Wow, what a post post..
Whatever you are describing yourself as doing in terms of BTC trading and preferences seems strange and disjointed to me, even though I understand that each person (assuming that you are a person) has a different approach to trading or accumulating bitcoin and goals, and each person has a past practice of employing differing strategies in terms of the extent to which they gamble their whole trading stash or if they are content with trading smaller portions of their stash (whether attempting to accumulate fiat or BTC).
I like to call my method something like - Semi-High Frequency Day Trading
I think you need a bot for
true high frequency..
I will concede early in my response that I may have been overly critical of what I perceived you to have a lack of strategy. Your responsive description negates my previous views.
I will also assert early that on a personal level I strive to move away from high frequency day trading and to attempt to trade larger price swings.
On the other hand, I understand that personal preferences are going to vary on this point in terms of how much pleasure (or lack of pleasure) you get from monitoring the BTC price on a daily basis. I am striving to move further away from that kind of activity; however, on the other hand, I understand that if you are actively involved and you create a system (whether manually or by the use of bots), you can make a lot more money by trading tighter price swings.
I like to put on the exchange what I want to trade, and usually trade with all of it.. Either full stash orders or many placed orders at the same time, keep all of it out there.. Keep the orders in where I expect them to hit, and move them to keep them in range if/when the market moves..
That is a fair enough approach and understandable.
I like to put the orders as deep in the books as I can to where I can still expect them to get hit by the slippage of big trades.. Therefore trading the spread plus as much of the slippage that I can grab.. So like a bigger "spread", where orders actually fill..
Personally, I have a difficult time being able to predict how far the price is going to go in either direction (trying to get as much as you can from tops and bottoms), and it seems to me that anyone get really screwed when they miscalculate tops and bottoms and therefore make a large number of profitable trades go badly from making just a few bad calls.
You ever make a market trade and fill like 30 orders or more? I want to be that 25th-29th order deep that you hit where your price slipped to..
Yes. I understand that you are going to be way more profitable than me, if you are able to get somewhere in the ballpark of being able to make your orders at or near the tops and the bottoms – even when you are within 10% or 20% of such bottoms or tops, especially if the price has gone on a long tear in one direction or another and caused 30 of my orders to fill, for example in $200 increments or some thing like that, but then you end up getting like a $4k to $6k increment and perhaps only one or two trades instead of 30 trades).
Those are my satoshis
fair enough.
If their is enough difference to catch it works great in sideways markets, always makes me feel like I sold too soon in up markets, and a lot of small stoplosses/break-evens when the market goes down..
0 fees means any tiny bit of spread is a WIN
The higher the fees the bigger spread I have to play..
Coinbase has so much LIGHTNING FAST bot liquidity in the books, their is no spread and very little slippage because oodles and oodles of liquidity bots chase the spread to zero instantly like lava flows battling in the depth chart..
That’s fair enough too, and I understand that when you take a different approach to trading then you are going to notice different dynamics, and what you are saying about a large presence of bots and the removal of spreads taking away some of the market inefficiencies and arbitrage opportunities that you would like to exploit when those arbitrage and spread opportunities are more prevalent.
The goal is to accumulate BTC mostly for HODL purposes but I'm weak for cars/parts so I've spent some, and it has done me well.. It has made me almost all of my stash + purchases except some lucky meme cards that made me some money too.. I never "buy" BTC..
Actually, that is good, and surely overall, I think that sometimes it is necessary to review what you are doing in order to be sure that you are not cashing out too many BTC at the wrong prices. My practice has been to buy back BTC when I sell them, mostly, especially when I am concerned about accumulation. Furthermore, sometimes, you might consider that you are cashing out at a profit because you are cashing out at $6k for coins that you acquired below $1k – yet if the price is going to go shooting up, then there can be a problem to cash out too many BTC… but of course, each of us is going to have different tolerances and even cashflow considerations in our personal lives based on other investments that we might have, too (or if we keep enough reserves in fiat in order that we are not forced to sell our BTC at times that are NOT convenient for us).
