Some Bearish Observations.

[maker88]

Time to buy.

the Mat the cat contrarian indicator has switched! buy buy buy buy!

[1714993316]

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[BTCtrader71]

too many 'facts' were staring me in the face to ignore and I have to let logic thinking guide my decisions to some extent.

How sure are you that you are interpreting this particular set of 'facts' correctly? How sure ought you to be to have exited your HODL strategy? I would say you need to be pretty damn sure. More sure, in fact, than you are that HODL will work for the pure HODLers.

I would like to see you test your ability to recognize actionable 'facts.' Every time you see what you consider to be a clear signal in the market, write it down as a prediction that is clear enough that a computer could decide the truth or falsehood (eg, "the price on stamp will drop to xxx between now and xxx," something like that). Write down the date and time of your prediction. Also, rate how sure you are of yourself. Do this whether or not you actually make a trade on it. Heck, even post your predictions here as an "official Mat the Cat Prediction." After, let's say, 20 such predictions, you will calculate a batting average. That way, next time you are trying to decide whether to take your coins out of cold storage, you can remind yourself what your batting average is.

(Disclaimer: always take unsolicited advice with a grain of salt  )

[HeliKopterBen]

Good.  Matt has flipped back bearish.  Time for a rally.

[inca]

Time to buy.

the Mat the cat contrarian indicator has switched! buy buy buy buy!

Yes when he admitted he only held ~13 btc I remember thinking , "why bother?".

Mat you are churning in and out of btc so often you are bound to lose. You must recognise that where the price goes from here short term is simply a guess, a toss of a coin, which incidentally you just have to react to.

The market cannot be predicted with a chart or TA by you in a way which will deliver consistent returns or more importantly beat a buy and hold position.

Just imagine how more productively you could have spent your time if you had bought, held and simply .. waited for time to pass!

If I were you I would buy back in, wait a year for btc to do its thing, then play wall st trader with a fraction of your gains. Yes it is still gambling that the bull market will continue, but you must have a a belief in bitcoin to still be here right?

Either way keep us informed

[damnek]

Thinking that you can glean anything about the future bitcoin price based off information that all market participants can see (order book, number of swaps, etc) is a mistake.

[MatTheCat]

I would like to see you test your ability to recognize actionable 'facts.' Every time you see what you consider to be a clear signal in the market, write it down as a prediction that is clear enough that a computer could decide the truth or falsehood (eg, "the price on stamp will drop to xxx between now and xxx," something like that). Write down the date and time of your prediction.

As you well know, reading markets is as much of an art form as a science. Anyone can cherry pick 'facts' to suit his own emotional bias. So perhaps the real battle is learning to calibrate ones tendencies for emotional bias. By announcing 'MatTheCat predicts', I am emotionally investing in a certain course of market action which may serve me up to a point, but I will more likely than not be required to change my stance as and when the market demands, but.....

MatTheCat predicts!

Despite the textbook bullish pennant, Bitcoin is more likely to break down before it can break out due to heavy selling pressure that seems to be operating primarily through Bitstamp. I am looking in the first instance for a retest of the $620 range and then we will see where we are and whether Bitcoin wants to rise or correct further down to say $580. In the case that I am totally wrong, then should Bitcoin break above the new long term downtrend resistance line currently at $665 (dating back to Nov 2013), and on strong volume, than that would be a time to go long.

Yes when he admitted he only held ~13 btc I remember thinking , "why bother?".

That is just under $10K. I have already lost around $5K on a short trade I decided to 'Hodl' on knowing that the market would eventually come back to me. The market eventually did come back to my short-sell point (only just), but my nerve caved-in way before then at what turned out to be around $35 from the top of the market. That experience hurt a lot. The 'paltry' $5K certainly fucking mattered and I shall never take such a gung-ho and/or negligent approach to trading ever again.

Right now, most people around here are of the opinion that another large move up is coming around the mountain and I would tend to agree with them at this point in time. However, there is also a convincing bearish case that suggests we have just had a Wave B of a greater Wave 4 correction from the November ATH. If that turns out to be the case, which it might, then I don't want to be bag holding from the top of the market. I should still be holding my position from $460, but I thought I could be smart and take profits and buy back in on a correction that never quite materialised. Since then it has been a cagey game of in and out for me. Next time I catch a clear winning tide, I shall know to get the Bitcoins the fuck off the exchange and into some offline wallet before I start drawing lines on chart and go getting 'smart' ideas. But until then, I have decided that my risk tolerance is such that I will not sit back and hold if I am convinced that there is a strong chance that the market is going to move against me in the near future. If I cement small losses doing this and am forced to buy back in at a higher price on break out, then so be it. That is my new policy.

[Ibian]

Problem is you are looking at things the wrong way. You want fiat. This is a mistake. Fiat doesn't matter, the total number of coins once we eventually hit whatever high number matters. Thus, the goal should be to accumulate coins and to never risk them. Don't spend more bitcoins than you are willing to lose.

