Challenge: if you really are a guru, post trades in real time

[Alonzo Ewing]

Lots of people on here act like gurus, writing stuff like, "I bought at this price and sold at that price.  Look at how badass I am".

Here's a real challenge:  post trades in real time.  It's much hard to bullshit others that way. 

Further, it would make for a much better Speculation forum as the real gurus would separate from the wannabes.

[podyx]

good thread!

lets see who the real playas are

[MAbtc]

If you pay attention, some do post their positions beforehand. Others don't. I don't take the latter very seriously.

[Alonzo Ewing]

Some additional thoughts:

1) It would be nice to post positions as amounts and prices, but many people won't post amounts due to privacy concerns.

2) People should bold the actual trades, and leave the rest of the prediction/analysis/justification in normal text.  Something like:

"I just bought 20 BTC @ $620.  I think with the news of NY State accepting applications for exchanges, the price should go up because this will create an easy way for Wall Street to get into the game."

(Note that I didn't buy anything--just an example)

[chessnut]

All in BTC. Expect it to break 700 this week or next week at the latest.

Im not going to expect that, but I'd agree that the time has come to HODL. my last trade was a small loss, sold at 640, saw the price drop to 605, and then I closed my position at 642 lol. I had been right on the short side every time before then, I think maybe Bitcoin is back!

[theonewhowaskazu]

Right now I'm long BTC. By long I mean leveraged long to minimize the amount of BTC that needs to be on the exchange. Opened position at $629.XX when I saw the $630 walls falling.

[TERA]

Just in time for when many of us are going to quit trading and go into offline for a few months.

[aminorex]

Information leak can only hurt one's competitive position.

[arepo]

Information leak can only hurt one's competitive position.

this. game theory, guys.

[seleme]

Information leak can only hurt one's competitive position.

this. game theory, guys.

No way. If one is good, he can only gain following to help him to move the market where he wants it, at least a bit.

[alexeft]

Lots of people on here act like gurus, writing stuff like, "I bought at this price and sold at that price.  Look at how badass I am".

Here's a real challenge:  post trades in real time.  It's much hard to bullshit others that way. 

Further, it would make for a much better Speculation forum as the real gurus would separate from the wannabes.

Buy now, HODL forever!

[zoinky]

Are you still a guru if you share what you are doing?  Isn't one of the guru rules is don't trade and tell?

[arepo]

Information leak can only hurt one's competitive position.

this. game theory, guys.

No way. If one is good, he can only gain following to help him to move the market where he wants it, at least a bit.

i'm fairly confident that (in general) any price manipulation would be costly, not profitable.

your scenario is discussed in the section titled "The Trading Metagame". the example i used is manipulating trading signals in indicators, but the analysis is relevant to any method that relies on inducing a certain action by other traders.

the take-away is that while this kind of manipulation may be able to yield profits in the short-term, it is unstable. that is, it cannot be performed consistently to yield profits.

--arepo

[Bitcoin BEAR]

How about if you ran an exchange that pretended to exchange bitcoins, when in reality it had much less btc and fiat to sustain the operation. Add on the fact that at one time, your exchange dominated the worldwide transaction volume. Also, other exchanges closely followed your prices in an attempt at reducing an apparent arbitrage.

How costly would it be to manipulate the market then?

Such an exchange would likely have huge amounts of users who have huge amounts of coins to sell into your buying, so it would likely be very costly

Edit:
In the end, should this exchange file bankruptcy for whatever reason, they would pay the ultimate cost

[oda.krell]

Information leak can only hurt one's competitive position.

this. game theory, guys.

No way. If one is good, he can only gain following to help him to move the market where he wants it, at least a bit.

i'm fairly confident that (in general) any price manipulation would be costly, not profitable.

your scenario is discussed in the section titled "The Trading Metagame". the example i used is manipulating trading signals in indicators, but the analysis is relevant to any method that relies on inducing a certain action by other traders.

the take-away is that while this kind of manipulation may be able to yield profits in the short-term, it is unstable. that is, it cannot be performed consistently to yield profits.

--arepo

The problem with your argument, as with so many game theoretic derivations, is that it assumes a "static" setup, and then derives conclusions that are correct for the simplified setup, but not necessarily for reality. In the case under discussion here, I could construct a "meta meta" game where, given enough time, effort and actual ingenuity you could create a flock of followers with an account that allows you to exploit their group behavior, while also keeping track of diminishing returns. Once you become convinced other are onto you, you continue the game with a new account, with a new set of "followers". The previous is not so much a practical suggestion (if you are good enough to gather followers that easy you probably don't need to manipulate to make consistent profits), but to point out that the conclusions drawn in many GT derivations based on a finite set of premises can rather easily be picked apart.

