Question: How can you not hold when we all know that you'll make a boat-load (lotsa money) in the next 18 months?
I am pretty sure that the dynamic is referred to as:
information asymmetry.
So, many of us should feel good that we both recognize the quality information that we have in regards to bitcoin, and we are also ready, willing and able to act upon such information asymmetry. Sure, BTC price dynamics to the upside could take a while to play out, such as in the ball park of another 18 months.
And, hey, there are many of us, also ,who have not been greedy with our possession of asymmetric information. I have read a lot of stories in this thread, over the years, about many attempts that several of us BTC HODLers/accumulators have made to share bitcoin related information with various regular peeps, and sometimes it just takes time for many people to come around and either start to better understand the bitcoin related information that is presented to them and also to figure out ways to meaningfully take actions such as setting up accounts in order that they can begin to accumulate BTC (or perhaps other means to accomplish such accumulation) that will benefit them in response to having had received such asymmetric information.
Interesting points.
I know that sometimes a VERY important piece of information is presented here, but it is difficult to ascertain what it actually means (a few moves downstream) and whether to take action and how much action to take.
Here is an interesting story (of information being here on WO but not being processed [by myself] correctly or rather timely)...
In mid Feb 2020 US stock market was scaling new highs despite CV warnings and Apple suddenly warning about Q1 results. Amazingly, market AND AAPL went to ATH a week or two later. I was flabbergasted as I was contemplated buying VIX calls, yet market was dismissive of any danger of upcoming volatility.
At that time @filippone actually posted here that Italy is starting to experience some CV related stress in Lombardy. I looked at it, but was quite busy on both Thu and Fri (Feb 20 and 21) and did not buy any calls (was thinking of buying VIX25 calls that were going for $0.4 or $0.5 with VIX being at around 17 or so). So, I was thinking of probably doing this trade on Monday, Feb 24, but suddenly there were more developments in Italy over the weekend and on Feb 24 SP500 opened up with a huge gap down and VIX was at 25 already. Looking back, I still could have bought VIX25 or VIX30 calls and make 10X instead of 100X, but I looked at VIX during SARS and it never went above 30ish, so I decided to punt and did not move.
I am telling this story just to illustrate that sometimes even when your mental model is eventually proved to be correct, you still might hold back and/or do not move in time or in scale. Of course, you can say that someone could have bought those calls as soon as China made it official in January, but at that time nobody could have predicted with certainty that it would spread (SARS did not) especially since they were dealing with it apparently effectively (for the time being).
To see "proper" aggressive trading behavior and scaling into position by PTJ watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYjL1uY2rv8I agree that there are levels of assymetric information, but if we try to take in too much information, then we are likely going to be paralyzed anyhow, and there are NOT too many regular peeps in this thread who actually are trying to guess and trade the short term BTC price movements.
Seems to me that the most prevalent and even successful strategies involving BTC involve merely establish some kind of prudent level of DCA and buying on dips, and sure maybe sometimes the BTC portfolio will not be in profits, but hopefully most people who at least get off zero and begin to accumulate BTC will have positive results as long as their timeline is decently long 4 years plus and even longer.
Sometimes also many of us have to walk before we can run, so we may not be able either act upon some kind of great information or even to recognize the information as being great if we have NOT already put ourselves into a position in which acting is fairly easy.. just one more step as opposed to a whole lot of steps that we would not be able to accomplish if we had not taken some earlier preparations... you know the expression, luck is the place where preparation meets opportunity.
So, frequently quite a bit of action has to be taken in order to prepare, and I frequently will tell people to get to know their own situation such as cash flow, other investments, view of bitcoin as compared with other investments, risk tolerance, timeline, time and skills to learn and to manage and tweak portfolio, including trading. It can take a long time to figure out ones own situation, too, but at some point, small actions can be taken while continuing to learn and to tweak, so if we just analyze and we do not act then we might not be in a good place to take advantage of some opportunities that might be staring us in the face.. but we have not taken adequate preparatory steps.. and a decent amount of those preparation steps take active engagement rather than just reading about it in threads like this... but reading about it can be a start and a motivator, too.