Crypto Trading 101 | Surfing the crypto and stock market

This week was the easiest way to make money — that is, if you didn’t do anything!

Sometimes sitting on a long position and having the patience to wait out the dips is harder than it seems — but when the market set up is there – sometimes the best move is no move — to let the market do its thing and waiting for opportunities to take profits.

This week was one of those weeks.

My thoughts this week were straight out of Jesse Livermore’s Reminiscences of a Stock Operator:

“It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight! It is no trick at all to be right on the market. You always find lots of early bulls in bull markets and early bears in bear markets. I’ve known many men who were right at exactly the right time, and began buying or selling stocks when prices were at the very level which should show the greatest profit. And their experience invariably matched mine–that is, they made no real money out of it. Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon.”

S&P500 Futures #ESU8

On Friday, the liquidity moved from the ESM8 (June) S&P futures contract to the ESU8 (September) S&P futures contract.

So going forward, charts will be based on the September S&P contract.

We had a monstrous run of around $2,000 from a $1,700 position size — an over 100% return. We cashed out 40% of this amount on the pop to what is now the 2775 ES level. So 40% of what was $1,700 in profits at the time resulted in realizing around $680 in profits.

We are still holding on to the remaining 3 of 5 SPY call contracts – which have an unrealized profit of $1,300.

So if we add this $1,300 unrealized with the $680 in realized, then we have a trade that increased account size around $2,000 — or from $25,000 to $27,000 — by risking only $1,700 — that’s risking less than 10% of the account value.

This just shows the power of options — when entered at the right time and selected properly to provide appropriate % return while still managing ongoing, and increasing built-in time decay.

This one trade is responsible for the May to June move up from $25k to $27k.

S&P500 4H Chart

Trade Recap

BUY Alert: Buy to open 5 SPY June 15 ’18 270.5 call at market – Wednesday, May 30, 2018

SELL Alert: Sell to close 40% SPY June 15’18 270.5 call at market – Wednesday, June 6, 2018

“position up $1,700 profit, roughly 100% return — exiting 2 of the 5 contracts to lock in”

Still holding 3 of the 5 SPY calls.

Pattern we predicted: 

Entry Date: May 30, 2018

A quick update on the crypto markets. After bottoming around $6400 a few weeks ago – bitcoin peeked over its own trend line around $8000 – which we called attention to members as a significant area.

Today, just a week later, bitcoin is hovering just over $9000 after reaching resistance around $9,500.

Meanwhile, EOS – has 5x’ed since its low of $4 – we recommended it at $10 and looked a bit stupid when it was down 60%, but now it’s up 100% – trading over $20. This it the wild wild west of cryptocurrencies – so you’ve got to be able to stomach pain and have a strategy in place – the strategy we recommend is the same as in our Warren Buffett video – dollar cost averaging.

Bitcoin. What is it?

The next big thing revolutionizing the world of money as we know it? Or just the biggest scam and bubble in history?

Bitcoin is everywhere, literally. We hear about it on the news. Your friends, their parents, their cousins and uncles all hear about it, yet it can be hard to explain.

What exactly is it? Why should you care?

Yes, bitcoin has been used by drug dealers and money launderers in illegal scandals that have taken place in dark corners of the internet through shady marketplaces including something called the Silk Road. Yes, bitcoin has also been hacked – not the coin, but the exchange it was on – in the infamous Mount Gox collapse.

Yes, bitcoin has been called a fraud by respected CEO Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan. And yes, even legendary investor Warren Buffett said bitcoin will come to a bad ending.

Yet at the same time, bitcoin has revolutionized the concept of money and more importantly, the concept of trust as we know it. It is perhaps the most important financial development of this century, whether it works or not. Love it or hate it, you’ve got to at least understand it and its implications for what is to come.

Before we define bitcoin, let’s put it in context – from the beginning.

Crypto Resources

If you are new to crypto – the most popular place to get started is Coinbase – use this link to get $10 in bitcoin when you sign up. For smaller cryptos, I’ve been using Binance – though I’ve been having issues verifying my identity with them. So far it seems to be one of the better platforms for getting exposure to various cryptos.

Robinhood has $0 trade commission for stock and will soon have it for cryptos.

Sign Up!

Sign up to become a member to access to premium videos and you will get the insights you need to make more educated trade decisions. And yes, you’ll get to join our Whatsapp mobile text alerts for weekly trade recommendations.

Get Trade Alerts Now

Follow on Instagram

  Need assistance with getting approved for options by your broker?

The Cointelegraph as well as Bloomberg Pantera Capital articles mention the top hedge fund calling a bit bottom in the price of bitcoin.

“For those who are new to Pantera who might think a fund manager like Pantera would always be saying ‘Today’s a great day to get long,”’ wrote Pantera’s Dan Morehead and Joey Krug. “I rarely have such strong conviction on timing. A wall of institutional money will drive the markets much higher.”

Prices of all cryptocurrencies have crashed quite a significant amount – most well over 50 % and some over 80% (Cardano / ADA) – is now the time to buy?

Here’s my take:

 

The biggest security crypto hack just happened with Coincheck (Japan) – and it’s bigger than the infamous Mount Gox collapse.