[arepo]

The problem with your argument, as with so many game theoretic derivations, is that it assumes a "static" setup, and then derives conclusions that are correct for the simplified setup, but not necessarily for reality. In the case under discussion here, I could construct a "meta meta" game where, given enough time, effort and actual ingenuity you could create a flock of followers with an account that allows you to exploit their group behavior, while also keeping track of diminishing returns. Once you become convinced other are onto you, you continue the game with a new account, with a new set of "followers". The previous is not so much a practical suggestion (if you are good enough to gather followers that easy you probably don't need to manipulate to make consistent profits), but to point out that the conclusions drawn in many GT derivations based on a finite set of premises can rather easily be picked apart.

your argument is sound. there isn't much more to be said of the various metastrategies involving inducing other market participants to make a certain action other than the fact that they are unstable. you point out that if you are able to pull off such a dynamic strategy then it is at least feasible to profit from it, however you're doing far more than simple market manipulation at this point. i suppose the limits of my argument are to simply state that the idea that "market manipulation = profits" is not sound under basic game-theoretic formulations of the trading game.

edit: also deriveable from my original argument is that this metastrategy is more unstable the more efficient the market is. as such, there is a hard limit to the profitability of the dynamic metastrategy imposed by the cleverness of the other participants enforcing efficiency.

--arepo

[oda.krell]

The problem with your argument, as with so many game theoretic derivations, is that it assumes a "static" setup, and then derives conclusions that are correct for the simplified setup, but not necessarily for reality. In the case under discussion here, I could construct a "meta meta" game where, given enough time, effort and actual ingenuity you could create a flock of followers with an account that allows you to exploit their group behavior, while also keeping track of diminishing returns. Once you become convinced other are onto you, you continue the game with a new account, with a new set of "followers". The previous is not so much a practical suggestion (if you are good enough to gather followers that easy you probably don't need to manipulate to make consistent profits), but to point out that the conclusions drawn in many GT derivations based on a finite set of premises can rather easily be picked apart.

your argument is sound. there isn't much more to be said of the various metastrategies involving inducing other market participants to make a certain action other than the fact that they are unstable. you point out that if you are able to pull off such a dynamic strategy then it is at least feasible to profit from it, however you're doing far more than simple market manipulation at this point. i suppose the limits of my argument are to simply state that the idea that "market manipulation = profits" is not sound under basic game-theoretic formulations of the trading game.

edit: also deriveable from my original argument is that this metastrategy is more unstable the more efficient the market is. as such, there is a hard limit to the profitability of the dynamic metastrategy imposed by the cleverness of the other participants enforcing efficiency.

--arepo

good point. but keep in mind, the discussion started because someone wondered why anyone would "share" his privileged information status. the answer was: to profit from predictable reactions your information sharing causes... but for that to be the justification, one only needs to believe it to be profitable to do so (marginally even, maybe), it does not necessarily have to be significantly profitable.

Probably runs down to the question how efficient you believe the market, and how rational you believe market participants, to be. I don't have such high opinions of either of the two (and that includes myself, by the way :D)

[Alonzo Ewing]

Lets see it OP. Post your entire trading history

I'm not a trader, but I am a speculator.  My original buy price is $120ish.  Actually, my original original buy price was $12 but those coins were stolen.  So my current buy price is $120.  Regardless, the spirit of this thread isn't about what someone has done in the past, as that's easy to fake.  It's about posting in real time.

I don't plan on selling any time soon.  But when I do, I will post it here as I do.

[sgbett]

The problem with your argument, as with so many game theoretic derivations, is that it assumes a "static" setup, and then derives conclusions that are correct for the simplified setup, but not necessarily for reality. In the case under discussion here, I could construct a "meta meta" game where, given enough time, effort and actual ingenuity you could create a flock of followers with an account that allows you to exploit their group behavior, while also keeping track of diminishing returns. Once you become convinced other are onto you, you continue the game with a new account, with a new set of "followers". The previous is not so much a practical suggestion (if you are good enough to gather followers that easy you probably don't need to manipulate to make consistent profits), but to point out that the conclusions drawn in many GT derivations based on a finite set of premises can rather easily be picked apart.

your argument is sound. there isn't much more to be said of the various metastrategies involving inducing other market participants to make a certain action other than the fact that they are unstable. you point out that if you are able to pull off such a dynamic strategy then it is at least feasible to profit from it, however you're doing far more than simple market manipulation at this point. i suppose the limits of my argument are to simply state that the idea that "market manipulation = profits" is not sound under basic game-theoretic formulations of the trading game.

edit: also deriveable from my original argument is that this metastrategy is more unstable the more efficient the market is. as such, there is a hard limit to the profitability of the dynamic metastrategy imposed by the cleverness of the other participants enforcing efficiency.

