Quote from: lopheaded on June 04, 2013, 10:51:34 PM

Quote from: theorange on June 04, 2013, 09:06:46 PM

I see that the profitability of mincoin has gone from one of the highest at 120 or so percent down to one of the lowest at 35 or so. Do these huge overnight jumps happen frequently or was it just that one time?

Frequent, the more minor a currency is the more volatile the market.

This is absolutely the case. Trading alt-coins is a lot like trading penny stocks; you have to be very careful. In the specific case of MNC, a lot has been going on with it lately. Its difficulty adjustment was too slow and thus when its profitability dropped, miners moved on to the next coin in a mass exodus. This left the MNC network "stuck" with a high difficulty and a low hash rate and new coins were being minted very slowly. On May 28th a mandatory update for the MNC client was announced in order to fix the difficulty problem at block 75,000. I don't know exactly when block 75,000 was reached but it has passed and the MNC network now appears to be moving along at the proper pace. I suspect that the recent volatility of MNC may partially be in response to this, but I could be wrong. Either way, I've avoided MNC for the past few weeks as it just looks too risky for a scaredy cat like me. Tongue

Definitely take time to study the market before investing (with either your Bitcoins or your mining rig's time). Eventually you will start to recognize patterns in the markets. A few patterns that I've observed (mostly as a miner) which have served me best are these:

1. Whenever a new alt-coin is added to its first exchange, it nearly always reaches its peak price on the first day (often in the first hour(s)). This is a good time to sell out if you've already mined plenty of the coin -- even if you'd like to hold on to some. You can buy back in to the market in the subsequent days (when the coin's value is lower) and effectively double or triple your coinage if you desire. Whenever a coin that's already listed on one exchange is added to another, it usually sees a bump in price. The size of this bump depends upon the popularity of the new exchange to which the coin was added. This is another good time to sell if you need to pay your electric bill. Wink

2. When a flash crash occurs (i.e. a coin drops to 50% of previous value in just 2 minutes time) there will nearly always be a bounce immediately afterward. If you can manage to buy in at the bottom (and it's really pretty hard to know exactly where the bottom will be) during a flash crash, you can usually sell at the bounce for a quick, pretty penny. Just be sure to sell before the bounce dissipates and the price continues its downward spiral; don't get too greedy. I usually miss these opportunities as I react too slowly and emotions (fear) get the better of me. Manage your risk. Never go all in during a crash, even if you're nearly certain higher prices will return.

3. Don't take my word for it! I'm not a professional investor but I do OK in the crypto-coin market. Observe these things on your own and make your own judgements.

Checkout cryptocoincharts.info for historical charts of coin prices.

Good luck, have fun and profit!