Why did I only make 0p? Noobie excited but let down by pure confusion

[ElBloggy]

Hi guys

As title suggest, Im a noob and made one of my first trades yesterday, let me explain what happened.

I bought @ limit order on Kraken 0.0025btc @ £10,212.4.
It cost me £25.50

I then sold @ limit  on Kraken 0.0025btc @ £10,229.0.
It paid me £25.50

I am so confused as to why I made no money..? Not even a penny! lol

Even though a small change in price, surely I should have earned something..?

Id like to do some more small trades tonight, just to learn, but first I really need to understand why I literally just got my money back, even though I sold at a higher price than I bought...Should I be choosing another option rather than "limit"?

Thanks guys.

[1714975648]

1714975648

[jackg]

Based on what I get from my calculator, you should've made £0.041449610276 this might have been negated by their fees

You're going to have to trade higher swings to make more money or just hold the coins until they're worth more.

[hosseinimr93]

Kraken doesn't work freely. You have to pay fee for every trade you make.
According to fee-schedule on Kraken website, maker and taker pay 0.16% and 0.26% as trade fee respectively.
Assuming you were the maker in both trades, you should have payed about 0.08 euro as fee.

[ElBloggy]

Based on what I get from my calculator, you should've made £0.041449610276 this might have been negated by their fees

You're going to have to trade higher swings to make more money or just hold the coins until they're worth more.

Thanks for your reply.

Can I ask the equation you used to figure out how much I should've made please?
 It would really help as I will try a bit more swing (im guessing that means more cash?) tonight.

In reply to other poster, it seems the money I should've made was taken in fees, thanks for pointing that out.

I was so excited, but then looked at the balance and was a bit Scooby Doo, as in what just happened, where are my winnings.

[NeuroticFish]

I bought @ limit order on Kraken 0.0025btc @ £10,212.4.
~
I then sold @ limit  on Kraken 0.0025btc @ £10,229.0.

My math tells that the difference is around ((10229/10212.4)-1)*100 = 0.162%
According to the previous post the fees at Kraken are 0.16%-0.26%.
So you were lucky you didn't actually lose money.

You should clearly pay more attention to (all) the fees at exchanges.

[Upgrade00]

Above comments about other fees attached are accurate and could apply depending on the nature of the trade.

There's also the possibility of currency conversion fees which affects the price when buying on an exchange, however, this would only apply if you're not from a country which uses pounds; in my country for example exchanges charge a lower amount when buying bitcoins from you than when selling to you to cover for the cost of conversion, which would lead to a difference in value when placing a 'bid' or when 'asking' for a buy.

[ElBloggy]

Above comments about other fees attached are accurate and could apply depending on the nature of the trade.

There's also the possibility of currency conversion fees which affects the price when buying on an exchange, however, this would only apply if you're not from a country which uses pounds; in my country for example exchanges charge a lower amount when buying bitcoins from you than when selling to you to cover for the cost of conversion, which would lead to a difference in value when placing a 'bid' or when 'asking' for a buy.

I bought @ limit order on Kraken 0.0025btc @ £10,212.4.
~
I then sold @ limit  on Kraken 0.0025btc @ £10,229.0.

My math tells that the difference is around ((10229/10212.4)-1)*100 = 0.162%
According to the previous post the fees at Kraken are 0.16%-0.26%.
So you were lucky you didn't actually lose money.

You should clearly pay more attention to (all) the fees at exchanges.

Thanks guys, great advice on what to look out for, plus an equation to use on future trades.

im not really getting how to make money with Bitcoin on an everyday basis.
If price only fluctuates at small amounts as above, then does it really just come down to upping my investment amount, and doing alot of small trades like the one I did yesterday?

Normally, I just bought, then sat on it until it went high, then sold, but wanted to try live day trading...

[o_e_l_e_o]

If price only fluctuates at small amounts as above, then does it really just come down to upping my investment amount, and doing alot of small trades like the one I did yesterday?

You need to trade at bigger spreads. A spread between your buy and sell price of only 0.1-0.2% will almost always be entirely negated by fees.

Upping your investment 10 or even 100 times isn't going to make any difference to trades like that. You need a 30 day trading volume above $50,000 before the percentage fee you pay on Kraken starts to fall. You can see this here: https://www.kraken.com/features/fee-schedule. So even if you had traded 1 BTC at those prices, you would still only have 1 BTC.

The price definitely does not only fluctuate by small amounts. In the last 24 hours alone there has been a fluctuation of over $400, with regular swings of $50-$100. These are the numbers you need to target, not swings of 10 bucks.

[ElBloggy]

If price only fluctuates at small amounts as above, then does it really just come down to upping my investment amount, and doing alot of small trades like the one I did yesterday?

You need to trade at bigger spreads. A spread between your buy and sell price of only 0.1-0.2% will almost always be entirely negated by fees.