So, yeah, I get it that you are attempting to trade rather than purely accumulate bitcoin and HODL, and you seem to want to trade BTC in order to become profitable whether you measure your profits in dollars or in bitcoin remains unclear to me because you are not describing whether you have connections to banks or how you might have planned to cash into fiat if that was one of your goals. Furthermore, it sounds as if you want to attempt to profit from smaller increments of trades, but you do not have bots yourself, but you believe that you are not able to profit as much if you conclude that the bots are more prevalent on any given exchange?
I feel bad for selling some of my precious BTC for another damn BMW and I need to make it back to feel whole again..
I measure my profits in BTC, I don't care if it is going to $500 I want more of it. Because I KNOW one day its going to be YUGE..
I agree that sometimes the bells and whistles of consumption can be deferred, and of course, Bmie tend to have a very high depreciation.. even though they are nice and fun and it is nice to have new things that are nice and to show status, too.
Cashing out to fiat is not really a goal or problem.. I like to keep away from that as much as possible but I've done it twice now
When I first got into bitcoin, I wanted to make sure that I felt comfortable about having various BTC exiting strategies, and I suppose the longer that I have been in bitcoin, the less concerned I am about exiting strategies because I have also gained additional confidence and comfort from holding a certain value in bitcoin and keeping it offline secure (in spite of UP and DOWN BTC price movements). Some of the comfort does come from being in a very decent profit cushion, such as 8x, versus when my coins were barely into profits or even in the red, which was the case for me between late 2013 and about late 2016.
It is so tempting when I see deals IRL too good to pass up but I don't, except for rare moments of weakness..
I cannot be opposed to some cashing out and some locking in profits and some enjoyment of the proceeds of your profits, that’s for sure. I have bought a few nice things in the past couple of years based on how well my BTC investment is doing.. more than I would have otherwise, and also I have a tendency to eat pretty expensive food, too, which brings good benefits to me, too in terms of food and in terms of getting benefits from my relationships… hahahahahaha
But I have a coinbase that is all set up with my bank, and used previously, so that's not a thing really..
Yes.. it is good to have some systems in place too, if you feel any necessity to move some or all BTC to fiat.
I don't generally mind bots but bots that are configured for 0% maker fee are a whole other animal, Like I explained..
Seems that from your own stated practice that you might profit from using bots yourself.
I personally don’t trust bots, but I do consider that there could be ways to program them in limited ways to be able to save a lot of work, especially during periods that you are planning to be away from your computer or your ability to reset orders.
I personally believe that you can still profit if bots are present and if spreads are close because the main way to make money is to bet based on the movement of the price rather than the spread.. because when the BTC price moves, it seems to move on all exchanges in the same direction, and sure of course some exchanges will move faster and further than others, but there also does not seem to be much of a pattern for well established exchanges regarding which one is going to move farther or moves first. So, in that regard, it can be useful to have some value on more than one exchange, and sometimes even if you set orders at the same prices, the orders might sometimes fill on exchange A more often than exchange B, but then that situation can reverse, from time to time, too.
Yeah but then the market HAS to move, and you have to be correct on which way you thought it was going to move, and you have to wait..
Surely, with my method, I prefer that the market moves to me, and yes there are periods in which orders are not really filling for extended periods of time. I am o.k. with that, even though sometimes I could make more money to make my price increments smaller or sometimes to even force some fills in one direction or another.
No way I could sleep at night with my BTC sitting in fiat because I was expecting the market to move down..
I am a whole hell of a lot nervous now with my BTC to fiat ratios than I was a few years ago, and even a couple of years ago.
So, yeah, each of us needs to find our comfort level in terms of how much we want to keep in BTC versus fiat.
