Track Record Forum Members

[RationalSpeculator]

Too many people here make bad calls, do not own up to them, and repeat. Following them is dangerous to your financial health.    

Hence why I'm starting a list with forum members that stand out negatively as well as positively for me.  

For bad calls they get a minus, for good calls a plus. I quote the call below for reference and say what the price did afterwards.

If you want someone to be added to the list, simply quote the call from this person in a new post below, and say what the price did afterwards to prove that it was a good or bad call.

Rampion: -1, +1, -1,
thezerg: +1, -1,
cypherdoc: +1, -1, +1, -1
doobadoo: +1
rpietila: +1, -1, +1
SlipperySlope: +1
Loozik: +1
Odalv: +1
Blitz: -1
molecular: +1
BrightAnarchist: -1, +1, +1, -1
masterluc (used to be Lucif): +1
adamstgBit: +1
Vycid: +1

[RationalSpeculator]

I'm considering selling all of mine at the market price of $175, and waiting to see what happens next. Its so hard to decide lol. What if it hits $200? etc.

You are in BTC because of fiat profits? SELL SELL SELL

You are in BTC because of freedom? HOLD HOLD HOLD

Every BTC sold goes from weak hands to stronger hands. Just do it!

Bad call by Rampion. After the market has gone up for many months in a row, parabolically, Rampion advises someone who considered selling at $175 to hold.

2 days later, on April 10th, the price peaked out at $266 and crashed to $105, only to end the day at $165.

It continued to go down the days after and bottomed around $50 only a week later.

[RationalSpeculator]

Waking up to see this ...another completely failed rally attempt... I think there might be some panic today
60's on their way soon ... have to say, I didn't think it would happen so quickly
What do you think Rampion and IAS ?

Well, I had a bid at $71ish that wasn't filled for a few cents (unfortunately, the bounce from $72 was very profitable for those who caught it), and I pulled it. Didn't catch it the first time, I won't be trying to catch a falling knife for the second time in the $70s for sure.

I may play a bounce in the $60s, but with a smallish position. Its risky.

I will for sure play the bounce from the $50ish with significant money, that its going to be nice action indeed.

I still see too much denial for the very bottom to be close, but it's also true that these forums are über-bullish by nature (its bitcointalk.org), so I don't really know how good indicator they are.

Bad call by Rampion. While price had been dropping for 3 weeks in a row coming from $110, and was now in the $70's Rampion thinks price will go down even more to $50's. He says he does not buy at current price around $70 and might buy a little in $60's.

Price dropped to only $65 that day July 5th and strongly recovered the days and weeks after to $111 by July 31st.

[hyphymikey]

A) Who cares?

B) Why not just make a thread that spotlights and praises people with a proven track record of making GOOD calls, instead of knocking down the ones who made bad guesses. I mean everyone here is just guessing when it comes to bitcoin anyway. You never know who is going to buy or sell, when, or how much.

EDIT: You shouldn't make your financial decision based on posts in this forum

[MAbtc]

Are you really going to do this because of that petty spat in lucif's thread? This a dick move, and frankly, it's pathetic. This forum is awash with bad predictions..... and you're going to make a thread about Rampion? Really uncalled for.

[RationalSpeculator]

Are you really going to do this because of that petty spat in lucif's thread? This a dick move, and frankly, it's pathetic. This forum is awash with bad predictions..... and you're going to make a thread about Rampion? Really uncalled for.

This is not related to that thread. I was wrong there and apologized to Rampion.

I don't think keeping track of people's calls is a dick move or pathetic.

We all do it automatically. I'd like to share my experience with others, and hope they will share theirs with me, so I can avoid people that are more wrong than right, and find the few diamonds in here.

I started using Rampion's calls as a contrarian indicator. Turning his calls upside down has definitely worked, as I prove here.


I do realise that those I call out here, might get angry or vengeful towards me. I'm sorry if I provoke those feelings but frankly I'm just quoting you and giving an objective price analyses.

I think it's important I do this as many have lost serious amounts of money here due to this practice, especially newbies.

I take Hulbert's report that documents past performance of newsletters and mutual funds as an example, as it has helped me a lot in knowing who to avoid, and who to follow. 

[RationalSpeculator]

A) Who cares?

B) Why not just make a thread that spotlights and praises people with a proven track record of making GOOD calls, instead of knocking down the ones who made bad guesses. I mean everyone here is just guessing when it comes to bitcoin anyway. You never know who is going to buy or sell, when, or how much.

