difficulty is a parameter of the coin that determines how hard it is to find a block, i.e. how much hashing power it takes to generate any one coin
normally price and difficulty are cointegrated: a higher price attracts more miners, that raises difficulty. A lower price detracts miners and lowers difficulty. seeing price and difficulty move in opposite directions is odd
moreover, difficulty affects the tradeoff of mining vs buying the coin outright. if the diff is low you should mine the coin to acquire it. the higher the diff the more attractive it becomes to buy the coin rather than mine it
Thanks for taking time to write that up, that makes a lot of sense. Intuitively I understood that to be the case but wanted to be sure before I made any more bad trading decisions this week.
I spent all last week making up for MZC losses, finally made it back to break even then made a bad choice on SPA that knocked me right back down.
Sticking with old favorites and slow growth for now, LTC, DOGE, and possibly BCC only because it continually mocks me by pumping right after I decide not to buy in on a low.