Currently, I am about 95% BTC and 5% fiat in my BTC trading allocated funds, and I tend to be pretty consistent, though at the top of the price (around $19k), I was around 88% BTC to 12% fiat and there were times in which my funds were in the 98% BTC to 2% fiat range.
In other words, I don’t make BIG plays because I am hardly ever confident about the price direction, and I feel that I have plenty of fiat, especially since currently my BTC is sitting at about 8x… and there are other reasons too, that I am comfortable, even if my overall wealth does go down when the BTC price goes down, but I still feel comfortable to be able to use whatever fiat to continue to buy BTC, even though peeps like you might prefer to attempt to wait it out and to time your purchase.. I would become too stressed out by attempting to predict and time such bottoms.
I am settled back into BTC after each trading session 99.9% of the time..
Yes.. seems to me that you play BIG, and if you can find ways to make that work, then that seems to be your personal comfort. I cannot really criticize you for that, and I appreciate that you spent some time explaining your strategy in a bit more detail than what I had seen in your earlier posts.
It appears to me that whatever you are attempting to do falls into a category of kind of winging it, and unclear to me how what you are doing is not just placing a bet and then gambling that the BTC price moves in that direction and then if the price moves in the opposite direction then you replace your bet by another bet, and so ultimately you are hoping to gain profits (but you are kind of expecting to NOT have any money left (principle or profits) after going through the process for a while and that is why you have not set up any exchange accounts that are linked to bank accounts)?
Winging it, kinda maybe..
When I place an order, I am placing a bet, that if that order fills, I can resell it for a profit BEFORE the market moves, with just the slippage spread, or the help of extremely short term volatility.. Just a percent or 2..
After you explained further, it seems to me that you have more of a system than my first impressions of what you were striving to do.
If the fees are 0.1% each way (buy/sell) then the first 0.2% of my spread breaks even so a 0.4% flip makes me .2%..
Do that 0.4% flip 30 times in a trading session or so, 0.2X30=6 - it makes me 6% for the day, but it's actually compound % for multiple trades etc..
But I don't just make 100% good flips.. The market moves and I break even or lose a tiny bit on 1/3rd of them or whatever, but usually it's a little better than a 0.4% flip I'm trying for, 1% is pretty common so 0.8% profit each time after fees.. That shit adds up if I can get in the groove and get it working.. Just a few % per day is stupid good when you compound it..
I basically try to do what you would want a bot to do I guess..
Speed placing, canceling, and replacing orders is important too for the market moving..
Yes.. I understand the numbers that you are explaining, and the profit margins and the work that is involved to attempt to achieve the numbers that you are outlining.
Margin is good for when the market is obviously moving infront of my face, especially up trading BTC, because I'm trying to make BTC..
I agree. If you can get it to work. I am never so confident, so margin is not within my comfort zone, especially since I feel that I have made more than enough money without using that, so I feel that I don’t really need to make more money in order to feel comfortable with my situation.
You cant make more BTC on a fiat market when BTC is going up, you can only HODL, unless you have leverage.. With long leverage you can make more BTC while it's going up..
Their isn't much to do in a BTC bull market if I don't have leverage..
Personally I am ok without making more money than I am already making.
So, for example, if I have 10 BTC, then if the BTC price goes up by $100, then I make $1,000. I am sufficiently satisfied with my returns because these days, BTC price goes up $100 much more easily than it did when the BTC prices were in the $200s range.
Altcoins usually trend down and you can only make BTC on that of you short it..
From my perspective, altcoins add additional risk to an already risky investment, namely BTC. So BTC has already provided me with what I consider to be a sufficient hedge against the dollar, and alt coins does not add anything except more unnecessary risk, at least from my perspective.
Just watch and wait till it stops so you can play the spread and try to catch the "falling knife" and/or "dead cat bounce" because you can only profit on the up side with no leverage..
I'm not very practiced at shorting alts but using long leverage on BTC when it was pumping sure was a blast!
Though I didn't have a lot of stake in it, if only I would have had the balls..
