Stats given cover closed trades for the 12th November - 18th November
My total realized loss from the past week is -0.54% Overall the portfolio is down 1.76% from last week
Profitable trades closed: 19
Unprofitable trades closed: 8
Most traded instrument: $BTC / $ETSY (5 Trades)
This week saw mixed results in my stock trading and yet another big move in crypto amid the fears surrounding the $BCH hashwar. I even managed to benefit from the most recent Brexit Chaos with a small position in GBPUSD following the flow of resignations. For stocks $ETSY and $AMD again performed well with some strong trading across the board. With cryptos, however I was again on the defensive for the most part, although some of you may have noticed our first long position in $XRP closed at a small profit. Unfortunately I did not stick to my goal of only closing positions under a -10% loss. Instead several trades were closed ahead of what I feared would be a major move down in crypto. All of these trades did as I hoped and avoided us taking on heavier losses, we are now in a position to re-enter the market at lower prices, although I’m holding off for a move below 5k on Bitcoin. I also took the decision today to close even more positions in some of the cryptos I no longer have strong belief in ($ETHEREUM and $ADA). Again, although very substantial losses, these were closed well above the price at time of writing.
News
The crypto crash this week came just a days before closing out a weekly candle above the long-term downtrend in most cryptos, including $BTC. As mentioned in previous updates, the weekly candle closing above the downtrend or below the support level with good volume was the confirmation of direction I was looking for. Over the weekend we finally got that confirmation and this week we are already seeing cryptos trade lower. From here my expectation is that we are likely to see 4.5k or so before the end of 2018. This will likely sink many of you into a pit of despair, but I feel the need to again point out that this prolonged bear market is still a great thing for the crypto space. There are now very few ICO’d cryptos sitting with a market cap over 50M, in fact most are well below 10M. We are genuinely seeing projects on the brink of dying entirely, and since over 90% of projects are terrible this is good news. Not only are we shaking out investors who did not put in due diligence, but we are shifting the focus of any who remain back towards the major projects which have made strides and continued to grow their respective ecosystems. You may be wondering what caused this correction and why some coins are benefiting while some are losing. There are two different themes at play here. The first is the Proof-of-Work trust diminishing following the dramatics seen during the $BCH fork. SV and ABC forks have been at war, a “hashwar” to be specific. The problem is that it’s highlighted concerns about how easy and cheap it can be to perform these attacks on any Proof of Work based blockchain such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum. Projects such as XRP, XLM, EOS, IOTA, NEO and ADA are all immune to these types of attacks. The second theme is following the SEC’s decision to fine two ICO’s and request they refund all of their contributors. This has shaken faith in ICO’s, meaning platform style cryptos such as ETH, EOS, NEO and ADA have seen increased fear about the utility and thus value of the projects. It has also lead to a decrease in confidence for projects that used an ICO. The result so far appears to be strength in projects that sit in neither camp and have a well-defined use-case. On eToro that means $XRP and $XLM.
Cryptos
$BCH
2 shorts for 6.22% & -4.86%, a small win overall
$EOS
1 loss of -19.71%, closed at 4.40
$XLM
1 loss of -20.02%, closed at 0.2182 (not quite as good given the stronger performance by Stellar)
$BTC
5 losses of -26%, -32.14%, -0.73% & -1.66%. 1 profit of 2.71%, two longer term positions and 3 day trades. Far from ideal, but given they were all closed at around 5500-5600, not the worst considering the recent movement
$XRP
Do not adjust your screens, one swing trade closed for a profit of 4.88% after just a few days
Stocks $ATVI
1 profit of 0.29%, a manual SL, I was hoping to see something bigger
$ETSY
4 profits of 5.94%, 4.17%, 1.51% & 1.53%. 1 loss of -0.53%, not too bad, a couple of long-term trades closed, the rest day trades
$AMD
4 profits of 0.83%, 11.27%, 7.35% & 1.58%, again all from day trading. I’m pretty happy with my results here
$NSDQ100
3 profits of 0.61%, 0.51% & 1.39%, two shorts, one long. Nothing huge, but these were actually very well timed trades that performed about as well as they could have given the low leverage
$UK100
1 short closed for a profit of 0.43%
$SNAP
Another short closed at 1.22% in the green. Just a few more positions left in snapchat, but I’m hoping to hold those a little longer
$GBPUSD
This is an instrument I’ve only traded a couple of times in my life, but the drama around the Conservatives this week was too good an opportunity to pass up on. If I were more experienced in trading it I’d have stuck it out longer. Very low leverage used for 1.32% profit
$MSFT
Another swing trade, this time for 4.04% profit
Looking Forward
A warning for you all this week. As Bitcoin has dropped below this major long-term support it looks increasingly likely that this bear market will stretch out into next year, possibly even another year from where we are currently As you can see I have already taken some action towards the end of last week and again today, but I will continue to keep exposure, perhaps it will end sooner, this is crypto after all. I just wanted to ensure you are all prepared for the likely scenario this entails 1. I am unlikely to finish much above -40% for the year unless something dramatic changes in crypto or the stock markets 2. Your stop losses may be at risk, it is up to you to decide if you want to try and ride it out with a wider SL, or if it’s better to keep it in place 3. You are likely to become more emotional about your losses the longer this lasts (congrats for making it this far at least). Be aware of this and try to think logically about and decisions you make. I’m more than happy to answer questions and concerns providing you are not rude or trolling With that all being said, I am still majorly bullish for crypto, every week there is more and more exciting news coming from the space, I have not given up on it, and have no plans to do so.