EDIT: You shouldn't make your financial decision based on posts in this forum

A) I care
b) I'm planning to add a lot more people, also ones that made many good calls.

[RationalSpeculator]

153!

Short the shit out of this false breakout dudes like a boss! Dont be sheep, sell like a man.

Disclosure: Sold BTC772 at $153.

I'm following you my friend

This was a good call from both rpietila and Rampion.

Price peaked out that day at $166 and started falling the next day for weeks in a row to a low of $92 by May 4th.

[thezerg]

But its SOOO much more fun to make the call, have everybody ignore you and then laugh as you take their coinz! 

Posted when BTC was 87...

Hope all you newbie doomsayers got back in!    If not, well welcome to bitcoin and thanks for your coins.  Trading here requires a steady hand; its not for the faint of heart.  You can choose low volatility and inflation (USD), or high volatility and deflation (BTC) 

[RationalSpeculator]

But its SOOO much more fun to make the call, have everybody ignore you and then laugh as you take their coinz!  

Posted when BTC was 87...

Hope all you newbie doomsayers got back in!    If not, well welcome to bitcoin and thanks for your coins.  Trading here requires a steady hand; its not for the faint of heart.  You can choose low volatility and inflation (USD), or high volatility and deflation (BTC)  

Good call indeed, price continued to go up from $87 to $111 by July 31st.

Added you to the list.


However, I checked your post history and found this call also made by you on April 10th:

People, please keep in mind that a pullback is what the some investors are waiting for... to let exuberance pop.  The fundamental value and promise that underlies Bitcoin remains strong.  So hang onto your coins!

This was a bad call. Indeed price had swung widely that day from the all time high of $266 to $105, closing the day at $165. I'm guessing your call was around $130 when you gave the advice to hang onto your coins. However price dropped every day after that to a low of $50 by April 16th.  

Guess you didn't see that one coming   

[smoothie]

People already shouldn't be listening to speculation calls here as financial advice so technically they choose to do what they want and it's their risk. Seems pretty healthy to me. The weak hands let go for stronger hands to hold.

[Coinseeker]

How about a track record for the dumbest threads ever.

RationalSpeculator +1

[thezerg]

But its SOOO much more fun to make the call, have everybody ignore you and then laugh as you take their coinz!  

Posted when BTC was 87...

Hope all you newbie doomsayers got back in!    If not, well welcome to bitcoin and thanks for your coins.  Trading here requires a steady hand; its not for the faint of heart.  You can choose low volatility and inflation (USD), or high volatility and deflation (BTC)  

Good call indeed, price continued to go up from $87 to $111 by July 31st.

Added you to the list.


However, I checked your post history and found this call also made by you on April 10th:

People, please keep in mind that a pullback is what the some investors are waiting for... to let exuberance pop.  The fundamental value and promise that underlies Bitcoin remains strong.  So hang onto your coins!

This was a bad call. Indeed price had swung widely that day from the all time high of $266 to $105, closing the day at $165. I'm guessing your call was around $130 when you gave the advice to hang onto your coins. However price dropped every day after that to a low of $50 by April 16th.  

Guess you didn't see that one coming   

No, all I didn't see was the magnitude.  If you look at the post just before that one, I called a DDOS drop BEFORE the crash and recommend that people put in bids.  It may be a little unclear out of context (if you weren't trading at that point), but that post means to put bids in significantly BELOW the market price.  If you had sold around when I posted (to prepare for a DDOS buyback) the price would have been $230+ ($230 had some stability -- 260 was a hard-to-hit peak).  I bought back too early (due to the incredible lag you just had to guess what the price was going to be 15 minutes later when your trade actually made it through the queue) at $150 giving a profit of only $80 per coin.  When you want to lock in a profit, you err on the high side... and actually, my buys were staggered to catch the "DDOS" so I didn't do that well on every coin...

And as you can see by the post I was replying to, the price was already below $106 (probably FAR below given the velocity at that time).  I was essentially suggesting that people think really hard before selling below $90-100 -- and as you can tell by the words "fundamental value and promise" this was meant to be long term advice.  Judging by the oscillations in the next 6 months that has not been bad advice.

You can't quote a locked forum so here's the relevant profile page:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=55749;sa=showPosts;start=160


Let me raise you these (just quickly read the red and then you can go back and read the rest):

As many of us predicted  months ago, we seem to be in the lead-up to the halving where ask depth is drying up -- people are thinking "why not wait and see what happens?"   

So what will happen? 

