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RE: What's In Store for 2018

in #bitcoin7 years ago

Concerning your last Etherium video - I watched bitcoin do a mini symmetrical triangle similar to what Eherium is doing now last Friday night on the BTC 1m ticker and it basically flatlined before it dropped.

Is there a way to determine the breakout direction of the symmetric triangle the chart is doing? What are the possible dynamics in that situation?

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@vpredoehl :

Hi.

I know your question was not directed at me, but if you don't mind reading my two cents on the subject...
I personally see this comment as much as a way of gathering my thoughts than trying to produce a helpful comment, actually, so please pardon me if it's not the answer you were expecting.

Before going further, I've got to say this : please don't take my words for granted here.
First warning : I'm not a professional investor and quite a newbie in the field.
Second warning : while it worked not so bad for me in the last few months, technical analysis may be not so useful and/or reliable in a market which seems to be somewhat surprising (read: irrational) even for veterans (and that's our host stance on the subject, provided I understood correctly what he said in various videos) .

So...

  1. Everybody's trying to predict the next market move, but in the end there's no certain way to determine the breakout direction of a compression (triangle), and that's why you basically have to wait for it to happen : wait for a signal. There again, there's no certain signal predicting what will happen in the next few timeframes, but when you see a long held pattern breaking, you can reasonably expect a change in the trend.
  2. The point is not to pinpoint the exact moment at which the trend is modified (let's say 'breaking up', as that what's you will mostly looking for with a basic buy order), the point is to identify a clear/trustworthy signal. There's no "too late"... as long as it has room to continue to go up and that you're able to sell at a higher price at some point in the (near or far) future. There's no "too soon"... as long as it doesn't go down forever after you bought at an all-time-high. I know this does not seem helpful at first, but what I'm trying to push forward is that, while the "buy low, sell high" rule may seem quite difficult to follow, it never was meant to be "buy at the lowest, sell at the highest".
  3. Be careful to the timeframes you are using. Would you expect to be able to spot a new fashion trend just by looking at the people crossing you street in the next minute ? Of course not. Same applies for candles. Even if your looking at dozens of 1 minutes, there are 1440 in a day, 10080 in a week.
    Of course, market rallies or dips can happen in a few minutes, but you won't die if you miss a part of the action or wait a little bit to make sure the breakout is really happening. And hot price action happening does not mean you should base your technical analysis on the shortest timeframe you can find.
    Actually, most of the time it's quite the contrary. First, sticking to the 1 minute leads to FOMO, and you absolutely want to avoid that. Second, the more you 'zoom in', the more you'll see false flags/signals.
    The more you 'zoom out', the more you'll average the movements and will have an accurate look at what is a meaningful change. Take some height there, and at least pay attention to the daily candles. Draw you trendlines based on multiple day candles, then zoom in to the 6 or 4h to spot a breakup during the day. Even better, also have a look at the weekly to get a grasp of what going on in the bigger picture, and pay attention to past resistances and support on wider timeframes.
    Big even numbers are also something you should take into account, as investor psychology plays a big role in market moves (think about automated orders, for example : imagine you are going for the long run on a crypto - where would you set a stop sell order ? Isn't that a big even you have in mind ?).
  4. And, finally, remember that, while drawing lines on a graph generated by raw price data can be very useful, it's final purpose is to help you identify and understand what's happening in a market driven by human beings. It's useful, but you also have to pay attention to the rest : the fundamentals of the project behind your crypto (usecases, team, roadmap and delivery, competing cryptos,...), the good/bad news surrounding it, and so on...

Once again, take all this with caution, but I hope this helps a bit - and I wish you profitable runs.
Be careful, though...

Thanks for jumping in. Your answer confirmed my basic intuition, but I wanted to be sure. I'm new to investing and signed up for Coingy's free trial. I am overwhelmed by the number of tools they offer and hope I can become sophisticated enough to use many of them. Crypto Investor's videos have so far been leading in a common sense direction. For example, the head and shoulders pattern is very intuitively understood from the perspective of investor's mindset. This amazed me as I assumed all analysis must be mathematically based.

I guess you have to get burned once to get rid of that "I gotta jump into the market" hysteria.

@vpredoehl :
Hey there. I just stumbled on this and I think it's a good watch :

Have a look at tradingview.com ; the free account features and tools are quite impressive.