RE: Bitcoin (BTC) Morning Update: Don't Confuse the Trees for the Forest
You will find that bots are way faster than you, but also that they have no emotions, and TA is built on human emotions. A market made up exclusively by bots might simply go sideways forever, having ups and downs of 500+ or minus where everybody would buy and sell, buy and sell... that wouldn't be bad.
The danger lies in that they are programmable and that their masters will sometimes take the rudder, and especially when normal users do what can be expected of normal users, like place their stop losses where all the massive prophets tell them to place their stop losses.
In such a case a low will suddenly dip way past your stop loss, trigger it, go way lower than anyone could expect and then shoot up again before anyone has time to place an order, or they will suddenly shoot high up to trigger a pocket of buy orders, which makes the rate rise even higher, then the humans who like to buy green will jump in to ride the spike, which will then magically turn red and eat all their gains... this is how the combo of bots and institutional investors can damage you.
Algos basically NEVER buy higher than you do, but they may buy every low, which you can't.
You're talking about a much shorter time-frame than I am. I'm not stupid enough to try to beat bots at day-trading! The bot version of me would obviously win, even if I were the best human trader in the world.
However, just because the micro-term is dominated by bots doesn't mean that you can't beat the market by expanding into a wider time frame where lightning fast orders lose their advantage. Algorithms have limitations, and many bots lose money, because of the bigger trends. Who are they losing money to? Well, to those of us playing a longer game than their algorithms are designed to comprehend.
91% of traders lose money when they trade.
If you're saying that you'll just hodl, that is okay with me.
You just need strong nerves in case you bought BTC at below 9k and watched it rise to 19k and now it's down at nine with a further dip straight ahead, more nerve if you bought above - and even if you have the nerve you still also need to afford the time, many months.
Ideally, you should already be rich when you start to trade.
Much better psychological base.
hodl? Too late, I already sold above 14 and bought again at 8 and sold again at 11. That's what I mean by "not short-term." Day trading is too volatile and fast for human hands, but week-trading and month-trading are a little more predictable.
Really though I prefer when the market is up and I can just go with BTC/Altcoin pairs and watch my portfolio grow no matter what trade I make, haha. Dollar/BTC pairs in a down market is stressful, you're right it helps that I already own my house, I can just easily watch my portfolio tank and not even notice an impact on my life.
Seems we're all having the same problem, and getting wiser ;)