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.