Newbie question

[sodapop89]

Hi Everyone,
I'm new to bitcoin and trying to learn as much as possible before jumping in. I have a question hopefully someone can help. It might sound stupid but here it goes. I join a simplefx to trade bitcoin on their demo exchange and it's a little confusing. The goal with trading that im reading says to buy low and sell high. Well on the simplefx trading screen the buy price is always higher then the sell price. For example: sell price 16460.20 and buy price is 16640.45. These fluctuate but the buy never goes lower then the sell price. If this is the case I'd buy and never be able to sell lower than what i paid for. I take it im missing something here. Hopefully someone can explain this to me please. thank you

[Queen12]

I think this is probably a list of some of the machines on the transaction website, which is a fake transaction record

[sodapop89]

Thanks for replying Queen12, I'm starting to think the site isn't working correct cause it doesn't make sense to me. Hopefully I could find another demo site that is less confusing.

[franky1]

the buy is always higher.

if it was the other way round people would buy and instantly sell for guaranteed profit. no one would ever lose

trading works by you buying at a price and waiting for the overall value to increase, whereby the new price would allow you to sell.
EG
day 1: buy:16640.45. sell price 16460.20
day 2: buy:16940.45. sell price 16760.20

buy 1btc on day1 and sell it on day2 = $119.75 profit

that said most FX platforms are not actually trading real bitcoins but just playing around with a database they own with numbers they input.
if you cannot deposit or withdraw bitcoins and your only able to deposit and withdraw fiat while only 'playing' with a cough btc cough price on their platform. stay away from it. its not real

its like boiler room gambling on racehorses without actually buying a ticket
its like boiler room gambling on stocks/shares without actually buying a certificate

[sodapop89]

Thanks Franky, I appreciate the advice. At the moment I'm looking at  a guy on youtube trading bitcoin and he is on gdax and there is only one price fluctuating and he is buying low and selling high. I think this is the way it suppose to go. If im correct I don't see a buy and sell price, he is just buying as it flucates in price and when it goes higher then what he paid, he sells.

[franky1]

gdax does have 2 prices.
see their charts.. red and green bid and ask buy and sell

ignore values in screenshot. its an old image from google search i used as example. but on the left you can see there is a 29cent difference between the buy and sell

[sodapop89]

Yup thats correct he was just stating that now. Its less confusing when I see on gdax then simplefx. Just curious have you ever day traded cryptocurrency. I'm seeing there is quite a bit to learn.

[franky1]

Yup thats correct he was just stating that now. Its less confusing when I see on gdax then simplefx. Just curious have you ever day traded cryptocurrency. I'm seeing there is quite a bit to learn.

yes i have
another tip

if you have lets say 1btc. dont throw it all on one order

only make orders of 0.1btc for instance.
if the price drops you then have 9 other opportunities to buy more CHEAPER.
instead of having no funds and just crying and waiting for the rise before you can trade again, knowing you missed oppertunities

as they say never put all your eggs into one basket

..
other tip. dont wait around for 10-100% profit before selling.
add up the commission(fee) cost of buying and selling..
add that onto the buy price. then add on 1% of that total to give you a suggested sell price with 1% profit

its easier to make 10x 1% profit in a faster time than waiting for 1x10% profit

last tip..
never sell at a loss.. thats what the other 0.9btc is for. to BUY at a price drop treating it as a good discount day. not to sell at a loss treating it as a day to cry

[HabBear]

The goal with trading that im reading says to buy low and sell high. Well on the simplefx trading screen the buy price is always higher then the sell price.

The goal of trading is to buy low and sell high. Meaning you buy today at what you believe is a low price d then you sell on some other day in the future at a price that is higher than your purchase price.

You will always see the buy price higher than the sell price at a single point in time from the same broker. Why? Because this difference in price represents the spread within the transaction that the broker or exchange gets to keep. That's how exchanges make money.

[Jah23]

Newbie here...please help