Frankly, a lot of the volume on Gox seems to be due to short-term speculative action.  This is just the "fog of war"... but it cannot hide the fact that a much lower volume of long-term activity must be sequestering the 9600 BTC produced each day which is keeping the price stable above 10.  This long term activity is expected given the positive press and growing legitimacy of the currency.  So I believe that the blockchain halving is going to place a small but significant upwards pressure on the price, since there is clearly demand for 9600 a day but only half that many coins produced.

But its very possible that the lack of a pre-halving "breakout" will cause short-term speculators to dump some coins near the halving mark.  However, many of these speculators are going to be the sort that keeps fiat on gox for reinvestment.  So a dump near the halving is just $ that will be poured back into the next breakout. 

TL;DR; the bull breakout after the halving will be a big one...

I'm crossposting my analysis because I originally put it in a pretty obscure thread:

People know about it but are miners hoarding coins now waiting for the halving?  I don't think many are, its still too early.  They have bills to pay.  But if you were a miner, would you sell ANY coins 1 day before the drop?  Might as well wait to see what happens... how about 1 week before?  So expect no ask depth in the days leading up to the reward halving.

I keep reading on these forums that people think supply vs demand means a reward drop in half = a doubling of price.  But this assumes a linear x=y supply demand curve.  Depending on the flexibility of demand (i.e. gasoline is inflexible while M&Ms are very flexible) this could be very much not x=y, but x=100y or x=y/100.  To figure out what the curve really is, you have to ask yourself, how flexible is demand for BTC?


But the above argument is faulty.  It focuses on instantaneous supply.  But in fact the supply is not changing (well due to miners, it will change due to anticipatory hoarding), it is the RATE of supply increase that is changing (because bitcoins are not a consumable).  So a lack of supply on day 0 of reward halving cannot be fixed in the classical econ 101 manner by an increase in production tomorrow.  There will be a similar lack on day 1,2,3, etc.  The issue must be fixed by a reduction in demand. 

Given a constant economy, this reduction in demand can only be addressed by an increase in the price of BTC compared to other commodities.  In other words, until SR merchants, etc lower their prices in BTC to compensate for an increase in BTC price (or sell less product) we'll see a constant increase in price vs USD to meet existing demand.  And if the BTC economy is growing and currently balanced by the 50BTC reward, we'll see great pressure on the price due to lack of supply at 25BTC. 

The above is the normal negative feedback mechanism that keeps prices sane.  But if the BTC economy grows BECAUSE of an increase in BTC price (i.e. due to new interest from investors),  we could see an unsustainable positive feedback mechanism.  This will cause the hockey stick bitcoin price appreciation until the positive feedback switches back to negative (i.e. investors see BTC as overpriced).

So the block rate halving is more likely to affect (increase) the rate of long term appreciation of the value of a BTC, combined with a spike leading up to the reward halving could possibly (low chance) turn into a massive price appreciation event.  And then (regardless of whether we see a small spike or a big rise), we'll see a dump afterwards as the short term hoarding is sold.

A key question I asked here is why everyone thinks that the mining halving will result in only a 2x price appreciation?  Why do they think the supply demand curve was 45 degrees?  And it was not; it was more like 10x ($10 to $100) price appreciation.

Ok... all done patting myself on the back.  Glad I got that out of my system; it just bugs me that some guys get so much attention b/c they post a lot.  I won't be quoting myself any more. 

PS:  If you start following me, my own experience is that I am better at calling bottoms than tops -- that is, I don't call a top when I should.

[RationalSpeculator]

People already shouldn't be listening to speculation calls here as financial advice so technically they choose to do what they want and it's their risk. Seems pretty healthy to me. The weak hands let go for stronger hands to hold.

Indeed, people choose by their own risk who's opinion to value and who's opinion to ignore. I hope this thread helps them to make a better informed decision.

[RationalSpeculator]

However, I checked your post history and found this call also made by you on April 10th:

People, please keep in mind that a pullback is what the some investors are waiting for... to let exuberance pop.  The fundamental value and promise that underlies Bitcoin remains strong.  So hang onto your coins!

This was a bad call. Indeed price had swung widely that day from the all time high of $266 to $105, closing the day at $165. I'm guessing your call was around $130 when you gave the advice to hang onto your coins. However price dropped every day after that to a low of $50 by April 16th.  