You can see this article: Coincheck Confirms Crypto Hack Loss Larger than Mt Gox

The total dollar amount hacked of the NEM cryptocurrency (no other cryptos were affected) was roughly $400 million – some sources say $533 million – compared to Mt Gox’s estimated $340 million.

Coincheck confirmed Friday that the hack, now likely the largest ever in the space, occurred on its servers early afternoon local time in Tokyo. Shortly after it discovered the theft, the exchange suspended trading of NEM, the stolen crypto in question, then of the other dozen coins it lists.

Coincheck is looking into compensating its customers, its executives also announced – which is different from Mount Gox where there was a total loss for investors. The amount is unknown at this time.

So given this hack, we have to talk about security.

Anything that is connected to the internet can be potentially hacked. These are all hot wallets – because they are hot on the internet.

You should consider holding a cold storage unit – like the one we recoommend with Ledger Nano S.

When you plug it into a standard mini USB to full-size USB cable to a computer – the device will turn on and you can begin configuring it by pressing the two buttons at the top together.

 

 

Step 1) Use Google Chrome-  adnd search for the Ledger Wallet

There’s different apps – a Ledger Wallet Bitcoin for bitcoin and a Ledger Wallet Ethereum for ethereum. If you have both bitcoin and ethereum, you’ll want to download both.

Step 2) Add the Chrome Extension for the Ledger Wallet Bitcoin/Ethereum

As the picture shows – you click the Add button.

Step 3) See Ledger Wallet App Added

You will see the two apps you downloaded – one for bitcoin and one for ethereum alongside your main Google Chrome apps.

If you don’t see it – go to the top right Settings – and go to My Extensions and Apps and you should see it there.

Next, you login with your pin code on your Ledger USB device and enter inside the Ethereum app – matching the Ethereum app you have opened in your Google Chrome browser.

Then a new window should pop up allowing you to send and receive your ethereum.

This is a cold storage unit that you can carry around with you anywhere and is generally considered the safest way to store your crypto.

So if you don’t already have one, check out the Ledger Nano S.

 

Bitcoin

Bitcoin may be peeping just outside of the downward sloping line. Ideally, I would like to see a move towards 14000 but it looks a bit sluggish to me.

Ethereum

The Ethereum chart is more bullish than Bitcoin. It, too, is just popping over its downward sloping channel – though it clear...

Quite a bit has happened in crypto land since the last post just before the holidays.

Ripple – Ripple stole the spotlight – due to its 10x gain in less than one month, making it the biggest crypto coin after bitcoin (previously Ethereum was #2).

Ripple facilitates bank transfer of money over borders. The rise up has to do with a combination of banks adopting usage of Ripple’s XRP token (which is the least used part of its protocol offering) – as well as speculation that more banks will adopt it. Rumors of it being listed on coinbase – which coinbase has since denied – also led to the run up.

Now, Ripple cofounders (Ripple’s current and former CEOs Chris Larsen and Brad Garlinghouse) are richer than Sergey and Larry from Google as well as the founder of Oracle – talk about madness. Jed McCaleb – another co-founder who left the company to start Stellar – is also a billionaire.

Ripple launched in 2012 to facilitate global financial transactions. It differentiates itself from other digital currency platforms by its connections to legitimate banks. Companies that use the Ripple platform include Santander (SANPRA), Bank of America (BAC) and UBS (UBS).

Cross-border payments that can take hours with bitcoin or days with traditional financial transactions can go through in a matter of seconds with ripple, the company says.

CoinMarket Cap Rankings

If You Invested $100

If an investor had placed $100 in each of the top 10 cryptocurrencies in 2017, the total yearly profit would have been $64,707 (on an initial investment of $1K).

Ripple has surpassed Ethereum in market cap to become the #2 coin in terms of market cap. My apologies for not alerting on this one, I put in a speculative position at $.25, added at $.50, added at $.70, added at $1.3 – and it’s near $3 now.

Amazing from $.25 to $3+ – basically a 10x’er in 1 month. And this is not some micro-cap crypto – it’s now the second largest.

We’ll have charts of the major cryptos below. During that Crash, we recommend buys at Litecoin 247, Bitcoin 13,000, and Ethereum at 620.

Bitcoin is now over 16,000; ethereum over 900; and the only one stuck is Liteocoin which is still at 247.

In fact with Ethereum – we reiterated a buy at 790 (see on the right) – and within one hour of alerting members, Ethereum shot up to 875. Now it’s at 950.

On the S&P side, we picked the correct direction as the markets opened for the New Year, but exited our SPY call way early. We entered bullish calls at 2690 and exited at 2702. Now it’s 2742 — completely ridiculous. Really can’t make sense of the size of the move up, but it is what it is.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin pulled back from almost 20,000 to around 10,400. We alerted to members in chat a buy at 13,000. Today it finally started showing some bullish signs and is at around 16800,

Litecoin

Litecoin has been a lot weaker than I expected.

In chat to premium members – we alerted sells in Ethereum >$820 after our buys at $360.

After a few days, the entire crypto space dropped around 35%-45%. When bitcoin dropped close to 50% – lots of people panicked.

