I have seen many topic like "how to start trading", "what strange is good for trading" .... etc. I had same questions when i was a beginer like you and here i found this post on a blog. I think it's good for beginer and experts, please leave your comments here to help beginer. I hope it will be useful.
These are very useful points, tungaghd. I do think that you should have 1) attempted a little bit of an analysis of the points, 2) provided a link to the website in which you found them, in order to properly credit the author 3) pointed out that the strategies are general and not at all tailored to bitcoin trading and 4) even though the article suggests that it is targeted at "beginners" it is likely that most beginners would not be able to directly jump into such a set of strategies, so it would be likely that it would take some time for such real beginners to even understand and would rise to the level of advanced beginner once able to apply these listed concepts in real life.
Below, I am going to pick apart each of the strategies, and describe each of them in terms of my own few years of bitcoin-specific experiences, and hopefully peeps will find my further analysis and application to be helpful. I am going to mostly talk about bitcoin, because I believe that bitcoin is the strongest fundamentally of the cryptos, and that remains largely the reason that within cryptolandia, I have about 98% of my crypto related funds in bitcoin rather than other cryptos.
Here are 10 strategies on how to day trade for beginners:
1) Look for scenarios where supply and demand are drastically imbalanced, and use these as your entry points.
The financial markets are like anything else in life: if supply is near exhaustion and there are still willing buyers, price is about to go higher. If there is excess supply and no willing buyers, price will go down. At Online Trading Academy, students are taught to identify these turning points on a price chart and you can do the same by studying historical examples.
I agree that there is some value in attempting to analyze good values in an asset and if the asset is at a potentially low price point then it is good to buy such asset; however, it surely is not easy to accomplish the figuring out of such low price points, and sometimes, investors could lose opportunities to make a lot of money, especially in bitcoin, if they attempt to second guess whether BTC's prices are relatively low or high in respect to demand and price direction.
If you are a beginner, it remains good to establish a bitcoin accumulation phase. Surely, the more that you are convinced that BTC prices are relatively low, then you would buy more BTC at those price points. However, during a BTC accumulation, phase, you would establish such time frame - perhaps 6 months to 1 year, and then to establish your budget and invest on a regular basis as the price goes down and sell small amounts of your stash as the price goes up, while continuing to focus on your accumulation goals in light of your overall budget.
Once you accomplish your accumulation goals, then you can become more aggressive on selling a bit more, and perhaps sliding your scale in the direction that puts less emphasis on accumulation and more emphasis on maintenance. For example, with myself, I set my first BTC accumulation goal in bitcoin at six months when I got into bitcoin in November 2013, and then I extended my plan for an additional 6 months. At the end of the year, I had felt that I had largely attained my accumulation goals and then at that point went into maintenance of my stash, which continued to involve buying BTC on a regular basis, but I did not feel any dire need to buy large amounts of BTC because by that time, I concluded that I had largely established my overall BTC stake.
I believe that one of my mistakes in my first year of accumulation of BTC was my reluctance to sell any BTC while I was accumulating, and I think that this remains a common fear of a lot of new persons entering the space while they are in their BTC accumulation phase. I don't really have any answer for how to approach this tendency exactly, but beginners should keep such tendencies in mind in order that they can tailor their own approach to their own assessment of the situation in respect to their own finances and views of the matter.
2)Beginners should always set day trading price targets before jumping in.
If you’re buying a long position, decide in advance how much profit is acceptable as well as a stop-loss level if the trade turns against you. Then, stick by your decisions. This limits your potential loss and keeps you from being overly greedy if price spikes to an untenable level. Exception: in a strong market it’s acceptable to set a new profit goal and stop-loss level once your initial target is achieved.
I agree with the concept of having plans when you jump in, but I don’t think that beginners should be playing around with stop losses when they are just getting into an investment, especially in bitcoin or other cryptos. Stop losses tend to be ways that BIGGER players can trick newbies out of their bitcoins by forcing the price and causing your to sell your bitcoin after the BTC price has been manipulated down.
As I mentioned above, your goal in the beginning should be to accumulate a decent sized stash of bitcoin without gambling too much of your principle or what you have been establishing to be your bitcoin stash. Accordingly, most times we do not know BTC’s price direction, but if we establish our budget decently, we can buy more BTC when the prices go down, and sell a bit when we perceive th prices to be going up a lot or rapidly. We use the money from the BTC sales to buy back more BTC if the price dips back down, however, we sell a small enough amount of BTC as the price goes up (and our sales are always at prices and amounts that are higher than our purchase price) that we are not emotionally distraught in the event that BTC prices do not return below our sales price.
