Any advice for altcoin day trading?

[bitcerto]

I humbly come before you today to ask for your advice on altcoin day trading.

I've been using one exchange, Poloniex, to day trade for a few weeks. I've made a few bucks, lost a few bucks and had a good time.

After reading a fair amount of blog posts on the topic, I'm convinced you fine members will have better applicable advice for getting more serious about it.

I've been doing the "buy low, sell high," cliche. I seem to always miss out on the meteoric rises, but make a few satoshis on the way up.

What advice do you have for someone new to altcoin trading who would love to do this full time?

What news sources do you use to stay on top of new and promising coins?

Thanks in advance.

[TrueCryptonaire]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P2FB9Mg_YI

[alyssa85]

The dirty secret is that hardly anyone actually gets all of the meteoric rise, and chasing it can lead to losses. Limit yourself to a 10% gain, when you hit it, sell. And sit on your hands during a pump (the time to buy is before the pump), and you'll reduce your losses. It's about controlling losses not hitting the ball out of the park.

[bitcerto]

The dirty secret is that hardly anyone actually gets all of the meteoric rise, and chasing it can lead to losses. Limit yourself to a 10% gain, when you hit it, sell. And sit on your hands during a pump (the time to buy is before the pump), and you'll reduce your losses. It's about controlling losses not hitting the ball out of the park.

That is immensely helpful, thank you!

[bitcerto]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P2FB9Mg_YI

Excellent.

[Imste]

It's all about research and different "release" dates.

And ofcourse, keeping your head cool when you hit one of the big ones.
That means no trading expect the really fast rises and dips. Other then that, hold until everybody is talking about the coin. That's usually when the whales start to unload

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Do it full-time?   I wouldn't.   You'll probably lose everything unless you get really lucky.  Altcoins are so risky that I wouldn't put serious money into trading them unless you can place stop-loss orders to limit potential losses.  Good luck.

[Red-Apple]

it will all come down to how much time you can and are willing to spend for it.

doing it half assed is not gonna get you anywhere, i think you have to dedicate serious time to searching for the perfect chances every day. and that is hard.

[partysaurus]

best thing that helped me alot in training in general is to take home your winnings dont know how many times i had 6% and got greed thinking i would gain more and it almost always go the other way :/

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

it will all come down to how much time you can and are willing to spend for it.

doing it half assed is not gonna get you anywhere, i think you have to dedicate serious time to searching for the perfect chances every day. and that is hard.

Red-Apple is spot on. Research takes an enormous amount of time. I think you would be happier joining a good paid trading group like the one run by klee here on the forum, see his thread for details.

[shintosai]

I humbly come before you today to ask for your advice on altcoin day trading.

I've been using one exchange, Poloniex, to day trade for a few weeks. I've made a few bucks, lost a few bucks and had a good time.

After reading a fair amount of blog posts on the topic, I'm convinced you fine members will have better applicable advice for getting more serious about it.

I've been doing the "buy low, sell high," cliche. I seem to always miss out on the meteoric rises, but make a few satoshis on the way up.

What advice do you have for someone new to altcoin trading who would love to do this full time?

What news sources do you use to stay on top of new and promising coins?

Thanks in advance.

Hi mate were both the same I'm also new in trading with alt I found something interesting with yobit buy low sell high, but to my desire to learn more it went me to look for other trading platform then I found cryptopia they have arbitage system so if you want you can check price of alt and movement from diff trading site, if you have big investment you can earn atleast 10-15% in a day trading good luck to you just don't forget to keep checking alt section for your ref.

[klarki]

To take for all the forks do not advise.
Select 3-4 coins, read the thread roadmap. Also, it would be desirable to know a little bit about Dev and his team.

[TrueCryptonaire]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P2FB9Mg_YI

Excellent.

Yes, the song tells the business idea of this in pretty simple terms.
The idea is to find "underpriced" coin and convince others to buy the shit load from yourself at higher price.

[vuduchyld]

The one thing I would tell you is that alts are a really, really, really thin market. 

BE VERY CAREFUL.

When you say day trading, I wonder exactly what you are talking about.  With major markets, there are people who make a great living taking big positions in small moves.  If you had sufficient stake and balls of steel, you could quit your job, monitor markets, take a few positions per week, and make a living.  But major markets are not NEARLY as thin as Poloniex.  If that's what you mean by day trading, I would encourage you NOT to do it.