--arepo

good point. but keep in mind, the discussion started because someone wondered why anyone would "share" his privileged information status. the answer was: to profit from predictable reactions your information sharing causes... but for that to be the justification, one only needs to believe it to be profitable to do so (marginally even, maybe), it does not necessarily have to be significantly profitable.

Probably runs down to the question how efficient you believe the market, and how rational you believe market participants, to be. I don't have such high opinions of either of the two (and that includes myself, by the way )

sounds like game-theory-ception

how about i share cos i don't care*.

im all in BTC. as ever. hold as much as I can at all times. sell a bit when it goes crazy. buy a bit when it looks bottomy.

(*dont think it makes any material difference to the outcome)

[Bit_Happy]

Does this include alt/BTC?
Many of the coins on Cryptsy are down ~90% and some are a strong buy.

[TERA]

Bought dogecoin @126

[chessnut]

Just shorted LTCBTC at 0.0315. looking to hold.

[seleme]

Does this include alt/BTC?
Many of the coins on Cryptsy are down ~90% and some are a strong buy.

shhhhhhh 

[derpinheimer]

Does this include alt/BTC?
Many of the coins on Cryptsy are down ~90% and some are a strong buy.

shhhhhhh 

I concur. Let me load up on, uh.. Mooncoin (not really) before you spill the beans.

[TERA]

bought 500ltc at .0318.
sold 300ltc at .0328
bought 500ltc at .0307

this all happened in the past 15 minutes or so...

[Bit_Happy]

High risk / HUGE reward
bought meow at 3
sold MEOW at 4
33% profit in under 2 hours
https://www.cryptsy.com/markets/view/149

[chessnut]

Just shorted 120 LTC/USD @ $20.00 USD

[Alonzo Ewing]

Just shorted 120 LTC/USD @ $20.00 USD

Now that is both ballsy and in the transparent spirit of this thread. I applaud you, sir.

[TERA]

bought 300ltc at .0296

[chessnut]

Just shorted 120 LTC/USD @ $20.00 USD

Now that is both ballsy and in the transparent spirit of this thread. I applaud you, sir.

=D thanks. update, I bought back at 19.03 for an easy profit, and I'll short any LTC that dares to come within reach of 20 ever again =P

[chessnut]

enough playing with LTC, back to BTC. I shorted 4.3 BTC on BItfinex @ $614. Im looking to take profit at 560-580 within 40 hours.

[TERA]

after watching the ltc swings i wonder why the hell i trade btc/usd. it all started with ltc for me btw. my first 500% of profit was ltc trading., maybe i should go back

[chessnut]

after watching the ltc swings i wonder why the hell i trade btc/usd. it all started with ltc for me btw. my first 500% of profit was ltc trading., maybe i should go back

+1..... today was a bloody and delightful day for litecoin. I wonder if it was 100% huobi hype. Hype does not come around every day though. I feel more comfortable trading bitcoin.

[RicePicker]

enough playing with LTC, back to BTC. I shorted 4.3 BTC on BItfinex @ $614. Im looking to take profit at 560-580 within 40 hours.

I think you just shorted the coins I just bought =P

[chessnut]

enough playing with LTC, back to BTC. I shorted 4.3 BTC on BItfinex @ $614. Im looking to take profit at 560-580 within 40 hours.

I think you just shorted the coins I just bought =P

oh dear what will the night bring. one of us had to lose 

[1Pakis]

Code:

LTC/BTC	buy	3 LTC	0.02899 BTC	0.08697 BTC	19.03.14 12:07
LTC/BTC	buy	107 LTC	0.02899 BTC	3.10193 BTC	19.03.14 12:07
LTC/BTC	sell	65.1907 LTC	0.03377 BTC	2.20148993 BTC	19.03.14 09:48
LTC/BTC	sell	31.7796 LTC	0.03379 BTC	1.07383268 BTC	19.03.14 09:48
LTC/BTC	sell	3.02976 LTC	0.0338 BTC	0.10240588 BTC	19.03.14 09:48

profit ~9.8LTC and ~0.17 BTC

[chessnut]

Code:

LTC/BTC	buy	3 LTC	0.02899 BTC	0.08697 BTC	19.03.14 12:07
LTC/BTC	buy	107 LTC	0.02899 BTC	3.10193 BTC	19.03.14 12:07
LTC/BTC	sell	65.1907 LTC	0.03377 BTC	2.20148993 BTC	19.03.14 09:48
LTC/BTC	sell	31.7796 LTC	0.03379 BTC	1.07383268 BTC	19.03.14 09:48
LTC/BTC	sell	3.02976 LTC	0.0338 BTC	0.10240588 BTC	19.03.14 09:48

profit ~9.8LTC and ~0.17 BTC

nice haul!