So, yes, I agree that it is good to establish a plan for price movements, but try not to play too big while you are in your accumulation phase – and similar principles will still apply when you gravitate towards maintenance, but by the time you reach maintenance you should have more money to work with and if you played your accumulation phase properly, you will be largely in profits or at least have a portion of your total portfolio that is in profits with which you can play a bit more risky.
3)Insist on a risk-reward ratio of at least 3:1 when setting your day trading targets.
One of the most important lessons in stock trading for beginners is to understand a proper risk-reward ratio. As the Online Trading Academy instructors point out, this allows you to “lose small and win big” and come out ahead even if you have losses on many of your trades. In fact, once you gain some experience, risk-reward ratios of as high as 5:1 or even higher may be attainable.
For me, this is a bit of a nonsensical point, even though I do understand that you want to wait for a certain threshold level of profits before you act, in order to make your efforts worth your time.
Personally, the way that I play is that I make sure that at least my trading fees are covered plus at least 1%, but sometimes if I feel that I make a mistake, I will go make a trade that just takes care of my trading fees or sometimes I might take a bit of a loss in order to reset up my stacking of orders.
Here is the gist of what I have done historically, that has played out very well for me. When I am first starting out, I set up buy orders increments that are comfortable for me that allow me to keep buying if the price goes down, so perhaps they may be every 1% price drop, in the beginning, because I am trying to get practice, and I am also establishing a system of stacking up my trade orders all the way down the price spectrum and all the way up the price spectrum so that I never run out of dollars and never run out of bitcoins no matter which way the price goes… so I become price neutral, to some extent, but largely the way I set up involves ongoing goals to accumulate bitcoins… with expectations that in the longer term, such as 5 years or more down the road, bitcoins are going to be worth more than I paid for them, and even perhaps a minimum of many percentages higher (6% per year or higher). Historically, we have received much greater returns in bitcoin, such as 78x between late 2015 and late 2017 or even 6x returns if you are just looking at early 2017 to present… so overall, without getting too greedy, I continue to maintain a presumption that BTC prices are going to higher in the future, and that a BTC accumulation strategy remains a strong one.. and attempting NOT to get tricked out of my coins based on various doom and gloom BTC price predictions that seem to be too frequently falsely spread in the space to attempt to get BTC accumulators to sell when the price goes down when in fact they should be buying based on already having had sold when the price had gone up, preceding the price fall.
4)Day trading requires patience, so be a patient trader.
Paradoxical though it may seem, successful day traders often don't trade every day. They may be in the market, at their computer, but if they don’t see any opportunities that meet their criteria they will not execute a trade that day. That’s a lot better than going against your own best judgment out of an impatient desire to “just do something.” Plan your trades, then trade your plan.
Actually, I agree that this is a fairly solid point, that you should let the price come to you, rather than rushing anything, but sometimes during slower price movement periods, you can engage in some reassessment of your position and reestablishing some of your buy or sell increments.. but frequently it may not be necessary to rush anything, even if you engage in some restructuring, you can still structure in a way that causes you to allow the price to come to your position before you do anything else.
5)Day trading also requires discipline, especially for beginners.
Beginners need to set a trading plan and stick to it. At Online Trading Academy, students execute live stock trades in the market under the guidance of a senior instructor until right decisions become second nature. If you’re trading on your own, impulsive behavior can be your worst enemy. Greed can keep you in a position for too long and fear can cause you to bail out too soon. Don’t expect to get rich on a single trade.
These points are largely true, and in the beginning you might be inclined to attempt to get rich quick, but instead your inclination should be to just practice and to get better at setting up your orders. Largely, I recall when I first started trading in 2015, the BTC price was in the $200s, so I would set my increments, for buying every $5 down and selling every $5 up with a spread of $10… I was getting a lot of practice, but my order sizes were so small that I would make less than $1 on each trade (and sometimes less than $.25), but with practice I continued to build up my amounts and my strategies and learned from some of my mistakes. When BTC prices rose to $19,666 in December 2017, my trade increments had surpassed $1k, but also my profits were much greater too. Currently, I have made some tweaks in my system based on BTC prices lowering into the $6k to $10k price territory, and sometimes my increments will be as low as the $200 arena and my spread between buy and sell is usually within the $500 to $1k arena… but sometimes might get smaller when I am tweaking, and if you are more of a beginner, you might set your increments and your spread much smaller in order to get more practice and use small amounts that do not cause you to get too emotionally attached while you are practicing, while at the same time, you might still be in the accumulation phase and setting some bigger amounts that help you to accumulate BTC, simultaneously.
