1) I want to be conscious and watching the movements happen when I buy my coins. I don't like buying on the way down, I want to buy as close to the bottom as possible. I feel I have a better chance of doing that if I am creating the orders at the time of the movement.
No, that is a bad idea, and you won't buy close to the bottom, and you have worse chance if you trade while looking at the moving ticker. Because psychology kicks in. You get scared / excited etc, any emotion destroys your ability to think resulting in poor trades.
Trust me, setting orders beforehand and not fucking with them later is the only way to get profit.
And coinbase is not an exchange, in case you didn't notice yet. It is a wallet where you can buy coins, but you don't trade there.
You are a smart trader. I keep my trading window at around 3 days and don't let hourly movements bother me. When it's the right time to throw money in, you'll know, usually when the price becomes stagnant over a 3 or more day period. The same for the reverse if you are cashing out bitcoins, if the price becomes stagnant for a few weeks, you should probably cash out before a crash occurs. I've had no losses from my long-term trading strategy and made well over a couple g's.