Black Swan on MTGOX

[Nefario]

I have a few bitcoins on mtgox, and for the last few weeks have been playing it to reasonable success, in total I had made a profit of some 5 bitcoins until today.

I had expected the drop in btc price to continue until something had changed the market, a new service with bitocoin or some bit piece of news.

Last night I set a sell at a little over $0.80, and a buy at $0.76. On arriving today I see that I did indeed have that sell order filled, only to find the price has jumped through $0.84

Why oh why???

And then I see it, my Black Swan, the slashdot article.

But I ask "wait a second, slashdotters can't have gotten funds into mtgox that quick" and realised that it was those evil speculators who are responsible for this rise 

Anyway, I'm holding on to my cash until the price drops down to at least $0.80, no sir I'm no solidifying my losses.

In the short term, unless there is a huge influx of new users(buyers) into bitcion or the market has something that seriously changes things then I expect the price to continue to fall.

Want to prove me wrong? Offer some more goods or services for bitcoin to grow the economy!

[1714154369]

1714154369

[GCInc.]

Hello I went to search for "My Black Swan" but that's obviously not what you mean. Are you talking about the old Slashdot article or something else?

[dsg]

I've seen silk road has been mentioned in several places (*chan boards and reddit) in the past few days. While it's always hard to pin a reason for an increase or decrease in price, it wouldn't surprise me if this was related.

Regardless of your views on the trade that goes on there, that is a market with a lot of demand, where bitcoins have a clear advantage over other currencies.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Hello I went to search for "My Black Swan" but that's obviously not what you mean. Are you talking about the old Slashdot article or something else?

I don't know about any Slashdot article, but I'm guessing Nefario was referring to Taleb's Black swan theory.

[Nefario]

Hello I went to search for "My Black Swan" but that's obviously not what you mean. Are you talking about the old Slashdot article or something else?

I don't know about any Slashdot article, but I'm guessing Nefario was referring to Taleb's Black swan theory.

It's th new slashdot article http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/03/23/0210207/Google-Engineer-Releases-Open-Source-Bitcoin-Client

Yes I was talking about the black swan theory.

Essentially, I had my plan for speculating, and providing no big events came along then it would work, but this slashdot article has become something of a blackswan event for me, causing the market to rally, and for my sell order to be fullfilled before I could react, and now have to wait for btc to fall if ever to break even.

[Grinder]

If something has happened several times before and has a fairly predictable result it isn't a black swan.

[Nefario]

If something has happened several times before and has a fairly predictable result it isn't a black swan.

I wasn't expecting it. Personal black swan 

[Hal]

The buy-low-sell-high game only works when the market is trading in a narrow range. But you can't expect it to stay that way forever.