Quote from: dmwardjr on May 26, 2016, 02:07:03 AM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on May 26, 2016, 12:50:04 AM

Quote from: dmwardjr on May 25, 2016, 11:25:47 PM

I'm ignorant when it comes to index funds, securities, derivatives, etc...

I'm no genius or anything when it comes to investing, and really I have been employing various kinds of investment strategies since leaving high school and then being on my own. So I have always set aside as much as I could for various investment purposes which has tended to be between 10% and 40% of my income.. and then attempting to invest in various ways.. some paying off better than others, but over the years building up a considerable nestegg.

Maybe a bit more than 15 years ago, I had increased some of my exposure to retirement investments (kind of like 401ks) that are connected with employment, but allows matching and also limits in how much that can be put in. Then within those 401ks there are limits in how I was able to allocate within them... but maxing them out also was helpful in building funds over a considerable amount of time.

I see... Thanks for the being straight up.

It is nice to have some flexibility within a 401k to reallocate what goes where. My wife had something similar with the oil and gas company she used to work for. However, we did not realize or begin to exercise the flexibility they offered her to move investments around until around the last few months of the 17 years she was employed there. I know, that's sad. We did not even think to look into her 401k flexibility until we had serious threats of oil stocks failing the end of last year due to oil prices falling.

Yeah, it is good to attempt to be proactive, when you can, and I had a similar situation for like the first 6 months of one of my investments, and I thought that I had sufficiently allocated within the fund.. and I guess I had made a mistake and got confused about it. Lucky I caught it after about 6 months, and was able to reallocate in a more diversified manner.. My investment was pretty low during those first 6 months anyhow, so it didn't really make any kind of major difference in the whole scheme of things, but it could have made a major difference if I had not caught it for 6 years or something like that... hahahahaha

Quote from: dmwardjr on May 26, 2016, 02:07:03 AM

I was similar to you. However, I first heard about it from Glen Beck on talk radio in 2010. He suggested buying some if you had free cash. He said he bought 1,000 BTC to put aside and see what happens. I want to say bitcoin was about $1.70 then. I went online and saw I had to get what was called a bitcoin wallet and sign up to an exchange to be able to purchase bitcoin. I was like, "I don't have time for this." So, I wrote it off and did not think about it again or even hear about bitcoin again until the end of 2013. I was pissed once I heard it was over $1,000 because I had very fruitful years business wise from 2007 to 2011. I was going to buy $5,000 in bitcoin minimum for the heck of it but got lazy. I did not take it serious when it was $1.70. Oh well...

Quote from: dmwardjr on May 26, 2016, 02:07:03 AM

That's part of the thing... Really difficult to invest in early days, so really, I have been a fairly frugal and conservative investor, so I am not sure whether I would have invested earlier.. and so some of the earlier investors were probably just lucky to have the right friends to sufficiently explain the situation to them.. because anything like $1000 or even $5k in those early days would have been quite profitable if the investor would have also had enough patiences to not sell everything as soon as the price went up 5x or whatever smaller increment.

I found bitcointalk.org the beginning of 2014 and began reading threads to learn about bitcoin. I would listen to Andreas Antonopolus (sp) on youtube all the time. I got involved with mining in August, 2014 with 18 x S3's, 15 x SP-20's, 5 x S4's and 7 x S5's. I later sold those to assist in my purchase of 41 x S7's in total beginning in October of 2015. I mentioned earlier I did not sell bitcoin to pay for power. I used my own funds to pay for power and held onto my bitcoin mined. There were a few months in the beginning when I first began mining that I sold bitcoin to pay for power costs. However, I later determined it would be more beneficial to pay for my power out of pocket and make up for it later by selling BTC at a higher price.

To be honest with yourself, I hope that you have some fairly detailed records of those costs in order that you can attribute all of that to your costs per BTC.

Even though I did not get into mining, I had some financial costs and money transferring costs and some other costs that I wrote into my total BTC costs in order to provide myself an accurate rendition of my costs per BTC.

By the way, a few months ago, someone contacted me through local bitcoins, and I agreed to transfer BTC to his account after I received various payments through venmo and then after those venmo payments were transferred to my bank. Anyhow, I thought that I adequately protected myself and I transferred him bitcoin, and then two days later Venmo reversed most (not all) of the payments... I went back and forth with venmo and the guy and in the end, I was in a predictament that ended up being a loss for me.. to send bitcoins and not receive payments... the fucker... anyhow... lesson learned.... I hope.. but those costs (and losses) went into my total costs per bitcoin.. and raised my average cost per BTC by a few dollars.

Quote from: dmwardjr on May 26, 2016, 02:07:03 AM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on May 26, 2016, 12:50:04 AM

Quote from: dmwardjr on May 25, 2016, 11:25:47 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on May 25, 2016, 08:58:29 PM

Yeah, each of us are going to make different choices regarding this (diversification), and the extent that we may need to redistribute and at what times and also depending on our timeline. Maybe 40% in BTC is too risky, yet that seems to be a question that you need to decide and maybe even reconsider from time to time depending on how the various markets play out, and your personal assessment of various markets in your total portfolio.

Yes, of course. There are times I have sold ALL of my BTC due to an obvious dump and had a very large portion of my holdings in FIAT for weeks. However, I feel quite comfortable with my percentage of holdings in crypto [Mainly BTC]. I feel as long as one stays on top of it to protect it as if it were their own son or daughter, there should not be much risk as one might think.

I think that we agree on some things, but you seem to be gambling a bit more than what is in my own personal tolerance. I stagger and so far, and attempt to never go full anything.. too much gambling involved. I would rather make a lot less and to slowly sell as prices go up (including possibly some larger moves along the way) and to buy on the way down, with possibly some larger moves a long the way....

To me, it seems to be less of a gamble to "work it" incrementally.

I can understand that. To each their own. I've always said one should only do or get involved with what they are comfortable with. I do trade smaller amounts in BTC/USD most of the time. However, I tend to go much bigger with the alts. However, I try to do it in a way that requires a LOT of monitoring of the alt coin markets on my part to avoid any potential big losses. When I do invest in an alt coin (LTC or ETH), I will choose only one exchange to do it on and use half of the BTC on that exchange to implement my LTC/BTC or ETH/BTC trades.

Possibly a decent experience.

It sounds like you have a decent approach to attempt to monitor your trading situation and then to focus on it, once you are doing it. So, in that regard, I think that if you are going to do it, you have a strategy in which you can attempt to learn by it. Some day I may give something like that a whirl, but for now, I feel sufficiently entertained, occupied and satisfied in monitoring my BTC/USD trading... Wink