Back in Week 27, a mere 2 months ago, I said "What a nice week! An expected TACO and everything turns around."

Guess what?

TACO. Again. lolz.

BTC jumps 5% or so, ETH pops back up about 10% in a day, SOL does the same,

If he doesn't do anything else stupid for a few weeks, we'll be on a roll.

Anyway, that was just the trigger for what I've been thinking about this week: recommendations, ignoring trends, and how the markets are annoying as hell.

FTSE Footsie

Let me tell you a short story.

This week, I was looking at my SIPP - a self-invested personal pension, which is basically a trading/investment account like any other, except that you can't withdraw the money until you're old and wrinkly (like, from 55 years old, I think).

I'd bought Wizz Air a month or two ago and it popped this week, giving me a nice 18% profit that I cashed out, minus the ridiculous high fees TradFi charges.

Yum, anyway.

So I went looking for something to replace it. I try to get my 6% a month in the real world as well, if possible.

And that's when I noticed that trading recommendations always come too late.

Try it yourself. Do a search for "best shares to buy now for 1 month [your country]".

What you get is a list of the most active shares, the ones that have just popped up 5% or more, the ones that everyone has already bought into and for which it's probably too late to ride the wave.

Yes, some will probably carry on growing (like Rolls-Royce, long term).

Yes, there are some recommendations of (usually risky or unlikely) wins, but most of it is called after the fact.

Ignore The Trend

And that's when I thought about how - with any investing - the biggest part of DYOR (Do Your Own Research) is often thinking the opposite of the crowd, the professionals, the advisors.

Taking the above example, I had to go through every one of the recommendations and individually look at their technicals, their forecasts on at least three different sites, and - most importantly - their charts.

Looking for "strong buy" on hourly, daily, weekly, monthly (and maybe longer). Looking at average forecasts higher than the current price, from at least half a dozen sources per site. Looking at past performance on charts and guessing where it's going.

Here's BTC right now. This is the 1-month chart from CoinGecko:

Very few people will recommend buying shares, stocks, equities, crypto, or whatever when it looks like that.

It's bombed, FFS! 

But look at the dip. Look back further and see the regular fall-and-rise. That's the bit that matters.

That and the fact that Bitcoin's price always goes back up (which is why I figure it's safe to ignore all the technicals saying "sell").

If you find a crypto (or a share/stock) that has regular ups and down, it's in a dip, and it's big enough to recover from where things are currently (that's the critical bit), it's in the right place as far as I'm concerned.

[Remember, I suck at trading and don't give advice that's legally binding. Choose your own damned strategy.]

So for me, both here and in those share/stock choices, the advice and recommendations are like a giant pile of dinosaur shit with one or two diamonds hidden in it. You gotta do the work, dig through the stinking pile of festering bollocks that's so easy to find online, and come back out with the gems.

I went with Hochschild and Trainline in the end. Maybe bad choices, but both had positive forecasts and were in a dip. 😎

How's your week going? Made a little moolah from TACO? Would love to hear from you!