Instead, on that Friday – we mentioned that bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin were all in buy zones to premium members in chat.

Now – a few days afterwards, CNBC gave this alert that Bitcoin rallied more than 50% from the Friday lows. 

Remember our Litecoin video?- it rocketed from $100 to $400 – and we put – live in the video – buy orders at $247 – which we notified members when it was sitting right there shortly after the big drop in cryptos.

Bitcoin

 

Ethereum

S&P

Meanwhile the S&P is flat, looks like as long as the pink support levels hold, the pressure looks to pushing up.

 

 

 

Litecoin was trading at $100 5 days ago. Today it hit over $400!

Just 5 days ago, Litecoin was $100 – this morning it touched over $400

Try Bitonnect and get bonus bitcoins: https://bitconnect.co/?ref=fushion83

$10 bonus coinbase signup link: https://www.coinbase.com/join/52d09ba5665390110c000076

I recommend this hardware wallet to store your crypto safely:

Does North Korea and Hurricane Irma news affect the markets?

Based on recent price action, the answer appears to be no.

Even though the media shows a lot of imagery – and the markets could be down at some point – lately it’s always bounced to higher levels shortly afterwards — in the matter of hours.

So far this has happened twice in the last week or so – and each time it was a buying opportunity.

Hurricane Irma is about to hit South Florida after tearing apart a bunch of caribbean islands.

Yet, volatility is near all-time lows with each spike of volatility just coming down — even as we are already in September — a historically volatile month with Congress back in session and with threats that the government could shut down due to Trump-related issues.

Yet, the market continues to march higher.

More Details: http://www.lifestyletrading101.com/2017/09/09/wkd-9917-markets-up-on-north-korea-2464-es/

Coinbase, one of the most popular ways of buying cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, and potentially more — charges mostly a percentage fee.

According to their site:

(a) Minimum fee — a flat fee that applies to conversion transactions under $200, and which is disclosed before you execute the transaction.

(b) Percentage fee — varies by region and payment type, as follows:

USA

Base rate of 4% for all transactions**

Payment Method for Purchase Effective Rate of Conversion Fee (after waiver)

U.S. Bank Account 1.49%, with a $0.15 minimum

Coinbase USD Wallet 1.49%

Credit/Debit Card 3.99%

So is there a way to avoid these fees?

The good new is yes, we can avoid these fees.

We do so by transferring our coins into the GDAX platform at www.gdax.com

In the above video, we connect our coinbase account into GDAX so we can transfer our existing coins from coinbase into GDAX.

From there, we avoid market orders and instead use limit buy orders and limit sell orders.

This does not guarantee immediate execution, but if you place your orders close enough to where the market is trading, there’s a good chance it will get filled — without an exorbitant 1.5% or 3.5% fee.

The market appears to be setting up in an ideal pattern on a daily chart basis that matches our theoretical diagram (see below).

While it looks really messy on a chart with hourly candles, from a daily chart perspective – it is much clearer.

Basically after a big A wave down and a big wave 1 down – this past week has been a wave 2 bounce.

But the wave 2 bounce has a characteristic “twin peaks” — which we can see as being at the 2452 ES region – which is what my target was as mentioned in last week’s video.

In fact, in that video at the 4:30 mark, I mention that we should get a bounce and my targets are 2446 ES and possibly 2452 ES.  The high was 2454 ES, which we hit on Aug 22 and again today 3 days later Aug 25 – we reached up to 2453 ES on the Yellen speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

So so far – the market is behaving exactly according to the C-wave pattern in the below diagram.

 

There’s no guarantee that the market will follow through according to the pattern, but the setup is potentially there.

Perhaps over the weekend there will be some geopolitical headlines to “trigger” this move?

This pattern is not clear at all when we zoom in — so I have less confidence when zoomed in, but when zoomed out on daily, it looks great.

Today’s S&P500 Hourly Chart

During the day, after attempting 2453 ES and failing — the market went towards 2440 ES – but then it attempted 2450 ES again — at this point, I was not sure if the pattern was on track, but lo and behold at the last half hour – the market finally reversed and closed near 2442 ES.

As such, there’s a chance for the pink count to target below 2430 ES. However, we could still be in a more complex b-wave — so if we hold support in the 2430s and turn back up strongly to new highs – that would be something to watch out for.

But my preference is for the diagram to play out.

Today’s Russell Hourly Chart

The Russell has held up unusually well — but I see resistance at the 1380 region – which is where we pulled back from in that last hour.

The Russell was previously destroyed — this past week was it outperformed on a relative basis to the other indices. 

Today’s Nasdaq Hourly Chart

The Nasdaq has reached into the 5870 region 3 times so far — and pulled back each time.

Today’s Silver  Hourly Chart

Silver has crossed over the pink line and also come back to test that down trend — and now it has consolidated near that 17 – it should eventually start moving up.

Trade Alert Performance (Model Portfolio)

see brokerage statement

Sign Up!

Sign up to become a member to access to premium videos and you will get the insights you need to make more educated trade decisions. And yes, you’ll get to join our Whatsapp mobile text alerts for weekly trade recommendations.