MarcusAurelius161

GARENTEED BITCOIN FORECAST! (Psychological management post)

Long
MarcusAurelius161 Updated   
INDEX:BTCUSD   Bitcoin
Do you find yourself checking charts first thing in the morning?
Do you sneak looks at charts when you should be doing something else?
Does your trading impact your mood / make you worry / impact your life like an abusive relationship?
Did you come here for 100% guaranteed price prediction?

I lied in my title. In this post, I will give a Bitcoin forecast BUT if any of the above apply to you, please read through the boring professional trader stuff first - it may save you money but most importantly YOUR HEALTH!

There is no certainty in markets. Given that we have gone through 3 'once in a lifetime' black-swan events in the last 20 years, the unwritten market rule is that the only certainty in markets is that you can not and will never be able to KNOW market direction. Tiktokers and YouTubers screaming for next x1000 altcoin won't tell you this, and yet it is a core foundation of trading. The sooner you grasp this, the sooner your unconscious bias and desire for control will vanish, allowing you to A) trade significantly better and not lose your life savings B) not have your life governed by the emotional impact of trading C) use trading to apply appropriate risk tolerance to other life choices and live a better, more fulfilling life.

I know it absolutely sucks, you just bought a couple of grands worth of crypto cause you thought it would be an easy buck. Now you're down a lot and some guy is ranting about trading being some kind of life therapy?! I'm basically the buddha mate, keep reading you degenerate.

Markets are a very strange alien environment for humans to operate in. While our entire psychological state seeks to address problems by drawing on past knowledge, lessons learnt and observations of others actions dealing with similar situations (after all this has worked for you your whole life), in the market this behaviour is the Achilles Heel of 99% of market participants. It's why you sit and wait day after day seeing an Alt increase in value 10/50/100% then when we finally feel the market has proven itself and you buy - BAM the Alt crashes. Alternatively, it's also why we FOMO in, listen to people shouting HODL, follow YouTubers shilling products and rationalise market movement through reading the news. All of these are drawn from emotional biases learnt over not just your lifetime, but that are hardwired into your very DNA. This is why trading carries significant risk as becoming a profitable trader is not just learning how to trade (that's only 10% of it), it is learning to harness and control the very fabric you are made of and go against EVERY natural instinct in a cold, rational, probabilistic manner.

There are a number of reasons why markets just don't work with our individual psychological state. Some examples are: the price of an asset is the price the herd agrees it MIGHT be worth in the future (name one thing you've ever done in life where you've had to guess what a bunch of unknown participants think will happen to something ONTOP of a million things potentially cropping up during the time between now and then), market makers shift price to areas that are intentionally designed to cause psychological distress to those who are unprepared for potential outcomes, etc etc.

We don't actually need to know any of this because ultimately - Price will go where price will go and, again (say it with me) there is NO CERTAINTY OTHER THAN UNCERTAINTY. And it is with that miserable understanding of the market that I introduce our ray of light, our one and only true unbias friend in the market. Probability.

Casinos are the primary example here. Gambling is also an environment where there is no certainty and so for casinos to become successful businesses, they can't lose more than the people gambling in the casino. Pretty simple. The way they do this is they understand that over an infinite magnitude of games, so long as they have a probability of winning that is over 51% they will make money. The Casino boss doesn't wake up in the middle of the night to check his balance sheet because he knows that the games he chooses to play are in favour of him winning and while he may go on losing streaks to the professional gambler, overall he will win.

The same is true for trading. Supports/resistances, candlestick patterns, technical analysis as a whole and trading strategies are to the trader what the 0 and 00 are to the casino on the roulette table - they shift that probability of winning above 50%. You might get a moonshot everyone once in a while, or you might get lucky accidentally investing at the start of a bull market, but the one thing I can guarantee to you is that if you do not understand the general probabilities behind your trades you will eventually lose all that money. If you are learning this for the first time I'm not going to sugar coat it - it will be a hard a transformative journey that most of you will drop out of - this is the second truth of trading. There is no profitability without probability.

This last one is particularly telling. Trading is EXTREMELY dangerous. Like a gambler, the trader can completely ruin their entire life or cause major psychological trauma by losing a significant % of their money. You are playing with fire constantly and so you MUST use probability to protect yourself, not just to earn money, but to be a healthy trader both financially and mentally.

So now we know we have a guardian angel standing over us, let's apply probability to try and plan for the potential future paths of Bitcoin. (Note: I am not saying predict - anyone that ever says that you should close that post ASAP. This is another super-easy way to filter out information that makes you doubt yourself and your trades, remember we can never predict - all we can do is understand the rough probabilities that things will happen and prepare accordingly.)

The number sections correlate to the numbered sections on the chart:

1: Here we know with hindsight that Bitcoin was trending bullish. In a market, there are only two states it can be in that define the overarching probabilities of price action - "Trending" and "Ranging" (there is a third - Choas - but we don't care about that).
A trend is where the price oscillates bullish or bearish. In a bullish trend, this means the price is more likely to break resistances than supports, and the reverse is true in a bearish trend. Understanding that the 'context' a market is in is a 'trend' means we can gauge that probability favours bullish or bearish trades more than the other and BAM YOU HAVE DONE IT YOU HAVE MASTERED THE 10% OF BEING A TRADER (the rest is applying that knowledge and lol good luck with that impossible task).

