So, it sounds like you may invest about 1/5 of your holdings every $10 the price goes up.  It also sounds like you do this over a relatively long period of time.  You keep up with the amount of BTC purchased and at what price.  Which means you have pre-determined an exit for each fifth of your holdings ($1,000) you have invested as the price heads upward.  This would mean most of the time you are not in a position to have invest all $5K or 5 fifths for example because the price may not have gone up $50 or $60 over the period you are trading before it goes down again.  At least that is what has been the case lately.  It has stayed pretty much between $435 and $465 for quite a while now.

When trading BTC/USD, I'm usually making trades with 50 or 60 BTC on BitFinex; 40 or 50 BTC on Coinbase and 15 to 20 BTC on BTC-e [I have stopped trading on BitStamp].  The price may have changed $5, $10, $15 or $20 before I've made my exit.  In some cases $30, $40 or $50 before exiting.  However, it may have played out over a 2 to 10 day period.  In most cases it has been 2 to 4 days.  About what time frame do your trades occur within on average from entry to exit?

Also, I'm usually getting out of the trade [Have a STOP] if it's gone to a point of losing 2% of my trade.  I risk no more than 2% in a bull market and no more than 1% in a bear market.  Of course, this means on a 50 BTC entry if I get stopped out, I lost 1 BTC in a bull market and 0.5 BTC in a bear market.  However, for every $10 gain without being stopped out with 120 BTC waged across 3 exchanges, I'll have a $1,200 gain in total minus fees.  $2,400 minus fees for $20 gain, $3,600 minus fees for a $30 gain, etc...  BTC-e fees are 0.2% fees for taker and maker.  Coinbase 0.25% for taker and 0% for maker.  However, I believe they have recently establish a discount credited back to your account every 30 days based how much one has traded during that time frame.  Same thing with BitFinex.

The ranges with BitFinex are as follows:

Executed in the last 30 days (USD Equivalent)        Maker fees   Taker fees
$0.00 or more traded                                                0.100%   0.200%
$500,000.00 or more traded                                      0.080%   0.200%
$1,000,000.00 or more traded                                   0.060%   0.200%
$2,500,000.00 or more traded                                   0.040%   0.200%
$5,000,000.00 or more traded                                   0.020%   0.200%
$7,500,000.00 or more traded                                   0.000%   0.200%
$10,000,000.00 or more traded                                 0.000%   0.180%
$15,000,000.00 or more traded                                 0.000%   0.160%
$20,000,000.00 or more traded                                 0.000%   0.140%
$25,000,000.00 or more traded                                 0.000%   0.120%
$30,000,000.00 or more traded                                 0.000%   0.100%

I wouldn't mind getting to a point I could live off trading BTC.  That would be sweeeeeeeeet.  At present, we cannot do it without too much stress.  I told Fakhoury about my wife getting laid off from her accounting job with an oil and gas company in January this year.  We've had to get a little bit out of savings each month to meet our monthly obligations.  Trading has helped but not quite enough.  Our monthly obligations are quite large.  Our health insurance and dental insurance are close to the same as our house note: approximately $1,750.  House note is more than that.  We have more than $4,000 in monthly obligations just with our house note and insurance.  Then we have a few credit card bills, utilities, grocery, gas, car insurance, etc...  It adds up quickly.  Hence, the reason I'm wanting to open up e-cig stores.

I've procrastinated on opening up e-cig stores long enough.  Which means you will not see me as much in the forums for a while beginning next week.  I'll still pop in almost everyday.  However, I will not stay on here very long each day.  It will take some time before I can find someone I can trust enough to run the e-cig stores so I can focus my energy back to trading.