Quote from: doctor877 on February 26, 2014, 02:44:19 PM

Quote from: TERA on February 26, 2014, 01:54:06 PM

Quote from: checkers6676 on February 26, 2014, 01:38:11 PM

i played the daytrading game during the april 2013 bubble. put in a measly $2k, convinced my parents to put in $2k, and proceeded to daytrade like a madman and turned that $4k into $20k. it was the damnest thing: i woke up the morning of the crash, looked at the price which was trying to eat through $260 and thought to myself, "self, it went exponential compared to yesterday, i should sell and buy the dip." but it was 6 am and i'd just woken up. went downstairs and ate a bowl of cereal. came back upstairs and the price was $140 and gox was completely frozen. so sad...i promised myself i'd just buy and go long from then on, and i made a hell of a lot more holding my coins for half a year and selling at 900 than i ever did day trading Tongue

now time to do it all again!

I've discovered a 'best of both worlds' strategy you can use during bull markets. You keep some coins on bitfinex - keep them as coins at all times (not usd), in your margin trading wallet. Then whenever there is a sharp movement downwards, you take an additional 2-1 margin trading position briefly during the volatility to make profits. Then convert your profits to bitcoins and add them to your stash. This way you have the ability to take advantage of volatility and downswings while still being able to keep all of your funds long in coins - it makes you much more able to commit to being long. I used this strategy during the october/november rally and used it to make a 50x gain rather than the 8x gain that everyone else was making. Of course this strategy also requires that you trust Bitfinex with those coins, and that you're not keeping them in cold storage, so it's not really "the best of both worlds".

Could you explain how that 2-1 margin trade actually works?

You hold a balance bitcoins which are used as collateral to borrow usd to buy additional bitcoins. The additional bitcoins isn't like holding actual bitcoins - Rather you are holding a "position" which shows in a table with a profit/loss amount. The borrowed usd is contantly charging you interest so you want to close the position as soon as possible (on top of mitigating leverage risk).