For estimating asset values on short and medium term scales, what I find most productive, in terms of timing, is gaming scenarios, estimating driver events, and tracking the over-extension of correlation schemas, responding to their breakdown.
This is often correct 50% of the time.
All you ever look for in those areas is a small edge. There's a trade-off of time-scale, price-scale and edge-scale, with an efficient frontier. Empirical evidence is that my methods are very effective at providing a quite significant edge, which is heteroskedastic, and works over a small range of elastic time-scales. Turning such a conditional edge into an optimal strategy is a monstrously complex undertaking, however. So far I am just doing manual trades with dead-reckoning informed by distribution estimators, for lack of time/manpower to implement the proper optimal automated form. I find that it works best in FX majors so far, where slippage is minimal and I can turn about 64bp per diem reliably (with a wicked tail of course). But even that is consuming too much time. I'm probably going to have to drop the project in favor of the day job for a while.
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Armstrong made a valid statistical point that the longer the time frame, the more reliable the prediction, if you have his database. He has proven this to be true. The short-term is noisy, the long-term follows a predictable cycle.
This is very deeply ingrained in my psyche, so that it seems almost too obvious to articulate - as deep and important things often do. But I don't have that much time, personally. I have targets to meet. They are insanely aggressive. I don't invest for generational wealth, but for instrumental wealth to accomplish very specific, and pressing tasks. To avert imminent negative outcomes and mitigate immediate ones.
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In BTC, the eventual listing of COIN is a likely watershed.
I didn't think of that. Am I correct to assume it is an ETF. When is that?
Correct. The Winklevoss Bitcoin Investment Trust is sponsoring an ETF. Very good lawyer they have: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-15/spiderwoman-brings-hope-to-winklevoss-twins-bitcoin-etf.html
As Wachtwoordt once said of the SEC, I don't think they can stop it, but they can surely delay it.
The amount of liquidity which will then become available to flow into bitcoin is essentially unlimited. It's a hole big enough to drain the whole ocean through it.
My best estimate of a desirable target date for the issuers (assuming SEC does not seek to delay it unreasonably) is November 8th, 2014, which is the 10th anniversary of the issuance of GLD. I do not have expert data required to form a mechanism-based timing estimate.
While COIN is the best, because it is NASDAQ, you can be assured that if it tarries, a London, Frankfurt, Singapore, and/or Hong Kong listing will occur before 2016. Any of those would suffice to drain a lesser ocean. A Japanese listing seems likely to take longer.