Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: When the tide goes out
by
exstasie
on 05/01/2019, 19:33:08 UTC
It looks like you don't make a living off crypto

And more specifically, cryptotrading, since otherwise you would soon be broke. The first rule of a successful trader is not to marry an asset, however personally attractive it might look or feel. Well, maybe it's not the first rule actually, but it is the one which you should invariably follow with your skin being in the game

Marrying an asset isn't a problem. As long as you're comfortable trading both long and short and you can use leverage to account for lacking volatility, you'll do fine.

The downfall of traders is when they marry a trade or forecast. A lot of traders get tunnel vision and refuse to admit when they're wrong. This leads to letting losses run and other emotional mistakes. Successful traders never get attached to trades. They exit when their stop losses are hit and react to changing market conditions.

It looks like there's a misunderstanding

What you refer to by marrying a trade, I consider marrying an asset. It happens when an asset earned you decent profits in the past and you get glued to it (marry it) by holding it despite the fact that it now brings you only losses and it should have been disposed of long ago.

Okay, well just so you know, your expression isn't clear and isn't commonly used in English, so you should probably expect future misunderstandings. You're referring to "bagholders" and "permabulls" (people who always believe price will rise and refuse to sell at a loss). "Marrying an asset" doesn't actually specify what side you're trading (long or short) so it's not a useful expression.

I mainly only trade Bitcoin these days. You could say I'm "married" to the asset because I don't trade anything else. I also shorted Bitcoin to the ground last year and didn't lose money by holding it. That's why the distinction is worth making. If someone is "married to an asset" that tells you absolutely nothing about his success as a trader. If someone is "married to a trade" they are a bad trader.