Upping your investment 10 or even 100 times isn't going to make any difference to trades like that. You need a 30 day trading volume above $50,000 before the percentage fee you pay on Kraken starts to fall. You can see this here: https://www.kraken.com/features/fee-schedule. So even if you had traded 1 BTC at those prices, you would still only have 1 BTC.

The price definitely does not only fluctuate by small amounts. In the last 24 hours alone there has been a fluctuation of over $400, with regular swings of $50-$100. These are the numbers you need to target, not swings of 10 bucks.

Thanks for the advice

So if it goes down for example to £9,700, I buy, then sell at £10,100, an investment of £100gbp, will result in a more noticeable return ..?
 Is there a regular % formula I can use for this example to figure out how much I would make on this? Would it be £400 is what % of £10,100? Any help would be realty appreciated.

[o_e_l_e_o]

So at a price of £9,700, £100 would buy you 100/9700 = 0.01030928 BTC.

At a price of £10,100, 0.01030928 BTC could be sold for 0.01030928*10100 = £104.12.

Another way to calculate is the chance in price divided by the buy price. So if you bought at £9,700, and sold at £400 higher, then you would make a profit of (400/9700) * 100 = 4.12%.

So the simple formula would be:

(Change in price / Purchase price) * 100 = Percentage profit or loss of initial investment

All of this doesn't take in to account fees, however. You can get lower fees if you make offers, rather than place market buys or sells. More info here: https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000526126-What-are-Maker-and-Taker-fees-

[hosseinimr93]

Given 0.16% trade fee in Kraken, If you pay 10,000 euro to buy bitcoin, you will have 9,984 euro worth of bitcoin.

Let's say R = ^{sell price} / _{buy price}

If you sell your bitcoin, you will get R*9,984*0.9984= 9,968*R.

In order to not lose money, 9,968*R[/b] must be bigger than 10,000.

9,968*R > 10,000 ---------> R >1.0032

So, you must place the sell order at least 0.32% higher than your buy price. Otherwise, you will lose money.

Note that, if you are not the maker and you are the taker, you must place the sell order at least 0.52% higher than buy price.

[ElBloggy]

Thanks guys so much, got some good tools to get started.

It seems I have a lot to learn

Reading what’s been posted, I really have no idea how I would make money each day with my small £100GBP.

Slightly disappointed tbh, though I could make at least a couple of pounds. But I got to make sure I’m a least selling and buying for more than 0.5% difference to make a profit, is that doable? Maybe two of them a day?

[Upgrade00]

Reading what’s been posted, I really have no idea how I would make money each day with my small £100GBP.

Slightly disappointed tbh, though I could make at least a couple of pounds.

If you're a newbie and just on your first trade, making profits should not be the initial goal, but rather you should look to get more knowledge about trading; what sites to trade on, what currency pairs to use, how best to enter and exit a market, it is unrealistic to expect a regular return so early on.

But I got to make sure I’m a least selling and buying for more than 0.5% difference to make a profit, is that doable? Maybe two of them a day?

Bitcoin is up almost 14% over that past one week, finding a 0.5% window within that period is doable, two times a day is also doable, it is also very possible you'll lose cash should the market temporarily go against you.

[ElBloggy]

Reading what’s been posted, I really have no idea how I would make money each day with my small £100GBP.

Slightly disappointed tbh, though I could make at least a couple of pounds.

If you're a newbie and just on your first trade, making profits should not be the initial goal, but rather you should look to get more knowledge about trading; what sites to trade on, what currency pairs to use, how best to enter and exit a market, it is unrealistic to expect a regular return so early on.

But I got to make sure I’m a least selling and buying for more than 0.5% difference to make a profit, is that doable? Maybe two of them a day?

Bitcoin is up almost 14% over that past one week, finding a 0.5% window within that period is doable, two times a day is also doable, it is also very possible you'll lose cash should the market temporarily go against you.

Thanks

So it seems the best for me is to set limit orders on buy and sell prices, and see what happens, rather than quick trades daily.

I’m starting to see it now, I think

[aesma]

I just stopped trading (on Kraken incidentally). I was doing "safe" trades as I was OK with owning either fiat or BTC, as long as I bought BTC lower than I sold it (including fees) and the reverse.

I traded more than 100000$/month, with my initial investment hundreds times more than you, and I made very little money in 6 months. Depending on the POV I lost money (I have doubled my fiat stash, but lowered my BTC stash).

Day trading is a job, and I'm not sure BTC is the right asset to learn that job, it's so unpredictable.

[ElBloggy]

That’s interesting.

So btc investment didn’t work for you.. I always thought it was one of the best places to invest, so are you goin back to stock markets in fiat then...?

[aesma]

No don't get me wrong I have a BTC stash I hold. In a way it's not really an investment as it didn't cost anything to me overall (sold enough to pay back my initial investment at a lower price). I was trading with a part of my stash to try to grow it, or to generate some fiat for day to day life, and it's that trading that I stopped because it didn't work.

If I were you I would simply buy BTC to constitute a stash, the key is to buy regularly, if you can 50-100 $£€ a month then do that.