I get the impression this forum turned bearish, contra indicator?

[RationalSpeculator]

Is it just me projecting or do you also notice a big shift here? Only several weeks ago half of the forum was still openly bullish. Now I can barely find a bullish post. Sure the winkle ETF many like, but very few seem to think this will push up the price in the short term. Compare that to the chinese bitcoin documentary that was used by most that 'price will go up up up'.

I'm bearish myself but seeing so many agree I think chances become higher that it will actually go up the coming weeks.

[1714806973]

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[omgitsmehehe]

Yup, most people who post here in speculation and talk the talk now have shit running down the side of their legs.

[culexevilman]

Is it just me projecting or do you also notice a big shift here? Only a few weeks ago half of the forum was still bullish. Now I can barely find a bullish post. Sure the winkle ETF many like, but none seem to think this will push up the price in the short term. Compare that to the chinese bitcoin documentary that was used by many that 'price will go up up up'.

I'm bearish myself but I get scared seeing so many agree.

short term we are going down, but hey look at the bright side just stash your coins and come back in two years...

[marvinrouge]

If we are all bearish, maybe we are all out.

So the price can't decline anymore.

BUY BUY BUY !!!  

[N12]

During the bubble, at what point did the forum sentiment turn bullish and how long did it last? Just like indicators moving to overbought/oversold confirm a trending phase, so does sentiment and it can last a longer time.

That's apart from my impression that I still see lots of bulls, they're just very quiet lately.

[RationalSpeculator]

If we are all bearish, maybe we are all out.

So the price can't decline anymore.

BUY BUY BUY !!!  

lol that would certainly explain why price goes up after everyone turns bearish

[RationalSpeculator]

During the bubble, at what point did the forum sentiment turn bullish and how long did it last? Just like indicators moving to overbought/oversold confirm a trending phase, so does sentiment and it can last a longer time.

That's apart from my impression that I still see lots of bulls, they're just very quiet lately.

Thanks for your validation. I agree the bearish trend can continue. Many times the masses are right too. The shift is remarkable though.

[solex]

If we are all bearish, maybe we are all out.

So the price can't decline anymore.

BUY BUY BUY !!!  

lol that would certainly explain why price goes up after everyone turns bearish

Aha, indeed, this is the secret of market turning points.

[BitcoinAshley]

Yes, it is a contra indicator, but long-term. I think there needs to be a little more blood shed before you can really call a bottom based on sentiment (i.e. "once EVERYONE agrees it's going down, it will start going up again.")

Right now a lot of people are still hoping for a sudden trend reversal.

[N12]

BitcoinAshley converted to double digitism?

[Endgame]

Forum sentiment for the most part just follows the trend. Right now trend is down so bears rule. I wouldn't read too much into it.

[Birdy]

Forum sentiment for the most part just follows the trend. Right now trend is down so bears rule. I wouldn't read too much into it.

yes, it's a lagging indicator.
Price goes down...dozens of bears appear and spam the forum.
Price goes up...suddenly bulls everywhere.

[EuroTrash]

That's apart from my impression that I still see lots of bulls, they're just very quiet lately.

Yep. +1
Even this one is a bullish thread.
Hope isn't dead yet. Not enough for a reversal. 

[oda.krell]

I've never^[1] identified as either bull or bear. In fact, I entirely avoid thinking in those terms when I perform the analysis that precedes my trading decisions. Practically, I concentrate completely on the short (a day or two) to short/medium term (a week, max), and it's working quite well for me so far. As a result, I have no qualified opinion on whether we're going down to 25, or the deflation/correction stops at 79. Which obviously makes it kind of hard to say whether you're a bull or a bear.

That said, if you would have asked me in, say, late May where I would speculate the 2013 bottom to be, I probably would have responded with a substantially higher value than I would answer with now. That's kind of bearish, I suppose.


^[1]"never" is kind of a big word, I've only been around here since, surprise!, April.

