It's becoming increasingly apparent to me that many crypto investors don't know how to trade their coins.

I can't give you a recipe for success, each trader must make a recipe that suits their own needs. I can give you a few tips...

From http://www.creative-commons-images.com/highway-signs/t/trading.html

How to TRADE CRYPTO

Don't.

Don't trade crypto. Seriously, it's dangerous.

That's not strictly true

If you are a pro trader then of course you can trade crypto. You know the risks, I'm not speaking to you. I'm speaking to the majority of crypto traders: amateur traders like myself.

Crypto is highly volatile (the price changes rapidly and severely). This means that you can get great returns on crypto in a short space of time. It also means you can make great losses. Trading crypto can be like walking up to a roulette table and placing everything on black. You can almost instantly double your money. You can just as easily lose it all.

The extreme difficulty in predicting crypto markets makes it unappealing to try to trade the market by predicting it. While it does have typical market cycles and patterns, it often has serious anomalies that can ruin you. For this reason, I consider crypto to be too risky to trade on a day trading basis. Even swing trading is risky (I do it every now and then, but I find that the stress is never worth it!).

That's not to say you can't make money from crypto.

Of course you can. You can make rather a lot if you work hard (or get lucky).

For me crypto is not something to trade, it's something to invest in. By that I mean that I do not want to buy and sell coins daily. I want to spot cheap entry points and buy them. Then I want to hold them (the often referred to "hodl" strategy of crypto). And keep holding them until they make a good profit (until it "Moons" in amateur crypto jargon).

Once a coin makes you a big profit, you can either decide to

1. Sell it and buy something else that is cheap.

2. Hold it if you think it has a strong chance of climbing further.

3. Sell to Tether or fiat if you expect the price to dip, and then re-buy the dip.

For example: I bought KuCoins for about $0.50 to $0.80 each. I watched the price go up to about $20.00. Then it started dropping and I judged that it would not go up again. I activated a stop-loss and sold at about $14.50. I used the profit to buy other cheap coins.

I bought NEO at various prices from about $7 up to $100. (I've always maintained that any NEO at under $100 is an absolute bargain.) NEO went up to almost $200, but I didn't sell anything. I think it will climb further. So I "hodl".

HODLing

To a professional trader hodling seems ludicrous. Many people are quite vocal about it, don't let it bother you. They can't see the point of holding something that is losing money when it is going down.

They have a point, a valid one, but they are also working to a recipe that works for them and trying to apply it to you.

I can't trade every day. I don't have the time. Sadly I need to work. I can't watch all the dips and rises and buy and sell at will. I can't possibly set buy and sell orders for all my coins (I simply am too diversified and that would also mean leaving coins on exchanges - not a great idea).

So I hodl, and I hodl with a smile on my face. Because my objective is not to make money every day! I do my research, I do proper research. I really put a lot of effort into researching what I buy. I keep my eyes open for good deals, and when I see one, I see if I have any coins nearing a high BTC value that I can sell, so that I can buy the new coin that is going cheap. That's about the limit of my trading. That doesn't mean that I don't trade: some weeks I trade 10 or more trades every day. Other weeks I trade nothing at all, it just depends on what opportunities present themselves at the time. When I'm on vacation I have more time and I find that I trade a lot more.

My objective is to make good long-term crypto investments

That's my recipe. It involves a lot of hodling. Sometimes I buy very solid coins like ETH, sometimes I buy very dodgy coins (no names mentioned). What I'm always looking for is a high reward to risk ratio. If I think a coin has a 90% chance of succeeding, then I only expect e.g. 50% profit from it. If I think a coin has only got a 10% chance of succeeding, then I expect e.g. 2000% from it. (see this post by @tradergurl on working out risk/reward: https://steemit.com/trading/@tradergurl/the-formula-for-success-it-s-literally-a-formula)

It does not bother me when the market dips: I believe in the long-term success of crypto. For that reason I am happy to hold and to roll with the punches in bear markets. If you do not believe in a long-term bull market for crypto, then you should not hodl. (see this post of mine for why I believe in a long-term bull market: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@bitbrain/bitcoin-price-predictions-chart-display-part-3-the-s-curve-more-good-news)
I can hodl through an ice age and not give a damn, my recipe allows for it.

I would recommend a hodl strategy to those who are also new to crypto and scared of making mistakes, as well as those who are looking at long-term investments i.e. not cashing out within the next few years.

Summing up

Find a recipe that works for you. If you're a hodler, then hodl. Don't worry if people don't understand you, they're welcome to do whatever they like with their own crypto. If you're a trader, then trade. But if you want to trade, then you had better really know what you're doing! If you want to jump in and out of the market, then go for it. Sell to fiat during the good times and buy cheap crypto again in the lean times. All of these can work if you put the necessary time and effort in.

Yours in crypto,
Bit Brain

DISCLAIMER:
I am neither a financial advisor nor a professional trader/investor. This is not financial advice, investment advice or trading advice. Unless otherwise stated, all my posts are my opinion and nothing more. Crypto is highly volatile and you can easily lose everything in crypto. You invest at your own risk! Information I post may be erroneous or construed as being misleading. I will not be held responsible for anything which is incorrect, missing, out-of-date or fabricated. Any information you use is done so at your own risk. Always Do Your Own Research (DYOR) and realise that you and you alone are responsible for your crypto portfolio and whatever happens to it.