In my previous post

Is Crypto Going Up or Down Before Christmas?

I laid out the bear case for bitcoin taking the market down, down, down before the New Year. Honestly, all of the technical signs pointed to a retest of one of the slower moving averages, marked off by the $17k price level and the $13.5k price level. Bullish momentum had stalled out at $19.5k; all bullish trend lines had been broken; it was over.

Then AstraZeneca or Moderna or somebody announces they have a vaccine and everyone loses their minds. Bitcoin now stands at $19.2k. It hasn't broken into escape velocity yet, but we have closed above the bullish trend lines that were previously broken. We now stand again to go to all time highs, because we got this momentum on a Sunday. When the markets open and retail sees this push up, they are likely to push it further up.

That would mean breaking the all time high and making a lot of people very happy.

So I'm not wrong yet, but the latest price action makes it look like I'm going to be wrong. So this post is all about how I deal with being wrong.

Head Faking

Folks who are new to investing — you have to know this. Everyone is head faking you all the time. Every. Single. Analyst. And we don't even mean to do it.

When I say that I think the market's going bear, that doesn't mean I sold everything. When I say I'm bullish, that doesn't mean I'm all in. It means I make changes in my portfolio to protect my positions just in case we get a black swan event. But good investors are ok with the market going either way, and you must organize your portfolio so that this is true at all times. That's how you win.

The one thing I made sure of — because I definitely believed we were going down before Xmas — was that I had a plan to keep my collateral level up in my banks so I didn't get liquidated if altcoins fell too much in value. That's it. I sold a few alts to get some stablecoins so I could buy up dips if we got the fall. But I was still ready to profit from the bull.

Take note: I'm not doing this maliciously, and I'm not lying to you. Every investor does this, up to and including the great Warren Buffett. Go back in his history. He'll say "you'll never go wrong betting on America" then in his next quarterly report you see he dumped 25% of his American holdings. He used to say that he would never get into tech because he didn't understand tech, then Apple became his biggest holding for a number of years. Don't get head faked.

Reacting, Not Predicting

I'm crazy enough to watch the price of bitcoin all day. When you do this (or you set alerts like a normal person), you can react to the markets instead of predicting them. It's a much more stressful way of playing crypto, but it is definitely more precise. You never have to wake up and see a 15% drop, because you are watching each move unfold in real time. If bitcoin would have dipped below a certain level, that would have confirmed my bear thesis and I might have taken further action.

Don't ever make the mistake of thinking that 1. anyone can predict the market, or 2. that you have to predict the market to be successful. The best traders are reactionary. They don't paint themselves into corners, first of all. Then they are just crazy enough to follow the price action and take strong action on confirmations of certain things.

Creating Your Own Battle Plan

I have certain setups that I look for, and when those setups don't exist, I'm ideally out of the market. This means my trading strategy may not work for you at all. Because when you're in the market, I'm out. When you're out, I'm in. Taking advantage of market conditions, not trading skill, make up the majority of profits for most people. The fastest way to profits is simply to be in the right market, not to try to scrape alpha out of every trade you're in.

I truly believe that everyone should listen to no one ideally. You may gather ideas as a noob from shills, but you should eventually wean yourself off of that teat. I bash Elliotrades in every other post because he sucks monkey balls and has 0 integrity, but I stopped watching him weeks ago. I graduated from his Shill School and now I don't need him any more. In the place of watching people like him, I now actually do my own damn research. This navigates me towards projects I like and makes for better investments — the ones that are hidden underneath the surface. I can't tell you how much money I've made investing in a project only to hear it get pumped a few weeks later through some shill. If you DYOR, you'll find these projects far faster than any shill. They are no smarter than you, trust me on that.

Be warned — I still believe bitcoin will retest the 20-day MA on the monthly chart, which is now creeping up past $13.5k. But every day bitcoin moves sideways or has a rally helps that MA to creep up ever so slowly... if we can maintain $18k for another 2-3 months, then the eventual drop may not be so bad.

But for right now, enjoy the bull. Or maybe the bear if shit turns around again. I don't know. But definitely buy $SYNC, it's the next 100X DYOR #notfinancialadvice pepe chad LULZ XD XD XD