In precious metal trading there is the concept of ratio trading.
The most commonly used one is the gold to silver ratio, but you could also trade platin against gold or platin against palladium.
So let´s just stick to the gold to silver ratio to explain the concept.

At the current spot price of USD 1248.16 for one ounce of gold and USD 14.62 for one ounce of silver the ratio is about 85.37, meaning you get 85.37 ounces of silver for one ounce of gold.
Looking at gold silver ratio charts in the internet we see that historically, that is cheap.
So the cunning plan says: when the gold silver ratio is at 80 or above you buy silver, because silver is cheap now and when, in a few years, the gold silver ratio is at 45 or below, then gold is cheap and you convert your silver into gold.
You can find a more detailed explanation here.

So you could have bought silver in late 1989 when the ratio was 80, converted it to gold in 1998, back to silver in 2003, back to gold in in 2006, back to silver in 2008, back to gold in 2011 and back to silver in early 2016 and you would now have about 5.5 ounces of silver for every ounce of silver you bought in late 1989.
So that took you a bit longer than 26 years, a couple of exchanges and I guess this calculation was done using spot prices, so spreads, commissions, etc. were probably not taken into account, not to mention that 1989 was pre-internet, so you probably had to log your physical gold and silver around to make the conversions, or go to your bank or storage facility.
Nowadays you can keep your gold and silver with a dealer like Bullionstar in Singapore and do the conversions online and I guess spreads and commissions also have come down.
But there is still some effort involved and I guess conversions will still go via fiat money.


In contrast to all that hassle, notice how effortless it is to trade the Steem/SBD ratio on the internal market.
Yes, there you have it, the secret of how I turned 100 Steem into 300 Steem.
By trading the Steem/SBD ratio.

Now if you compare the history of Steem/SBD with that of gold/silver, three years against thousands of years, you might agree that there is not enough data on Steem/SBD to come up with statistically valid ratios at which to convert.
So you just have to go with what you think is "cheap" and "expensive".

Remember last December, when SBD exploded and you could get 7 Steem for 1 SBD?
That was definitely the time to convert SBD into Steem.
Unfortunately I did not have much SBD then, because I was on 100% Power Up.
That, by the way, is also a kind of ratio trading, to know when to be on 100% Power Up and when to be on 50%/50%.
Then Steem also exploded and the ratio came down again.
Then there was the rise of the machines and I needed some SBD for the bots.

I forgot exactly when, I guess some time in spring this year, I converted Steem into SBD. You could get 1.2 SBD for 1 Steem then. The climax then I guess was 1.5, but, I was too impatient and converted too early. You never really know when the best time is anyway, only in hindsight.
Over the months I used some of the SBD for bots, but a couple of days ago you could get 2.5 Steem for 1 SBD on the internal market, so I converted 120 SBD into 300 Steem.
Remember, those 120 SBD had cost me 100 Steem back in spring, so in less than a year I turned 100 Steem into 300 Steem.
Compared to the time and effort it takes someone to triple precious metal by ratio trading that´s not bad at all.

Okay, the ugly truth still is that in USD 1 Steem is now about 25 % of what I bought it for in July 2017, but I also increased the number of Steem I have now by posting, using bots and ratio trading, so that in USD my account is down about 25 to 30% and not 75%.

In times like these it really helps to adopt the attitude of die-hard precious metal bugs, who never think in USD about their shiny treasure, but only in ounces.
And by the grace of God and ratio trading them ounces keep getting more and more. 😎

@ecotrain