Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[podyx]

Maybe you should try it first with 0.1 BTC to get used to the system? 

Maybe so..

[Cablez]

Wait......did someone setup their bot wrong again!?  We are supposed to be going down people.  

[N12]

Wait......did someone setup their bot wrong again!?  We are supposed to be going down people. 

Pretty sure Willy the Wanted is setup correctly.

[Thomas-s]

Wait......did someone setup their bot wrong again!?  We are supposed to be going down people. 

Pretty sure Willy the Wanted is setup correctly.

You mean Wirry.

[N12]

In this market, you either buy or you get bought from.

[noobtrader]

surely this is the end of bear season...   

[fonzie]

Maybe you should try it first with 0.1 BTC to get used to the system? 

Maybe so..

You can also switch from contracts to BTC as unit if you click on the settings wheel.

[justusranvier]

Do you consider a competent poker player a "gambler"? If yes, I'm okay with calling the act of trading that as well: both are (risk controlled) finite resource bets on a stochastic process, based on the limited ability to predict future outcomes of that process.

If, on the other hand, a competent poker player is not a gambler, while a trader is, I would like to hear what makes predictions of the 'poker' process different from predictions of the 'market' process. Or, if both of them are gamblers, but neither of them has a chance to be EV+ in your view, then I'd like to see an explanation of why a competent poker player beats an incompetent time after time, (almost) independent of the cards that have been dealt. Been there myself, lost some money in the process

Poker is not a pure game of chance in the same way that a slot machine is a pure game of chance. (I've added enough disclaimers about cheating in prior posts, so mentally insert them where appropriate)

I don't know exactly what mechanism makes trading a game of pure chance, but the evidence shows that it must be.

The first way we know is that because if a strategy existed which consistently resulted in EV+, then one single entity could follow it and eventually own the entire market, at which point it's no longer market. Markets continue to exist, therefore no EV+ strategy exists.

The other way we know it's a game of pure chance is because when enough data is collected on the lifetime behavior of all traders, the results are consistent with playing a game of chance, with about the number of outliers one would expect given the sample size (every once in a while 20 random coin flips will come up all heads in a row).

I should also clarify that I'm talking about gains relative to the overall market. When the entire market is moving up due to the addition on money from external sources, it's easy for individual traders to see patterns that look like successful strategies, but aren't in fact.

Imagine 100 gamblers playing slot machines that start out at 99.5% payout, then as they continue to play the operators gradually increase the payout past 100% to 110%, then lower it back down to 100% and finally back to where it started.

That's what the infusion of the Baby Boomer's 401k money did to the market, and also to the perceptions of the people involved in it.

Every strategy that appeared to work from the early 1980s until the mid 2000s only did so because the market had been temporarily turned into a positive sum game by tax policy and other regulatory manipulation.

It was never real or sustainable.

[Blue]

this is the original version of a Chinese pump



also known as

fuck a duck

[NotLambchop]

...
It was never real or sustainable.

Spoiler justusranvier, don't look!

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[inca]

Drifting higher. Almost all my coins are lent out on bitfinex although the swap rate is tosh. Thanks for the interest gamblers

[billyjoeallen]

In this market, you either buy or you get bought from.

Sure as hell looking like a bullish pennant. This ride ain't over.

[oda.krell]

I should also clarify that I'm talking about gains relative to the overall market. When the entire market is moving up due to the addition on money from external sources, it's easy for individual traders to see patterns that look like successful strategies, but aren't in fact.

Imagine 100 gamblers playing slot machines that start out at 99.5% payout, then as they continue to play the operators gradually increase the payout past 100% to 110%, then lower it back down to 100% and finally back to where it started.

That's what the infusion of the Baby Boomer's 401k money did to the market, and also to the perceptions of the people involved in it.

Every strategy that appeared to work from the early 1980s until the mid 2000s only did so because the market had been temporarily turned into a positive sum game by tax policy and other regulatory manipulation.

It was never real or sustainable.

Another fair point about the practical side of trading for perhaps a majority of market participants, but we're discussing whether profit is possible in principle.

Obviously, serious investigations into market factors are taking your objection into account, either by comparing the factor's results against the market baseline, or by investigating time scales where the larger market direction doesn't play a role.

I really invite you to take another look at the Harvey paper, especially because it is extremely critical of what they call a "zoo of new factors", the majority of which are likely just statistical artifacts. The flip side is however that the factors that do survive the additional scrutiny are not easy to dismiss.

So, no objection if someone is skeptical whether Elliot Wave this or MACD that is a viable long-term strategy. But the notion that markets are (more or less) unconditionally adhering to weak-form efficiency is hard to sustain in the face of the evidence.

[Erdogan]

Drifting higher. Almost all my coins are lent out on bitfinex although the swap rate is tosh. Thanks for the interest gamblers

The market dynamics seems to be: Flat with only trading. 500 coins or so genuinely new buying (actors who choose to get in) gives jump of 10 USD. Just my intuition.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[N12]

So this guy is basically arguing that EMH (strong form, where any public fundamental/technical knowledge leads to 0 return) is true. If it is, then why would you stick money month after month (like he says he does) into this particular asset, and not some other? As a gambling hobby?

[N12]

What about all those little barracudas that do both, just to survive? Do you really consider them retarded, from the highs of your lucky-early-adopter-loaded position?

It's not a matter of how many Bitcoins I do or do not have - it's a known fact that day trading (in general, not specific to BItcoin) is a negative sum game.

Anybody who is not cheating is just achieving random returns.

Over long time scales, the lifetime returns of all investors converge to the same average value (except for the ones that manage to cheat).

Never mind, just scrolled back a little and it seems the argument is reduced to "daytrading". Well, if you daytrade Bitcoin (every day open up at least one position and close it before day's end), you will most likely indeed never be profitable longer term for the simple reason that fluctuations in the shorter time frames are more likely to be noise. For daytrading, you need many assets to choose from so you can filter it down to meaningful moves.

But, it seems to me that when you mean daytrading you are talking about trading in general (like many who know no other form of trading than "daytrading"), which can extend to months and years of holding time. If buy&hold has some positive expectation value, then so does trading with random entries and exits, excluding commission and slippage. So aside from paying more to trade and wasting one's time, WTF is the difference?

[Cheeseonastick]

So short term trading is a gamble, but long term trading is skill. That's real logical.

[podyx]

Should I choose week, month or quarter on OKcoin when margin trading?

I have opened a 0.1 bitcoin 20x leverage long order. Does that mean I will get the gains of having 2 bitcoins? IE $2 for every dollar the bitcoin price goes up?