[Hyena]

As a bull I must say it sure is rainy these days.. However, because I'm a long-term bull I'm already moving fiat to Bitstamp and expect to buy cheap coins during the next weeks. I will panic buy at 50$ but because everyone thinks so I'm probably going to start buying at 70$. Last time I bought BTC the price just got to 30$ and it made me a nice profit in the next months especially because I gradually spent the coins on pills...I mean vitamins instead of holding them.

[BitcoinAshley]

BitcoinAshley converted to double digitism?

I've been talking the talk for a while, yes, but my trading position has been bearish for the last month, and recently mega-bear. I am committed to making money whether price is going down or up, and right now that means being mostly in fiat, as much as I hate fiat. Can't argue with reality.

With movement like this, it's not hard to call short-term bottoms and tops, and if you guess wrong, you just have to wait a week and you're right again.

[Ultraviolet]

You'd have to be retarded to be short-term bearish right now. Weeks of negligible trading volume coupled with long periods of no green candles and any mini-rally that tries to start getting killed by a dump is absolutely not bullish.

Bitcoin needs new money to come to the market. Failing that, $200 will never, ever be seen again, and neither will $150. If it's as bad as it looks right now, $100 won't be seen for a long period of time either.

[mgio]

Is it just me projecting or do you also notice a big shift here? Only several weeks ago half of the forum was still openly bullish. Now I can barely find a bullish post. Sure the winkle ETF many like, but very few seem to think this will push up the price in the short term. Compare that to the chinese bitcoin documentary that was used by most that 'price will go up up up'.

I'm bearish myself but seeing so many agree I think chances become higher that it will actually go up the coming weeks.

Here is how it works. When the price is going up the people on this forum are bullish, when the price is going down, people are bearish.

It's as simple as that. Nobody here ever makes a prediction worth a damn.

[oda.krell]

It's as simple as that. Nobody here ever makes a prediction worth a damn.

Really? I'm sure you just have bookmarked the wrong forum members.

[MAbtc]

I still see bulls. But I think they tend to quiet down a bit as the price continues to drop despite their positions. I still see Jozzaboy and ShroomsKit around.  

It's as simple as that. Nobody here ever makes a prediction worth a damn.

Really? I'm sure you just have bookmarked the wrong forum members.

This!  

[Wuji]

That's funny when the price was going up over $200 I was a major bear (and cashed out) and then as it dropped down under $100 the bulls came charging out.  I think it is just the reality of seeing the price slowly fall over a long period of time that makes the sheep come home to pasteur.  I don't think the specific price on a given day causes it.  I am happy though the fall in price has been gradual and slow meaning there is still support out there.  I was worried the huge crash would run off all the bulls and we'd see things really drop.  I'm still buying and using coin now that the price is stable but not in large amounts as it continues to slowly slide down.

Also I only do local transactions now as I no longer trust any exchanges or believe in the need to pay useless fees.  I guess someone has to use them so we can quickly determine the value but, they must be people of real faith unlike me.

[batcoin]

...$200 will never, ever be seen again, and neither will $150. If it's as bad as it looks right now, $100 won't be seen for a long period of time either.

Um... You sound kinda like...



Just from the other side...

[Rampion]

I don't see so much bearishness in here. Until yesterday, it was denial in each and every post. Since the latest crash, a bit of fear, but just a bit. Go and check the November 2011 posts to see the difference - that's "bearishness".

The turning point will be when the number of posts actually declines consistently. When you will see people totally losing interest in Bitcoin, articles on mainstream media claiming Bitcoin is dead and a failed experiment... Well, that will be "very bearish".

Now I just read the cheering of a bunch of happy guys waiting for their cheap coins from one side, and the perma-bulls in denial from the other. Not a lot of negativity on BTC which would support the theory that the end of the bear market is nowhere close.

[Ivanhoe]

People back in 2011 didn't have a crash to compare with. There was a lot of uncertainty about Bitcoin surviving. This crash is different because a lot of people are selling to catch the bottom. It takes a lot more bad news for these people to rout from Bitcoin. If this bad news however will not come then we will see a rally again. I don't think we will reach the state of total despair again.

[Kazu]

SELL NOW and buy back at $17 which is the bottom of last crash.

But if everybody knows that...

BUY at $20!

But if everybody knows that...

etc...