By the way, over the years I have become less emotionally attached to any kind of feeling that I am selling too much BTC because tend to stay within parameters that I have established for myself, which is only to sell BTC on the way up and to usually sell within 1% to 2% of my BTC value for every 10% BTC price rise, which I can tweak towards one end or th other end of the range based on how I am feeling about the future price direction and the same can be true for buying ohn the way down and considering the extent to wait longer or to buy in increments without attempting to project with some kind of specificity how much cash or BTC that you have to be able to spread out your buys or your sells in the event of extreme price movements, which we have found to take place in BTClandia.
6)Don’t be afraid to push the “order” button and execute your trades.
Novice day traders often face “paralysis by analysis” because they get wrapped up in watching the candles and the Level 2 columns on their screen and can’t act quickly when opportunity presents itself. If you’re disciplined and work your plan, actually placing the order should be automatic. If you’re wrong, your stops will get you out without major damage.
I agree, and playing with small amounts while working your way up can help, but somtimes BTC price movements can cause questioning of whether your own strategy needs to be tweaked to account for some aspects of your BTC price movement expectations.
7)Only day trade with money you can afford to lose.
Successful traders have a “little bucket” of risk capital and a “big bucket” of money they’re saving for retirement or another long-term goal. Big bucket money tends to be invested more conservatively and in longer-duration positions. It’s not absolutely forbidden to use this money occasionally for a day trade, but the odds should be very high in your favor.
Yes.. well said, and you can establish a pot of capital that continues to grow that is within your trading portfolio – however, you should also have your cash flow planning that covers you for 6 to 18 months in order that you know that you do not have to dip into your bitcoin investment for living expenses, unless you are strategically planning to withdraw parts of it at times that you plan ahead.. for example, building up enough of a cash reserve to pull some out, or cashing out a bit of a higher amount at certain price points in order to “take profits” and to remove from your investment funds.
8)Never risk too much capital on one trade.
Set a percentage of your total day trading budget (which might be anywhere from 2% to 10%, depending on how much money you have) and don’t allow the size of your position to exceed it. Otherwise, you may miss out on an even better opportunity in the market.
This is true, too. I frequently deal with trade amounts that are much less than 1% of my portfolio value, and if I am feeling confident, I may go up a few percent, but it would be pretty rare that I would even exceed 5% unless I had preplanned that at certain price points or price movements or events would justify such an extreme bet, for me… I am considering myself not to be gambling, but instead to have a system that has really high chances of making money on an incremental basis by accumulating BTC in the long term expecting the BTC price to rise that is the bulk of my potential to “get rich.”
9)Don’t limit day trading to stocks.
Forex, futures and options are three asset classes that display volatility and liquidity just like stocks, making them ideal for day trading. And often one of them will present appealing opportunities on a day when the stock market is going nowhere.
Yes, we see here that this advice is tailored towards traditional market trading.
Certainly, I am not opposed to diversification of risk through various asset classes.. but once we get to crypto currencies, I don’t really see any compelling need to diversify beyond bitcoin.. or that there is any need to trade other assets, besides bitcoin. With my particular system, I sense that selling BTC on the way up, causes a bit of insurance for downside price movements and a way to profit from seemingly inevitable and considerably high volatility. Accordingly, bitcoin is already a risky investment, and even though there continues to be potential to make profits by getting involved in various alt coins in the short term, from my point of view, only bitcoin really matters or has any real long term and meaningful potential.
If your presumptions differ and you happen to believe that some of the alt coins have longer term value or at least you can profit from them in the short term, then, sure, you might want to apply some similar trading and accumulation strategies with them. On the other hand, if you do not have confidence in the longer term performance of various alt coins, then your plan should involve figuring out strategic points to cash out of them rather than accumulating them.
10)Don’t second-guess yourself, but do learn from experience.
Every day trader has losses, so don’t kick yourself when the occasional trade doesn’t go your way, especially if you're a beginner. Do, however, confirm that you followed your established day trading rules and didn’t get in or out at the wrong time.
Yes. I largely agree with this point about learning from your experience, and frequently, you will lock yourself into a plan, but sometimes, from time to time, you do need to make adjustment to the plans. However, for the most part when you tweak your plan, in various ways, you should not be deviating in considerable degrees.
For example, when BTC prices rose to $19,666 in December, and then dropped back down to $14k and then ultimately lower, when prices dropped down to $14k, we did not now that they were going to continue to drop, so at that time, it is not necessarily a smart move to sell at that time, but instead better to buy or to just hold off on buying and wait… Others are going to sell at that time and then profit from such move, but that is not something that I would attempt to time, so for me, I rather lock in more gradual accumulation rather than to deviate from my system. Of course, others are going to come to differing conclusions that may or may not work for them in them in the long run.. yet overall, it will be best to tailor for yourself, learn from your experience and to tweak your plan to the extent that such tweaking makes you more comfortable to continue to have a plan for either price direction and to even prepare for price movements that go much beyond your expectations (which does seem to frequently happen in bitcoin).