Certainly, there is much more potential to make more money in trading alts, but I don’t want to be spending my time chasing around alts and their manipulation. BTC seems like a much more solid investment that causes enough thinking on its own, without the additional manipulation and marketing levels of the alts… but yeah, peeps can certainly profit from playing those alt angles when they can identify various angles to exploit.
Personally, I believe that it is much better to attempt to establish your initial trading stash without margin and to get a hang of the situation, but I understand that you can gain a lot more by use of margin, if you are lucky (or insider information) enough to be able to place your bets in the right direction.
I'm not much of a swing trader, trading movement, so I don't use leverage much..
I think I have developed this method of trading because crypto usually just floats down.. Floating down slow enough to be realistically sideways, 1-2% a day, this trading style works in boring markets..
Just a flat market with the trad-able slippage spread a bit bigger than the fees and maybe 1-2% up/down volatility is purrrfect.. All day long..
Oh surely, if you can spot the dominant patterns then of course that is going to work.
Volume is a bit important too, because if it's working good and I want to trade with a larger amount, my trades have to be the small ones..
If my orders ARE the market's walls it doesn't work at all, lol..
It is extremely easier to do this on lower volume markets with just a little bit of BTC..
I could probably turn 100k sat into 200k sat like every day no problem because you are small enough not to effect the little market with a huge spread, you are just dust..
The market has to be like exponentially bigger than you for you to be just dust to them so you need bigger volume markets to do it with even like 0.1BTC..
I surely agree that you don’t want other traders to be pulling one-upmanship on you, so volume helps with that.
I'm trying to up my game and trade with larger amounts, and make larger profits, to maybe REALLY make something trading. I put a LOT of time into trading when I trade so I have never really made much as compared to all the time I've spend doing it..
Well yes… if you are consistently good on it, then it can be quite good to increase your amounts.
Considering all the TIME I have spent trading, maybe I have made McDonalds wages doing it, lol..
Sometimes I have been criticized for NOT making much money on my trades, especially on each trade, but I consider the trades to serve as a kind of insurance, and since I have been consistently accumulating bitcoin, the movement of BTC prices UP has caused considerable profits, but I consider the trading to be insurance for on the way down, so that I feel more comfortable keeping higher levels of investment into BTC because there is insurance in place for down.
I have made unbelievable %s on my BTC considering what I started with, really you wouldn't believe it in terms of %, but it doesn't amount to all that much, e.g. I'm not retired off of my crypto, yet.. I want to make it life changing..
It tends to take a long time to build up a nest egg, even if you have been extremely profitable, so each of us has to be careful NOT to risk too much principle with our bets.
I want that Lambo money, but really I'm a simple guy and the money it costs to buy a lambo would last me a LONG time just to do whatever I wanted and be free..
Freedom from the rat race, come on BTC..
Of course, a lambo is nice but living in luxury is nicer, and the lambo should come into place after the other fuck you money has been securely established.. such as freedom from the rat race, as you recognized to be valuable.. being able to live without working and considerable amount of passive income that supports your expenses.
I'm trying to find the right place that I can do it with larger amounts, or I'd just go to cryptopia where I could make satoshis forever..
Personally, it seems that increasing the amounts has to come incrementally and with work, otherwise you are going to be risking too much principle. That is my personal thoughts. You don’t want to risk very much principle, when possible.
I've also never been able to figure out how to tell when pumps/spikes are coming, so I have to be there to catch them happening.. Trading like this my chances of being there at the right time for spikes is also greater I believe..
Sorry that's long, but so was yours
I agree that the more you practice, the more you will be prepared to take advantage of price moves and to see them. You can be in the right place at the right time, when you prepare yourself adequately.
There is an expression that luck is where preparation meets opportunity, which means that the more you prepare, the more likely you are to become lucky because you recognize the opportunities based on the preparation and you are able to take advantage of such opportunities based on your preparations.
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