Quote from: RyNinDaCleM on May 12, 2015, 12:15:59 AM

Quote from: sidhujag on May 11, 2015, 11:19:05 PM

Quote from: RyNinDaCleM on May 11, 2015, 08:45:58 PM

Quote from: bassclef on May 11, 2015, 06:30:15 PM

Quote from: chessnut on May 11, 2015, 01:48:56 PM

Quote from: bassclef on May 11, 2015, 12:36:27 PM

This is totally wrong. No analyst can make money running such a ponzi scheme. The market is so much bigger than that. The whole basis of EW analysis is that the crowd gets emotional sometimes. They make the mistake and then we make the trade, not vice versa.

I make money trading, and I dont need to post anything, but I continue to post my charts. Its a way to log my trades and I enjoy sharing.

Its difficult to make money with even the best analysis, thats basic knowledge, you have to be a good trader, you have to be in control, and you have to be able to think for yourself, on your feet.

I hear you and I do appreciate your analysis. I make money too. It's just that a)bitcoin is a very thinly traded market with a handful of interests doing the heavy lifting and b)there are a lot of green traders trying to keep their heads above water. The I think it's probably not so hard for the big whales to keep an eye on the most popular and influential technicians' work from a perspective that they look for every opportunity to better their positions. Making money in markets is a serious business. I do enjoy helping people out but there is that inherent risk of making certain information public which is why I do not share most of my analysis. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.

+1 to both of you.

Quote from: madmat on May 11, 2015, 08:27:11 PM

Quote from: bassclef on May 11, 2015, 08:16:05 PM

Quote from: madmat on May 11, 2015, 08:09:40 PM

One question for traders, not analysts.

Lets say you open a long position, buying at 1500, with a target at 1600 in 5 days and a stop loss at 1450. After 2 days, price is at 1550. Is it a good thing to move up your stop loss, e.g. at 1500, or you don't touch it until target is reached or the 5 days are done ?

Traders are analysts too Wink

Ideally you'd move your stop to breakeven. In reality Bitcoin is such a choppy market that stops in obvious places will probably get hit unless the trend is super strong in one direction. Just pay attention as most stop-hunting takes place on relatively low volume and use discretion.

Once your target is hit you can move the stop up closer to the price and let it take you out (or use a trailing stop), that way you can take advantage of any additional price rises.

Thanks for this answer. I know traders are analysts, but i see more discussions about analysis, and a good analysis is not enough to earn money. I already lost some long trades due to stop loss placed too high, so i am carefull to set them below the support. I already played with trailing stop on kraken, and i think fine tuning is hard if you don't want to miss big moves.

Stops are good... USUALLY. In Bitcoin, they can be very dangerous. Mostly due to order depth being too shallow. If you set a stop right now, a large enough sell would blow through it and your stop would sell you out at the bottom and you'd be looking in disbelief as the price heads higher without you. This happens in both directions, obviously. It's safer to decide an absolute mental stop, set an alarm on your phone when the price is hit and assess the situation before exiting. When the price spikes against you, you can almost always get a better price than what you see at the time of sell-off.

Stops are also meant to stop you from losing your shirt. The first use-case for a stop is after you have derived your expectancy of a trade, thus since there is little to no volume then the sensible thing to do is place a stop far enough away such that a small spike in volume wouldn't alter your expectancy, ofcourse this moves your TP farther away and essentially forces you to look at a bigger TF. By only using mental stops it just takes 1 trade to ruin your account and statistically your system becomes a martingale strategy.

The second use-case is used to stop you from losing your shirt... so if you really do want to trade in a TF that is high-risk because you think you have found an edge on it, greater than the risk of a volume surge from stop hunters then you would still want to use a hard stop at a place where you don't totally drain your account. (depending on leverage).

To me thin market trading really doesn't make sense where you have to worry about manipulators.. something is either wrong with your expectancy calculations or you are just gambling in that case, 50/50 losing out on slippage/commisions/spreads.

I agree! I'm not arguing the idea of stops, just that they can be dangerous in Bitcoin. I'm talking about a stop-loss that protects against the market going against you from the start. Since orders are executed linearly, your stop is triggered but not executed until the order that triggered it is completed. If this happens to be a 10k dump, then you are selling at $225 on BFX. Hardly the best price. Say it's a 25k dump (I know these aren't likely anymore, but it is possible) you are now selling at $50 (or with liquidations, maybe lower). My point is, manipulation or not, if the price moves too far too fast, it will come back to a better price than where you would otherwise get executed, which in my mind, is better for capital preservation than a traditional stop. This also means you must be able to access the trade in a timely fashion and if you can't, then the best thing is definitely a regular stop order. Personally, I don't use them often if ever. I plan my trade and trade my plan... Decide my TP and set my limits around there. Decide my S/L price and set an alarm before it gets there. I also use an alarm to notify me when the price moves in my favor so I can check the situation more frequently as it nears my TP level. I will not hesitate to take profit early if the conditions call for it.

Doesmt your broker automatically force a margin call stop once your available margin falls below operating margin? In that case wouldn't the 25k dump to $50 pretty much wipe out any position even with slight leverage?