This was back in my early days when I first stumbled upon crypto back at the moment before Bitcoin went parabolic for its moon shot. It was late November 2017 and it became an attractive introduction to trading as an art, as well as Bitcoin as a technology. The allure to trade more was fuelled by such astoundingly good returns on your investment within a week or two. Little did I know that this kind of parabolic price pump is a seasonal thing and it only happens for a few months every few years.
Having come a long way since then, all the way through the subsequent bear market for the whole of 2018, and now into what looks like an unprecedented parabolic launch to the moon this past half a year, Bitcoin and XRP look different, not only in BTC value but also in fundamentals. I have learned that Ripple is the banker’s coin and is more centralized than one might like in one’s currencies. So I don’t trade it any more. A good trader is always able to adjust his or her analysis based upon new data.
Day trading as a meditation?
I have also adjusted my outlook and technical analysis of the art of trading as a source of income, especially day trading, and my underlying education taught me that it was a form of gambling, speculation, and so was not such a clean source of income. It almost emulates the villainy that it so easy to deride in the elite banking and financial system of Wall St and The Fed. It attempts to create money without producing anything of value. It is a way of using money to make money that is part of the unhealthy global economy that is modern day capitalism. And today’s isn’t even decent capitalism, but rather a hijacked version run by an elite few as a form of neo-feudalism, where the laws for the rich and the poor are uneven.
Blockchain still inspires new possibilities
Long term investing in blockchain technology and products is still something I will consider, this is the next technological revolution built on blockchain technology I would like to believe, so I still hodl long term for the coming bull market. But I spend less time attempting to engage with the day trading lifestyle. I will keep abreast with trends and news, since research appeals to me, and this is a fast growing industry. It’s writing that allows me to get the best out of my self, based on the life I have lived and conclusions I’ve reached from observation.
Now back to trading psychology:
The life of a day trader is filled with adrenaline at first, as you obsess over every movement of the price graphs all day long. At some point you will decide to make a trade after some hours of observation, perhaps. And then you would want to observe the trade while it rose or fell, and of course react to it if it should do anything against your interests.
In the long run the cortisol released by this kind of trading was excessive, where I could make 2% in a couple of hours or half a day, with each small trade and having numerous small trades open. It was like deejaying with multiple channels and cross-faders and all levels of tunes and graphs intermingling in you mind. It was a highly stimulating, “gamified” type of experience, so lot’s of fun, but perhaps overly filled with cortisol, which is the stress hormone that can age us quicker apparently.
TA best learned in the field
With time you learn to remove your emotion from trading and inhibit hopefully as much cortisol release, but still it ends up being a life focused on money and profit, as opposed to the results of money and profit, like beautiful sunsets, or dancing on the beach, or socializing or making art. In other words it took up my most valuable commodity of free time to make profits all day long and the trade off wasn’t in my best interests. It favors bigger amounts of cash to trade with. The bigger, the better, otherwise you’re sweating for peanuts. At least I have learned the art of TA the real way.
After months of practice, recording every single trade in a log book with pen and paper, for days on end, like a monk in his cell, eagerly studying the ancient texts of a dead language, or a language of symbols and signs and patterns that were so easy to misinterpret, I made some breakthroughs.
I was able to consistently make small profits on small trades day after day, sometimes a bit delayed and sometimes I would be left bag holding for months on end with lost trades, but they were all generally small trades. And those losing trades would generally eventually move back into profit or even as price fluctuated because I never used a stop loss, not wanting to make a loss of any sort. That was my defensive strategy, which works with crypto. So all I lost was time. I still always had my investment, whatever crypto it might be.
And as a trader it became more about the potential profit than the product. Although there were some exceptions, some I would never trade and some I would always trade, like Bitcoin. But trading started reminding me of the vile monetary system too much, and the less than healthy “financial tools” market, including options, leverage, margin, futures, and other such instruments where one never really purchases a product, one only purchases a long or a short on the price movement of the product.
But that story of how I doubled my money the first time I tried options trading on gold is for another post.