[koryu]

just bought

49.1 ltc for 1.42btc ~ 0.0289
and another
32 ltc for 1btc ~0.0307

[TERA]

sold 200ltc @ .0313 ( a while ago)

bought 500ltc @ .03

sold 700ltc @ .0304

Now I'm out of my over-extended daytrading position and back into something I'm willing to hold for the daily charts.

[chessnut]

sold 200ltc @ .0313 ( a while ago)

bought 500ltc @ .03

sold 700ltc @ .0304

Now I'm out of my over-extended daytrading position and back into something I'm willing to hold for the daily charts.

you are holding short 700 LTCBTC?? very nice. That idea occurred to me in the rush fro $21-17.8, but I am focused on BTC.

I think you will be well rewarded.

[TERA]

sold 200ltc @ .0313 ( a while ago)

bought 500ltc @ .03

sold 700ltc @ .0304

Now I'm out of my over-extended daytrading position and back into something I'm willing to hold for the daily charts.

you are holding short 700 LTCBTC?? very nice. That idea occurred to me in the rush fro $21-17.8, but I am focused on BTC.

I think you will be well rewarded.

No I'm not short. I'm trading on btce actually.

At one point tonight I had 1450ltc. Now I only have 600LTC.

[oda.krell]

after watching the ltc swings i wonder why the hell i trade btc/usd. it all started with ltc for me btw. my first 500% of profit was ltc trading., maybe i should go back

Question (since you seem know your stuff)... how does LTC handle volume? I didn't trade any alts yet, always thinking 'probably too much slippage to be worth my while', but from what I can tell you don't trade in tiny volume either. Is it worth it? (I'm aware, asking another trader if he thinks I should trespass into his territory :D ... just think of me as another pig that can be slaughtered)

[BitCoinsLOL]

Your Recent Trades

TIME   TYPE   PRICE   POT   TOTAL   FEE   NET TOTAL
2014-03-19 00:16:19   BUY   0.00001420   229.74715911   0.00326241   0.00000489   0.00326730
2014-03-19 00:12:08   BUY   0.00001420   50.44586122   0.00071633   0.00000107   0.00071740

I will post when I sell hopefully on 4/20. I know it's a lame trade just wanted to get in on the action.

[TERA]

after watching the ltc swings i wonder why the hell i trade btc/usd. it all started with ltc for me btw. my first 500% of profit was ltc trading., maybe i should go back

Question (since you seem know your stuff)... how does LTC handle volume? I didn't trade any alts yet, always thinking 'probably too much slippage to be worth my while', but from what I can tell you don't trade in tiny volume either. Is it worth it? (I'm aware, asking another trader if he thinks I should trespass into his territory ... just think of me as another pig that can be slaughtered)

This is why I trade ltc on btc-e. btc-e is like mtgox for litecoin (when gox was still big). When I was trading last night (morning), the volume was:
ltc/btc: 600,000LTC / 20,000BTC
ltc/usd: 1,200,000LTC / 2,400,000USD

So the total volume was about 1,800,000LTC.

This is actually low for a litecoin rally day. On previous days, volume has been as high as 5 - 10 million LTC.  That is why it crashed.

[TERA]

Adding 3 million dogs at 128

[chessnut]

Taking profit from my LTCBTC short.

further shorting BTCUSD by 7 BTC between at an average of 610.

[TERA]

I opened a short on bfx at $610 to cover the coins I sent to btce. I don't feel like selling there for some reason. I might move them to cold storage.

[chessnut]

does anyone else think it's time for a LTCUSD upswing/correction? I do. I will be looking to short heavily at 19.5 if it gets there.

[RyNinDaCleM]

does anyone else think it's time for a LTCUSD upswing/correction? I do. I will be looking to short heavily at 19.5 if it gets there.

There are divergences present in the charts. I do not see $19.5 happening but If I'm wrong, then I'll just make more profit, so we'll see

Edit:
Oh and BTW, I picked up a few million dogs in the 120's looking for 300's+ to exit

[oda.krell]

Sold ~1/5 of my on-exchange BTC @590-595

[TERA]

I've come to the realization that doge now has 3% of the volume of that it had when I first started trading it and I should probably stop trading it until that changes.