It just depends how much money people are going to spend in order to guarantee that they won't accidentally miss the next rally.

[Miz4r]

I don't see so much bearishness in here. Until yesterday, it was denial in each and every post. Since the latest crash, a bit of fear, but just a bit. Go and check the November 2011 posts to see the difference - that's "bearishness".

The turning point will be when the number of posts actually declines consistently. When you will see people totally losing interest in Bitcoin, articles on mainstream media claiming Bitcoin is dead and a failed experiment... Well, that will be "very bearish".

Now I just read the cheering of a bunch of happy guys waiting for their cheap coins from one side, and the perma-bulls in denial from the other. Not a lot of negativity on BTC which would support the theory that the end of the bear market is nowhere close.

You're way too stuck on thinking about set stages like denial - fear - capitulation, like it just has to follow exactly that pattern. That's not reality imo, bitcoin will do its own thing and that may not be what you had in mind.

[vokain]

I don't see so much bearishness in here. Until yesterday, it was denial in each and every post. Since the latest crash, a bit of fear, but just a bit. Go and check the November 2011 posts to see the difference - that's "bearishness".

The turning point will be when the number of posts actually declines consistently. When you will see people totally losing interest in Bitcoin, articles on mainstream media claiming Bitcoin is dead and a failed experiment... Well, that will be "very bearish".

Now I just read the cheering of a bunch of happy guys waiting for their cheap coins from one side, and the perma-bulls in denial from the other. Not a lot of negativity on BTC which would support the theory that the end of the bear market is nowhere close.

You're way too stuck on thinking about set stages like denial - fear - capitulation, like it just has to follow exactly that pattern. That's not reality imo, bitcoin will do its own thing and that may not be what you had in mind.

don't forget, Keynesian beauty contest, something I learned about yesterday

Other, more explicit scenarios help to convey the notion of the beauty contest as a convergence to Nash Equilibrium. For instance in the p-beauty contest game (Moulin 1986), all participants are asked to simultaneously pick a number between 0 and 100. The winner of the contest is the person(s) whose number is closest to p times the average of all numbers submitted, where p is some fraction, typically 2/3 or 1/2. If p<1 the only Nash equilibrium solution is for all to guess 0. By contrast, in Keynes's formulation, p=1 and there are many possible Nash equilibria.

In play of the p-beauty contest game (where p differs from 1), players exhibit distinct, boundedly rational levels of reasoning as first documented in an experimental test by Nagel (1995). The lowest, 'Level 0' players, choose numbers randomly from the interval [0,100]. The next higher, 'Level 1' players believe that all other players are Level 0. These Level 1 players therefore reason that the average of all numbers submitted should be around 50. If p=2/3, for instance, these Level 1 players choose, as their number, 2/3 of 50, or 33. Similarly, the next higher 'Level 2' players in the 2/3-the average game believe that all other players are Level 1 players. These Level 2 players therefore reason that the average of all numbers submitted should be around 33, and so they choose, as their number, 2/3 of 33 or 22. Similarly, the next higher 'Level 3' players play a best response to the play of Level 2 players and so on. The Nash equilibrium of this game, where all players choose the number 0, is thus associated with an infinite level of reasoning. Empirically, in a single play of the game, the typical finding is that most participants can be classified from their choice of numbers as members of the lowest Level types 0, 1, 2 or 3, in line with Keynes' observation.

In another variation of reasoning towards the beauty contest, the players may begin to judge contestants based on the most distinguishable unique property found scarcely clustered in the group. As an analogy, imagine the beauty contest where the player is instructed to choose the most beautiful six faces out of a set of hundred faces. Under special circumstances, the player may ignore all judgment-based instructions in a search for the six most unique faces (interchanging concepts of high demand and low supply). Ironic to the situation, if the player finds it much easier to find a consensus solution for judging the six ugliest contestants, he may apply this property instead of beauty to in choosing six faces. In this line of reasoning, the player is looking for other players overlooking the instructions (which can often be based on random selection) to a transformed set of instructions only elite players would solicit, giving them an advantage. As an example, imagine a contest where contestants are asked to pick the two best numbers in the list: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 2345, 6435, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13}. All judgment based instructions can likely be ignored since by consensus two of the numbers do not belong in the set.

