Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: Goomboo's Journal
by
gandhibt
on 13/07/2013, 13:38:00 UTC
I am in doubt about how to know in good time when the EMAs cross. You said you use the hourly or daily bitcoinchart, but his update is not high enough to let you to profit from small oscillations. I mean, suppose the fast EMA cross above the slow EMA when price is 74, and comes below the fast EMA when the price is 76: we can get profit only buying before 76 is reached, and this often happens too quickly when there is a bounce.
So how to get this info quickly? Using the market API? Automatic trading softwares?

Thank you for the question, I am happy to hear that you have learned from this thread.

My personal preference is to trade from the daily chart to avoid the small oscillations.  As I've mentioned throughout the thread, after you cross the bid-ask spread to physically buy and sell in addition to paying a .65% commission, the market must move substantially in your favor to actually provide a profit.  For these reasons, I favor trading less frequently, which is why I trade on the daily timeframe.

For the daily timeframe, I don't need an API/automatic system to alert me to opportunities.  You only get 1-2 trading signals a month (on average) using the daily method, so it's really just a matter of checking a chart every few days to see if a crossover is nearing.  When it comes to trading the lower timeframes however, you really need to be either actively monitoring the chart or utilize some sort of software to spot the 3-7 trades per week (on average), which are generated.

Have you thought about trading on 2-4-6-12 hour systems? 2h system is interesting, a lot less sideline trades, but still decent amount of trades.