[koryu]

just bought

49.1 ltc for 1.42btc ~ 0.0289
and another
32 ltc for 1btc ~0.0307

sold the ltc @ 17.30$ last night. lost a bit of the bubble profit with this trade.  

full fiat atm.

ltc market looks bearish short term. on huobi 10k ltc bid walls just disappear before price reach them, its fake support.

but not confident with btc either.

[chessnut]

just bought 250 LTC @ $16.93 USD - looking to hold for 24 hours or less.


EDIT LOL got raped on that one but luckily still holding 7 BTC shots so all good.

[nick32768]

Just placed a buy order at 530.17 to close my short positiion opened at 621.21

I hope it will be filled in the next hour.

Nick.

[RyNinDaCleM]

Bought at $579 sold at $598 and bought again at $563.
I would have posted in real time but I was asleep for it   

[chessnut]

Just took short profits and im leveraged long on Bitcoin from 575.

woot woot scared much?

EDIT. - closed for $3 profit when I saw all that bloody arbitrage filling up. Ill get in lower.

[MatTheCat]

Just took short profits and im leveraged long on Bitcoin from 575.

woot woot scared much?

I had buy-ins triggered at 557.32, just sold at 575. No doubt Bitcoin will go up a bit more, look as though it is going to break out but actually break down etc and whipsaw everybody around as the exchanges empty the side of the order book with the majority of leveraged trades into their pockets, but for me, overall sentiment is still negative.

I will be away from home all day today and don't consider the risk of having open Bitcoin positions worthwhile at this point in time.

[chessnut]

Just took short profits and im leveraged long on Bitcoin from 575.

woot woot scared much?

I had buy-ins triggered at 557.32, just sold at 575.

congrats. I made some nice money shorting from 620. dare I say not a good day for everyone though.

Today I learned how Bitfinex is never priced in your favour. early days. 

[koryu]

gratz!

i am just happy that i get rid of the ltc in time and didnt make much loss.

for now placing my bids low and wait. 13$ltc 500$btc.  expecting the market to go sideways or down, but not up.

[MatTheCat]

congrats. I made some nice money shorting from 620. dare I say not a good day for everyone though.

Today I learned how Bitfinex is never priced in your favour. early days. 

My profits were pish. I just cashed them in out of spite for the market.

That short would have been a bit juicier, especially if leveraged, but also very risky doing any leveraged trade in such a shallow stagnant market.

You will soon learn that Bitfinex is a shark pool. Basically, you shouldn't set Stop Losses there. You will be cheated. I have seen Bitfinex spike to exactly where my stop losses where set before. i.e. My stop losses turned out to be the top of the short term market. The exchange owners would suggest that their are bots that can try and guess where the margin calls are. I would suggest that these bots have a little helping hand with inside exchange info, and then they bots can calculate how far up/down the order book it is worth their while to bid/sell in order to trigger margin calls.

[chessnut]

yea ive noticed how my orders have an unnatural weight on bitfinex, I take it as flattery. I use 2.5 leverage but no stops for sure.

[MatTheCat]

yea ive noticed how my orders have an unnatural weight on bitfinex, I take it as flattery. I use 2.5 leverage but no stops for sure.

yeah....as though much of the other 'orders' were simply faked volume in order to entice suckerstraders in to play. When I first discovered leveraged trading on Bitfinex, it seemed like I couldn't lose when they still allowed Stop Losses to be routed through Bitstamp, but when they took that routing option away, I started getting my pockets picked left right n centre.

I may go back to that place, but would never ever place a leveraged trade there in a low volume environment such as what we have seen, and ideally I would have the discipline only ever to trade when I was certain of a future course of events......of course what normally happens is that I go there with a certain trade in my mind, I do well on that and start to think that I am too smart, and then I start firing trades off from the hip all over the place and rapidly deplete my profits.

[TERA]

Hard to post trades in real time when I'm daytrading.

[TERA]

[Alonzo Ewing]

Folks,

Let's keep this thread real.  "Posting in real time" does not mean posting completed trades once they're complete.  That's too easy to be selectively biased about, i.e., only posting successful completed trades and omitting completed trades gone bad.

Rather, it means posting both the opening of the trade and the closing of the trade independently at different times. 

Obviously, the primary motivation is to show off.

But I think there's a better purpose here: to be honest with yourself, track your record in public, and learn from your mistakes.  It can only pay off long term.

I suggest some sort of common format.  Something like:

Open: Bought 1.4BTC @ $500

Or something similar.  I'm open to suggestions.

[TERA]

Sorry. It's just kind of hard to do that when I'm daytrading in high volume and tracking a bunch of charts at the same time. Maybe I should only post in here when I'm doing swing trading and not daytrading?