If you just mean taking some swing trade positions over the course of a given week, well, still risky, but if your life doesn't depend on it, I'd say go for it, have some fun, but be prepared to learn hard lessons.

Look at it this way.  On December 24th, 2015, coinmarketcap showed a BTC market cap of $6.8 billion.  On the 21st, total cap was 7.159 billion and on the 28th it was 7.063 billion.  So if you take out BTC, you had a total alt market cap somewhere in the range of $300,000,000. 

Right now, total cap is $8.062 billion.  BTC is actually down from $6.8 billion to $6.4 billion.  Alt market cap has gone from $300,000,000 to $1,600,000,000 in roughly three months.

So if you've made some money in the last three months, it doesn't mean you're picking winners with any proficiency.  It just means you are swimming in the right pond.  But there is no guarantee that will continue to be the case.  Total market cap for alts has grown 5x.  Of that, probably half is just Ethereum.  You can decide for yourself, but think about what that pond looks like over the NEXT 6 months.  And think about the implications if the total alt cap goes back to something like $800,000,000.

Just for the sake of comparison, think about a company like Kellogg.  Good company, lots of history, well-known, but it's nothing like Apple, IBM, GE, Alphabet.  Kellogg has a total market cap of almost $27 billion.  It's more than 3x all cryptos, and more than 15x alts.  It's also about 90x the market cap of EVERYTHING other than BTC in the crypto-universe as of three months ago.  NINETY TIMES!  Then realize that Polo is only a slice of that tiny marketplace. 

So, sure, day trading is all about profit from volatility.  And this is a volatile market, no doubt.  You may even have been right more often than wrong over the last 3 months or 6 months.  But if your bias is long side and you've done well recently, in the big picture, that is meaningless.  Certainly no indicator of future success. 

[arseaboy]

much better if you know how to play like arbitage or locate the alt that have strong back up it always the back end of the stated alt to depend with, almost all alts got the same with btc price fluctuation are also hard to predict with maybe if you can locate the flow of the whales you can do this day trading alt,. always check dev background mate and see their future plan so you have opportunity to decide if you will hold or not.

[bitcerto]

Wow, the advice here blew the blogs I read out of the water (as I hoped). Thanks guys! I'm going to keep playing it cautious with small trades as I learn more, and my dreams of day trading for a living are much more...realistic.

[JerryGarcia]

I had an early success with the rise of LTC, ETH and Ripple all within my first month. Made ridiculous gains but realised I was just lucky. So timing is everything bc if I had sold just a bit sooner then I would have made about 100% more.

I think the best strategy is to split your investments evenly on blue chip cryptos like BTC, ETH and maybe LTC (?) and then devote the other 25% to speculation.

For example $1000 investment would be $250 BTC, $250 ETH, $250 LTC and then maybe $125 Ripple and $125 ZCash.

Then hold hold hold. The real gains will be after 2020 once blockchain tech is fully adopted and the financial system fully embraces altcoin. This is at least 10 years out globally so use that as a guide.

Just an example of course and I would love any feedback neg or pos on this strategy.

[bearex]

I'm sorry, but i think after reading what you described, you are making a profit based solely on luck. It takes a lot to be a "guaranteed profit" day trader. I will just point a few things out  
Firstly, you might need some general idea on reading charts, i don't know to make assumption based on them, but you should if you want to day trade.
Secondly, follow events around cryptocurrencies. Be the first to know who will have meeting with who, when will Stratis make a deal with Microsoft, when BTC will be accepted in China, etc.

Of course, holding is also good, but you said you like day trading, so keep up with it.
This would be about it, for decent day trading  

[emezh10]

Try to invest a big amount in trading you well get a high profit and income small investment in trading is not worth for a full time work also try holder your altcoins in years it will give u a big amount but not easy to do and also risky at a time.

[NUFCrichard]

Try to invest a big amount in trading you well get a high profit and income small investment in trading is not worth for a full time work also try holder your altcoins in years it will give u a big amount but not easy to do and also risky at a time.

dreadful advice. Bitcoin is already a risky prospect, altcoins are a step further removed.
You are investing your actual money at the end of the day.  Are you happy to give your money to scammers or pump and dumpers?

Don't invest more than you can afford to lose, move in and out of bitcoin depending on price. Don't be afraid to trade out for a loss, instead of holding for a bigger loss!