Guess you didn't see that one coming  

No, all I didn't see was the magnitude.  If you look at the post just before that one, I called a DDOS drop BEFORE the crash and recommend that people put in bids.  It may be a little unclear out of context (if you weren't trading at that point), but that post means to put bids in significantly BELOW the market price.  If you had sold around when I posted (to prepare for a DDOS buyback) the price would have been $230+ ($230 had some stability -- 260 was a hard-to-hit peak).  I bought back too early (due to the incredible lag you just had to guess what the price was going to be 15 minutes later when your trade actually made it through the queue) at $150 giving a profit of only $80 per coin.  When you want to lock in a profit, you err on the high side... and actually, my buys were staggered to catch the "DDOS" so I didn't do that well on every coin...

And as you can see by the post I was replying to, the price was already below $106 (probably FAR below given the velocity at that time).  I was essentially suggesting that people think really hard before selling below $90-100 -- and as you can tell by the words "fundamental value and promise" this was meant to be long term advice.  Judging by the oscillations in the next 6 months that has not been bad advice.

You can't quote a locked forum so here's the relevant profile page:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=55749;sa=showPosts;start=160

Thanks for making your case.

I agree that you called the DDOS attack and I will take your word for it that it was around $230.
 
However, what did you do with it? Did you advise to sell around $230? No, you did not. Here is what you said:

looks like the DDOS is here, flash crash to come soon... hope you put in your bids!  Last chance for coins below 250...

So you advised to buy more on a possible correction, as you expected price to continue to go higher than $250 after the DDOS drop.

If one followed you and bought successfully more coins at say $150 that day he did not make any profit. In fact he just lost on the coins he already owned, and now increased his position. After that the price did not go back up to $250 but ended the day around $165. And continued to drop every day after that to a low of $50 a week later. So following your advise given, would have only increased the total loss.

That was a very bad call. Predicting an event about to happen correctly (DDOS) has no value if you got the big picture wrong (price will continue to go up after that, while it actually continued to go down) and the chosen course of action (buy more) makes you lose even more money.  


About your second call during the drop to hold.

On the first day of the crash, April 10th, according to bitcoincharts data, mtgox price did not go below $105. So it is impossible that the price was below that when you advised to hold. Please explain, preferable with supportive data! Until then I have to dismiss your comment about that and will continue to use the price of $130 to use as the price when you placed your advise to hold. Note that weighted price of that day was $180, so I'm being generous already I think.  

Advising to hold at $130 that day was the right call as the day ended at $165. However next day it dropped to $124 and continued to close lower every day after.

Today, 4 months later, there have only been a few weeks where holding at $130 was the right decision, all the others showed a loss. I don't look at the future here, only at the past to evaluate calls.

I think it is fair to say that overall it was a bad call to hold at $130 on March 10th.


Summarized, you predicting the DDOS drop and a sharp correction correctly was an accomplishment but advising to buy more if it would happen, and during the correction you advising to hold, were both bad calls. I will keep this as one bad call since it was the same time period, even same day.

I hope you succeed in the future to also get the big picture right (that the bull market was over and a bear market would start) and that you choose the right course of action so that you help yourself and others to reduce losses instead of increasing them.

I will evaluate your other calls from 2012 in a next post.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

I hope you succeed in the future to also get the big picture right (that the bull market was over and a bear market would start) and that you choose the right course of action so that you help yourself and others to reduce losses instead of increasing them.

You do realize that for someone to profit in trading, someone else has to lose, right?

[RationalSpeculator]

I hope you succeed in the future to also get the big picture right (that the bull market was over and a bear market would start) and that you choose the right course of action so that you help yourself and others to reduce losses instead of increasing them.

You do realize that for someone to profit in trading, someone else has to lose, right?

Yes. Why you ask?

[Spaceman_Spiff]

I hope you succeed in the future to also get the big picture right (that the bull market was over and a bear market would start) and that you choose the right course of action so that you help yourself and others to reduce losses instead of increasing them.

You do realize that for someone to profit in trading, someone else has to lose, right?

Yes. Why you ask?

It sounded like you were saying it was a holy mission to correctly predict the market, and everybody would profit from this.

EDIT: maybe, to the extent that trading could be useful (in providing information to the economy), correctly predicting price based on value fundamentals is the best thing that a trader can do.

[vssa]

Here is my calls 100% trend accuracy:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=238095.msg2530362#msg2530362
Called the 0.0055 Bottom on LTC/BTC-https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=157440.msg1667644#msg1667644
 Called the buy signal on 3.17.2013 at 48.15 -https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154119.msg1633552#msg1633552
 Called the correction from 49 to 33 -https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=149817.msg1591419#msg1591419
 Called the rally from 5.2 on 5.31.2012 -https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96878.msg1067596#msg1067596

[RationalSpeculator]

As many of us predicted  months ago, we seem to be in the lead-up to the halving where ask depth is drying up -- people are thinking "why not wait and see what happens?"   

