and btc/eth pairs is when you use technical analysis with these. there tends to be an extra moving part.. because the volatility of the alt coin also primarily goes up and down vs the price of the coin you're purchasing with.. which is often not found in traditional technical analysis since the price of traditional currency is way less volatile. Any TA can fall apart in seconds if BTC is bull running or dropping.. so the only real way to really use TA in these types of markets is to use it to judge what BTC/USD is going to do, and use that as the primary buy and sell indicator of your favorite alt coins. You can have a lot of success in alt coins I feel if you can move to BTC fast enough based off of things you see through technical analysis on the BTC chart, because you're moving one step ahead of the best revolving position...Think BTC won't break 9200 USD and we'lll spiral down to 6000 USD again or lower? You could move to USDT to buy BTC at that price again and alts will be waiting for you 50% off.. so the risk you take could net you 50%+ gains just reaching the correction price.. which is the safest of all sell zones to reach again (any price thats happened in the past will be exponentially more likely to be reached again over speculative all time highs).
Anyways.. as far as BTC TA (or even alt coins TA, but ALWAYS have BTC/USD Bitfinex on tradingview open while trading alts at all times so youre monitoring what the king is doing to help/hurt your trade's cause).. I try not to overcomplicate my predictions.. (breaking supports for profit - See Quickfingers Luc youtube videos this guy explains safe buying zones using nothing but resistance support for basic day trading, really good)
Ones I find useful
Moving Averages on the Day Chart (50/100/200 Day) - I value this one the highest.. its simple, and allows at a glance of scanning coins what has pulled back enough from runups that may be worth looking at if other indicators seem positive
Fibonacci retracements for buy and sell zones (just ideas on where to look for resistance levels to take profit, always leave the areas a bit lower, since everyone uses these to sell as zones, hence the more who use TA, the more of a self fulfilling propechy it becomes.
Bollinger Bands (sometimes I use these just to see how tightly wound things are getting when trying to break out from descending wedges/bull flags/etc.
MACD and RSI (just a quick indicator to pair with others to confirm the information the other indicators are showing me)
Ichimoku Cloud - Love seeing the overhead resistances and when on bull runs if its starting to fall flat.. this indicator isn't good on its own but like using with others.
Things I don't find useful:
Elliot Wave Theory - I can certainly appreciate the concept and I think overall the general concept of any 1-5 wave will lead to an ABC correction in a general sense is good, but as a predictive price to buy or sell at, it seems way too optomistic 99 times out of 100 to me. When chasing coins on a pullback however I do wait for the confirmed C pattern to form.. the problem is large runups can lead to a very long C extension (especially when paired to BTC acting up) so its just best to wait for confirmed reversal pattern over trying to buy based off of the measurement of C.
RSI alone - alot of people use RSI alone for whatever reason which I don't feel is a good idea.. it can in a general sense show if something is overbought or oversold, but something can rally oversold for days or weeks..btc in 2017 is a good example... if you sell when something is overbought or buy when its oversold, youre gonna miss alot of the tops of runups and get cut by the falling knife as it just becomes even more oversolid.. wait for other indicators to confirm what the RSI is telling you.
Anyways I do find some of the tools useful, but like all things nothing is always a perfect science. Even if you think TA is complete garbage.. use common sense when trading.. do not buy things in parabolic runups and dont buy coins all at once price (make sure to ladder into positions so you cost average.. and YES sometimes that means you will miss some of the bottom). At the end of the day I think TA can help you min/max your results with some practice.. but most of the gains comes from using common sense... buy low sell high and not fomoing or getting too greedy or panicking. If you are a new person work on managing your emotions and common sense first then work on perfecting your TA later.
I can't stress enough that any trade into profit is a good trade.. so many people beat themselves up over not hitting the top, or buying and not hitting the bottom.. Technical analysis is more discipline that helps you buy in better zones, but you will never hit it perfectly. Over the course of a couple of years, you will miss many times: sell too early, hodl too long, etc. But it's just a matter of being more right than wrong, and being proud of what you earn instead of holding on to your mistakes.
Let me know if you have any specific questions about anything.. this is more of a broad stroke response but any specific part I can expand upon.