[BTCtrader71]

Anyone can cherry pick 'facts' to suit his own emotional bias.

This is very true. It's true of us all (and not just wrt investing -- life in general!) Many people recognize this in others but we all find it inherently difficult to recognize it in ourselves. Just recognizing it will often put you ahead of the game! (I am speaking in very general terms here.)

So perhaps the real battle is learning to calibrate ones tendencies for emotional bias.

Yes. This is a hugely important, difficult battle! Requires discipline. Discipline is what I rarely see in those who post about TA. Their predictions are imprecise and posed in a manner such that whatever happens, they can say "yeah I predicted that." Very often, a long winded post will boil down to this:

"If the price drops, then [insert fancy TA terminology] and it will drop some more. But if the price goes up, then [insert some more fancy TA terminology] it will go up some more." The result is that the person ends up chasing the market: all too often, buying AFTER the rise, selling AFTER the fall.

Solution: make your predictions specific, unambiguous. The more you discipline yourself along these lines, the better.

[BTCtrader71]

However, there is also a convincing bearish case that suggests we have just had a Wave B of a greater Wave 4 correction from the November ATH. If that turns out to be the case, which it might, then I don't want to be bag holding from the top of the market. I should still be holding my position from $460, ...

If the market goes from 660 straight up to 4000, or 660 to 460 and then to 4000, or hell: 660 to 50 in a flash crash and then to 4000, doesn't matter to me. I'm not going to kick myself for failing to predict a crash.

The only way to win at this game is to have more information that the ones you're playing against. When you HODL, you win because you are playing against the large chunk of humanity who have not yet focused their attention on bitcoin. They're going to buy one day, and you and I know it, but they don't. We're not necessarily smarter than they are, we just got here first. When you play the short-term fluctuations, you are playing against people who have immersed themselves in all publicly available information on bitcoin, and may even be privy to information that the rest of us don't have. The odds are that you and I can't beat them!

[Undone]

More sure, in fact, than you are that HODL will work for the pure HODLers.

I'm fairly sure that Mat is not sure of the HODL strategy in the slightest.

[oda.krell]

Thinking that you can gain an advantage in a game of chess against an opponent who has access to the same information as you (the board, pieces, the agreed upon rules) is a mistake.

[piramida]

Don't spend more bitcoins than you are willing to lose.

Yes that should be my advice from now on Instead of "don't risk fiat which you are not prepared to lose", smarter advice would be "don't risk not owning bitcoins which you can own today".

[MatTheCat]

Yes. This is a hugely important, difficult battle! Requires discipline. Discipline is what I rarely see in those who post about TA. Their predictions are imprecise and posed in a manner such that whatever happens, they can say "yeah I predicted that." Very often, a long winded post will boil down to this:

"If the price drops, then [insert fancy TA terminology] and it will drop some more. But if the price goes up, then [insert some more fancy TA terminology] it will go up some more." The result is that the person ends up chasing the market: all too often, buying AFTER the rise, selling AFTER the fall.

Solution: make your predictions specific, unambiguous. The more you discipline yourself along these lines, the better.

Dunno about that.

I posted on here some TA, which also happened to be the TA that I was adhering to at the time. I also stated that I favoured a bearish outcome in that the price would break beneath the support other than above the resistance. Either way I had IF [insert fancy TA terminology] Then [insert fancy TA terminology] for both possible outcome. In the end, the market broke the long term resistance on strong volume after a low volume fake out of the support line. Despite thinking that the market would go further down, I knew that I had to jump in on the retest and got in at $460. As sweetly timed as I ever have timed Bitcoin......pity my profit taking and correction catching efforts never went so well.

[BTCtrader71]

Yes. This is a hugely important, difficult battle! Requires discipline. Discipline is what I rarely see in those who post about TA. Their predictions are imprecise and posed in a manner such that whatever happens, they can say "yeah I predicted that." Very often, a long winded post will boil down to this:

"If the price drops, then [insert fancy TA terminology] and it will drop some more. But if the price goes up, then [insert some more fancy TA terminology] it will go up some more." The result is that the person ends up chasing the market: all too often, buying AFTER the rise, selling AFTER the fall.

Solution: make your predictions specific, unambiguous. The more you discipline yourself along these lines, the better.

Dunno about that.

I posted on here some TA, which also happened to be the TA that I was adhering to at the time. I also stated that I favoured a bearish outcome in that the price would break beneath the support other than above the resistance. Either way I had IF [insert fancy TA terminology] Then [insert fancy TA terminology] for both possible outcome. In the end, the market broke the long term resistance on strong volume after a low volume fake out of the support line. Despite thinking that the market would go further down, I knew that I had to jump in on the retest and got in at $460. As sweetly timed as I ever have timed Bitcoin......pity my profit taking and correction catching efforts never went so well.