So what will happen? 

Frankly, a lot of the volume on Gox seems to be due to short-term speculative action.  This is just the "fog of war"... but it cannot hide the fact that a much lower volume of long-term activity must be sequestering the 9600 BTC produced each day which is keeping the price stable above 10.  This long term activity is expected given the positive press and growing legitimacy of the currency.  So I believe that the blockchain halving is going to place a small but significant upwards pressure on the price, since there is clearly demand for 9600 a day but only half that many coins produced.

But its very possible that the lack of a pre-halving "breakout" will cause short-term speculators to dump some coins near the halving mark.  However, many of these speculators are going to be the sort that keeps fiat on gox for reinvestment.  So a dump near the halving is just $ that will be poured back into the next breakout. 

TL;DR; the bull breakout after the halving will be a big one...

I'm crossposting my analysis because I originally put it in a pretty obscure thread:

People know about it but are miners hoarding coins now waiting for the halving?  I don't think many are, its still too early.  They have bills to pay.  But if you were a miner, would you sell ANY coins 1 day before the drop?  Might as well wait to see what happens... how about 1 week before?  So expect no ask depth in the days leading up to the reward halving.

I keep reading on these forums that people think supply vs demand means a reward drop in half = a doubling of price.  But this assumes a linear x=y supply demand curve.  Depending on the flexibility of demand (i.e. gasoline is inflexible while M&Ms are very flexible) this could be very much not x=y, but x=100y or x=y/100.  To figure out what the curve really is, you have to ask yourself, how flexible is demand for BTC?


But the above argument is faulty.  It focuses on instantaneous supply.  But in fact the supply is not changing (well due to miners, it will change due to anticipatory hoarding), it is the RATE of supply increase that is changing (because bitcoins are not a consumable).  So a lack of supply on day 0 of reward halving cannot be fixed in the classical econ 101 manner by an increase in production tomorrow.  There will be a similar lack on day 1,2,3, etc.  The issue must be fixed by a reduction in demand. 

Given a constant economy, this reduction in demand can only be addressed by an increase in the price of BTC compared to other commodities.  In other words, until SR merchants, etc lower their prices in BTC to compensate for an increase in BTC price (or sell less product) we'll see a constant increase in price vs USD to meet existing demand.  And if the BTC economy is growing and currently balanced by the 50BTC reward, we'll see great pressure on the price due to lack of supply at 25BTC. 

The above is the normal negative feedback mechanism that keeps prices sane.  But if the BTC economy grows BECAUSE of an increase in BTC price (i.e. due to new interest from investors),  we could see an unsustainable positive feedback mechanism.  This will cause the hockey stick bitcoin price appreciation until the positive feedback switches back to negative (i.e. investors see BTC as overpriced).

So the block rate halving is more likely to affect (increase) the rate of long term appreciation of the value of a BTC, combined with a spike leading up to the reward halving could possibly (low chance) turn into a massive price appreciation event.  And then (regardless of whether we see a small spike or a big rise), we'll see a dump afterwards as the short term hoarding is sold.

A key question I asked here is why everyone thinks that the mining halving will result in only a 2x price appreciation?  Why do they think the supply demand curve was 45 degrees?  And it was not; it was more like 10x ($10 to $100) price appreciation.

A great call indeed. Price went up after the halving from $10 peaking out at $266 4 months later. Added a plus to your name and congrats on helping others make some serious money

That could well have been me included as I entered around that period, and also read many posts here and came to the same conclusion. So thanks for sharing at the time

Ok... all done patting myself on the back.  Glad I got that out of my system; it just bugs me that some guys get so much attention b/c they post a lot.  I won't be quoting myself any more. 

PS:  If you start following me, my own experience is that I am better at calling bottoms than tops -- that is, I don't call a top when I should.

If we can't get it from others, we must give it to ourselves. Love starts with self love.

I understand your frustration totally. It also irritates me seeing the regulars here barely responding to my posts while at the same time being all excited with people that basically make a joke of this speculation board. I seem to be unable to connect with most of them.

I also get the impression that you are good at calling bottoms but haven't succeeded yet in calling tops (though I only studied some posts of yours). Good to see you are aware of your strengths and weaknesses. I'm curious to see how you will do in the future.

Thank you for responding and nice meeting you thezerg

RS