Firstly, I'll admit I'm very amateur at trading.  I'm mostly just a long-term holder (Bitcoin Believer), but I've been dabbling in Bitcoin trading since 2012 though so I have some sort of feel for the market.

Something seems to have changed in my opinion.  Back in 2012/2013 I was able to put together a nice little trading plan when I bought or sold and use stoplosses effectively.  I would place my stoploss in a smart place, it wouldn't usually get hunted and I ended up with more good trades than bad ones.  Also, that big ATH in 2013 seemed a lot more predictable and made sense, I could take a fair guess when the market was overbought (silly above trend) and oversold (silly below trend).

Now fast-forward to this Dec 2016 to Feb 2017...I know technically the volatility is a lot lower than 2013, but predicting the market direction seems crazy difficult compared to previous years.  My skill level hasn't got worse, but every time I predict the direction of the market it then goes in exactly the opposite direction.  Like recently, even after a huge quick pump that looks clearly overbought I get it wrong (I would say its a good time to sell). 

In particular, I don't understand how my stoplosses are now getting hunted so PRECISELY.  Are the exchanges giving stoploss data to big traders?  For example, in this previous week I sold my BTC at $1015 with a stoploss if the price got to $1060 and $1060 was waaaay above any trends at that time (price was tight sideways between $1010 and $1020).  Then see what happened, the price just kept increasing until it reached $1066 (only a measly $6 above my stoploss and then instantly after a HUGE RED DILD* and market crash down to $1010.

My point is, no matter where you put a stoploss these days, even at a really distant price, it is getting hunted with crazy precision.  It makes having a trading plan pointless in my opinion.  What the hell?