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.
I never really used any of those kinds of strategies nor the stop losses. So yeah, it does seem as if you can figure out systems in order to just let something ride until it reaches your target.. and surely volatility helps for these kinds of moves.. otherwise, seems like it may take forever to reach your price points.... and thus your money is tied up.
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%
yeah those are decent fees, compared to some of the others. So far I have not put any money on bitfinex, because they were acting weird last year, and they had a few "incidents" of suspiciously being down... but maybe they have gotten their act together a little better in recent times?
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.
surely it is good to figure out ways to have a steady enough income in order to meet all of the bills, and accumulating in various ways can help, too.. but yeah, when you start drawing on things, you gotta see if you are making money in other areas and then how much are you drawing into principle or merely just drawing into profits... If you are in your late 40s, then it seems much too early to be drawing into principle.. unless you have an extremely large nestegg.... which depends on your standard of living.. consider that you should be able to draw about $3,500 a month passively for every million principle... but then your principle would be stagnant in those circumstances and if you lose some of the principle for various reasons then you are further screwed... so usually we need a fairly decent cushion... to rest with some level of assurance and comfort.
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.
Retails a bitch. so may be more work and geographical tying down than you expect... and employees or independent contractors or partners can cause a lot of work too.