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I wasn't specific enough - I'm buying the DIPS that are more pronounced throughout a certain movement period with additional funds/budgeting, besides the regular fixed-period onloading.
How has your practice been working for you in the past 2.5 years? did you buy enough bitcoin over the past 2.5 years? or did you spend a lot of time waiting for dips that did not end up happening?
Maybe an example can be given?
Let's say for example, you had been wanting to be aggressive from the start, and maybe you had some other investments and perhaps around $12.5k in savings (and from other investments) that you could put into bitcoin, so maybe you decided to front load your bitcoin investment and over the month of December 2022, you invested $2,500 per week into bitcoin for 5 weeks... so maybe those initial purchases cost you close to $20k per bitcoin, since maybe you screwed some of the purchases. which would have resulted in the accumulation of right around 0.625 BTC.
Thereafter you invested
$200 per week into bitcoin from January 1, 2023 until now, which means that you invested an additional $24.2k and you got nearly another 0.6 BTC.
So right now you would have had right around $36.7k invested and you would have around 1.225 BTC, which would be a good bitcoin stash and a good 2.5 year start to bitcoin, and yeah, of course, you would have had the advantage of starting out in a dip period, yet at the time you started, you would not have had felt confident about whether you were starting out in a sufficient dip or not...
Even if you were not able to front load your investment into bitcoin and you merely bought $200 worth of bitcoin every week from January 1, 2023, you would still have had gotten about 0.6 BTC from a $24.2k investment, which also would not be a bad place to be. Hopefully your waiting around strategy has been able to produce at least equal amounts, and surely many of us know that guys who persistently bought bitcoin over a couple of cycles, such as over 8 years, they have tended to do quite well with their persistent buying of bitcoin - even though history does not guarantee future results.
I think that many of us acknowledge that the dynamics of investing into bitcoin can change with the passage of time
We can later have a change in decision over the investment strategy we take on bitcoin investment, because not every time using the same approach will always have to work for us, we may sometimes also try to improvise more to make use of the opportunity each time or season brings ahead of us for choosing bitcoin as our preferred investment, so we have to be completely dynamic from how we invest in other to avoid being stereotype on using a single approach over our investment for long.
I doubt that what I was saying justifies diverting away from a strategy to try to persistently, consistently, regularly, ongoingly and perhaps aggressively buy bitcoin through some kind of a DCA like strategy, and if you want to fuck around trying to figure out dips, you are likely not going to improve upon such DCA strategy and you will likely under perform such DCAing strategy.. but yeah, of course, you can do whatever you like and read into history what you like in terms of what you believe are your best current and/or future actions.
Surely, once an emergency fund and back up funds are established, then they do not necessarily need to keep coming out of discretionary income, so many of us frequently mention that we end up in a better place to start to invest even more aggressively into bitcoin from our discretionary income once our various back up funds have been established.
Another thing that you have mentioned here which needs more highlights is about our backup fund, though lots had been said already concerning this, but we must also understand part of the reason why it is necessary for us to have it, so that it ma not affect our investment and cut us short and unaware in making our way out of any market fluctuations and losses that may accrue to lack of having an investment backup fund.
You have been registered on the forum for more than 3 years, and so if you have been building up your various back up funds (including emergency funds and reserve funds) then maybe you are finding that it might have taken you a while to build those up, yet once they are built up then each of us can consider the extent to which we might feel that deviating from strict DCA might be productive for us.
Many times, I have suggested that a guy with just a regular income and no extra money coming in, then he will likely be better off to just focus on building his bitcoin investment through ongoing and regular DCA (and perhaps simultaneously building his back up funds). Even a guy who has a fairly regular income, he might reasonably choose to hold back 10% to 25% of his authorized bitcoin buys for buying on dips. It might make him feel better psychologically to have such a practice.
Of course, any guy who receives bonus payments from time to time, he is going to be in a better position to decide the extent to which he might want to supplement his regular DCA buying with setting up buying on dips with those extra funds. I am not going to suggest that either way is preferable, yet i would suggest that the trade off should be kept in mind in regards to advantages and disadvantages of buying on dips as compared to buying right away. A guy who receives bonus payments from time to time, even 2-3 times per year, is also going to be in a better position to make sure that his various back up funds (including emergency funds and/or reserve funds) are in a good position too...
Guys will sometimes pursue extra income sources to add to their discretionary income, which may or may not be a good idea (or good use of funds), yet sometimes the spending of money on the gaining of employment skills or even the putting of capital in a business to leverage labor might be better longer term ways to use money, yet since each of these avenues will be dependent on a guy's circumstances, none of us can proclaim that one avenue is necessarily better than other avenues, even though surely if there are ways to increase discretionary income, then more bitcoin can be purchased, yet we also know that if it might take 4 years or longer to achieve the extra employment skills or to build up that extra income then there could be trade-offs in regards to those kinds of choices that are not always easy to calculate in advance.
There's virtually little or no principle that is ideal or all encompassing. I'm not a proponent of sitting around while waiting for dips that could never come neither would I suggest quitting your investments due to rise in bitcoin price. In my individual view, a slow and steady approach by DCA, (this has nothing to do with bitcoin price). Investing by fiat currency amount order than bitcoin amount. That is to say, depending on your discretionary income, a set amount to be invested not minding the amount of bitcoin it could afford. This would allow anyone grow above reading charts and worrying over markets you may not decide.