You have made my point perfectly. Your trade was based on the logic: if the price goes up [above the resistance line] then it will go up some more. In this particular instance you were right, but I am sure there are similar examples where you lost on the trade.

[MatTheCat]

You have made my point perfectly. Your trade was based on the logic: if the price goes up [above the resistance line] then it will go up some more. In this particular instance you were right, but I am sure there are similar examples where you lost on the trade.

Yeah....if you just go drawing lines on any old bunch of spikes or dips then go saying if X happens then do this, but if Y happens then do that, you will likely be wrong a hell of a lot. But this one was looking at the bigger picture using support trendline that dated as far back as Jan 2013 and a resistance that went back to January and I still admit that I was wrong in that I thought the market would go down a bit more, but never placed any bets until the confirmation of market intent was made. Sure, the market still could have double backed on me, but by correctly identifying these patterns and potential turning points, the trader is greatly increasing his chances of making a good trade.

[oda.krell]

Eh. I'd cut Mat some slack. He had the right intuition all throughout the bear market, when a lot of bulls were still (or: again, and again) in denial. And despite what some people like to say, intuition is a big part of trading profitably.

My advice: develop some basic trading system that works for you, filter out everything that is not part of that system, and see if he can make it work better than his previous trading attempts.

[Ibian]

Eh. I'd cut Mat some slack. He had the right intuition all throughout the bear market, when a lot of bulls were still (or: again, and again) in denial. And despite what some people like to say, intuition is a big part of trading profitably.

My advice: develop some basic trading system that works for you, filter out everything that is not part of that system, and see if he can make it work better than his previous trading attempts.

Yeah, that's great. But if what I'm reading lately is correct, that he has 13 coins and lost $5k trying to trade, that means that instead of having twice as many as me he instead has slightly more. How long until I'm ahead, being in denial all the way down and buying a bit every month?

[BTCtrader71]

You have made my point perfectly. Your trade was based on the logic: if the price goes up [above the resistance line] then it will go up some more. In this particular instance you were right, but I am sure there are similar examples where you lost on the trade.

Yeah....if you just go drawing lines on any old bunch of spikes or dips then go saying if X happens then do this, but if Y happens then do that, you will likely be wrong a hell of a lot. But this one was looking at the bigger picture using support trendline that dated as far back as Jan 2013 and a resistance that went back to January and I still admit that I was wrong in that I thought the market would go down a bit more, but never placed any bets until the confirmation of market intent was made. Sure, the market still could have double backed on me, but by correctly identifying these patterns and potential turning points, the trader is greatly increasing his chances of making a good trade.

Yes, you are looking at the bigger picture. And of course, looking at the bigger picture is a good thing. But you're still just making my point. All you have done in the above paragraph is to flesh out the [insert fancy TA terminology] just a little bit. And I'm sure you could flesh it out some more. But it still boils down to:
"[Lots of TA analysis of the bigger picture, and the smaller picture, and the in between picture, coupled with my intuition], oh look, the market just went up! Given my aforementioned analysis, I am going to buy now."

Eh. I'd cut Mat some slack. He had the right intuition all throughout the bear market,

I won't deny that.

when a lot of bulls were still (or: again, and again) in denial.

I'm not so sure that bulls / HODLers are in denial. It's just that they are much more focused on the long term trajectory (years) than on the medium or short term trajectories (months, days). In fact, most bulls are already predicting the NEXT crash, after the impending bubble.

[inca]

The only way to win at this game is to have more information that the ones you're playing against. When you HODL, you win because you are playing against the large chunk of humanity who have not yet focused their attention on bitcoin. They're going to buy one day, and you and I know it, but they don't. We're not necessarily smarter than they are, we just got here first. When you play the short-term fluctuations, you are playing against people who have immersed themselves in all publicly available information on bitcoin, and may even be privy to information that the rest of us don't have. The odds are that you and I can't beat them!

Fantastic point.

[MatTheCat]

Yeah, that's great. But if what I'm reading lately is correct, that he has 13 coins and lost $5k trying to trade, that means that instead of having twice as many as me he instead has slightly more. How long until I'm ahead, being in denial all the way down and buying a bit every month?

Is a man's merit measured by the number of Bitcoins he has?

I have had various amounts of capital in and out of the exchanges. Been practically 'all in' at some points aside from what I have in precious metals. I remember sitting on around 26 BTC that were bought in $1000 range and having decided that I was gonna sell these ones for a small loss. I was told that I would be crying when I bought back in at $1300. I am glad I never listened to piramida. You would have no doubt told me the same thing. So it isn't like I have whittled away my stack and I only have 13.5 BTC remaining. I have been taking money out and spending it to live of, and also just blowing it, especially at the start when thousands were coming in that seemed like money for nothing......when I discovered leveraged trading, is when things started to go not so well and I started finding out the things about my personality that make me a lousy trader. I have therefore resolved not to use leverage and also not to short which is counter intuitive......hard to get accustomed to feeling baddd about the market actually being a good thing.