I really need to take that game theory course

[Rampion]

I don't see so much bearishness in here. Until yesterday, it was denial in each and every post. Since the latest crash, a bit of fear, but just a bit. Go and check the November 2011 posts to see the difference - that's "bearishness".

The turning point will be when the number of posts actually declines consistently. When you will see people totally losing interest in Bitcoin, articles on mainstream media claiming Bitcoin is dead and a failed experiment... Well, that will be "very bearish".

Now I just read the cheering of a bunch of happy guys waiting for their cheap coins from one side, and the perma-bulls in denial from the other. Not a lot of negativity on BTC which would support the theory that the end of the bear market is nowhere close.

You're way too stuck on thinking about set stages like denial - fear - capitulation, like it just has to follow exactly that pattern. That's not reality imo, bitcoin will do its own thing and that may not be what you had in mind.

I'm not saying that those are rules set in stone, but empyrical experience says that they quite accurately represent market psychology during a bubble. The 2011 bubble was very canonic, and this one so far too, especially in its inflation which has been fueled by speculative mania in its purest form.

Bitcoin was designed with characteristics that make it very prone to speculation and boom and bust cycles, and while the market is so tiny, its future so uncertain, these cycles mimic very well the typical speculative bubbles of some commodities and penny stock markets.

If the market contradicts me I will be extremely happy, because first and foremost I'm in Bitcoin because I believe is a revolutionary tool that could change the world for good. But in the meanwhile, I cannot help thinking this was a huge bubble that needs to fully deflate, just because most people is in this because they hope its value will be higher, and when the price halves several times people starts to panic and feel cheated, undervalues the asset, the bottom is reached and then the cycle restarts. It's like that 99% of the times, it was like that in 2011, and the most likely scenario its that it will be the same this time too.

[vokain]

I do agree it needs to deflate. Get the quivering get-rich-quick kids out of here, we're better off without 'em

[CurbsideProphet]

Is it just me projecting or do you also notice a big shift here? Only several weeks ago half of the forum was still openly bullish. Now I can barely find a bullish post. Sure the winkle ETF many like, but very few seem to think this will push up the price in the short term. Compare that to the chinese bitcoin documentary that was used by most that 'price will go up up up'.

I'm bearish myself but seeing so many agree I think chances become higher that it will actually go up the coming weeks.

Nah, ask any of us who were around after the first crash.  This is nothing, you'll know when it's capitulation, trust me.

[Crypt_Current]

I don't see so much bearishness in here. Until yesterday, it was denial in each and every post. Since the latest crash, a bit of fear, but just a bit. Go and check the November 2011 posts to see the difference - that's "bearishness".

The turning point will be when the number of posts actually declines consistently. When you will see people totally losing interest in Bitcoin, articles on mainstream media claiming Bitcoin is dead and a failed experiment... Well, that will be "very bearish".

Now I just read the cheering of a bunch of happy guys waiting for their cheap coins from one side, and the perma-bulls in denial from the other. Not a lot of negativity on BTC which would support the theory that the end of the bear market is nowhere close.

You're way too stuck on thinking about set stages like denial - fear - capitulation, like it just has to follow exactly that pattern. That's not reality imo, bitcoin will do its own thing and that may not be what you had in mind.

You're still in denial   

[BitChick]

I think that whenever the price drops people become more bearish and whenever it rises it becomes more bullish. 

I am bullish though.

This was some great news for Bitcoin taking off soon in Africa:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250027.0

[tokeweed]

Is it just me projecting or do you also notice a big shift here? Only several weeks ago half of the forum was still openly bullish. Now I can barely find a bullish post. Sure the winkle ETF many like, but very few seem to think this will push up the price in the short term. Compare that to the chinese bitcoin documentary that was used by most that 'price will go up up up'.

I'm bearish myself but seeing so many agree I think chances become higher that it will actually go up the coming weeks.

don't bet against the market.  there's only one indicator that can tell you what to do.  the price.