2: Here we can clearly see that Bitcoin entered into its second potential market state - a "range"
A range is nothing more than price oscillating between two ROUGH price areas. Within this the enthusiasm of buyers has been met by the supply of the sellers and so price bounces around chaotically, shifting probabilities of price going one way or the other much closer to 50/50 in a choppy, ugly chaotic mess. This is the 'context' where most of those who don't know trading and don't have control over their emotions begin to give away all their easy money won in the trend as they are consumed by shifting emotions that uncertainty provides.

Yet it is combining the two that gives us 'context' of the wider market. Bitcoin is not (I can say this) NOT in a bear market. Probability significantly favours large timeframe (weekly) bullish price action and price needs to drop significantly lower and spend a lot more time there for a bear market or bearish trend to emerge. This is where I introduce the 3rd universal truth of trading. "The trend is your friend". The weight of the bullish trend prior to Bitcoins range gives a statistical probability that price will extract itself to the bullside of the range. Obviously, you can't see that if you are looking at a 15 min/1 hour / 4 hour chart but its clear on the higher timeframes. This means that even within a dynamic where price has a 50/50 chance of bouncing around bullish or bearish, we can still gauge that the overarching probability still remains bullish.

3: With an understanding that the range is tainted bullish and so probability still favours larger time frame bullish movement, we can begin to look for entry points where price offers additional statistical advantages to us - i.e supports and candlestick patterns. Even though that is true, there is NEVER pressure to trade. If the only certainty is uncertainty then here comes our 4th universal trading truth - If you don't trade, you can't lose money. Your focus should ALWAYS be on capital preservation - this is one of the many technics that shifts your bias away from those natural emotional desires to FOMO in as you start seeing the true dynamics of market involvement and not the warpped biases of incorrect untrained psychological mindsets. This means that we do not need to get involved in a trade or add to our position if the probability is not in our favour, and so in a range where probability is 50/50 or slightly tainted bullish or bearish due to prior larger timeframe trends, we still don't NEED to get involved if we know we can increase that probability further in our favour at a later period in time.

So we wait for appropriate price areas that increase our probabilities and combine this with the 'context' that we have established in the above points. In this case, Bitcoin is sat at historic price support (the 41k area) and so this again adds to the probability we have established in the fact that Bitcoins range is tainted bullish to give us a higher chance that if we were to repeat this trade 100 times, more often than not you would make money. We can even add another layer here and wait for a signal that confirms what we think will happen at the support - price reacting off of it. We do this by looking for candlestick patterns. Candlesticks are nothing more than a visualisation of price action over the course of time, and price action is nothing more than a demonstration of the behaviour of market participants. A hammer candle - (I've drawn what one looks like at 3a.) demonstrates that price opened high, sellers pushed price lower but for whatever reason, over the course of the candle buyers came in and pushed the price back up to close the candle near the highs. If this happens in an area of support we can use this as a sort of 'confirmation' that our assumptions about the probability of a trade being in our favour are potentially correct. (NOTE: This is very simplified but the jest of it still applies). So here, as Bitcoin is in a supportive area, in a range that is tainted bullish, if we see a hammer candlestick we can say that "ok price MAY keep going down but I know more often than not price will go up".

And that's it. I know it might be a bit of a letdown or a bit deflating having read through all of this but it really is that simple.

We have assessed that the context of Bitcoin is a range = 50/50 chance of bullish and bearish price action.
We have also assessed that Bitcoin trended bullish prior to the range and so this slightly taints that probability towards Bitcoin extracting itself from the range to the upside.
We have assessed that Bitcoin is on a support area and if we see an appropriate candlestick pattern, that will add to this slight bullish taint in probability.

All of these combined means that Bitcoin will more likely than not reactivate bullish. That doesn't mean it will, and so you should be prepared for that eventuality - i.e by not being too leveraged, by having a stop-loss or even by having a plan - "Dude it's chill the 30k support is still in play, my invalidation/stop is below there and so we still know bitcoin is in a bullish tainted range so I'm not going to panic sell like the herd if 41k area breaks". But crucially going through these steps with each of your trades will start you on your journey to achieving success in trading and controlling the dumb monkey in your brain that wants instant gratification, easy money, to panic sell, to panic buy and that will eventually lose you money.

I have marked down 52k as an area of interest. This would be a higher high on the daily timeframe and so should Bitcoin bounce from these levels and IF 52k is reached, this adds more weight to our probability that Bitcoin will extract itself to the upside from the range. I do not look at lower timeframes most of the time as it's so much more chill looking at only the daily/weekly. Why bother trying to get a 2% swing over the course of the week when I can not check a chart for a week or and, over the course of a few years, catch a 700% swing like we have over the last 2 years.

Thanks for your time.

P.

NOTE: I would not be here without the incredible lessons I have learned from my past teachers. I can not offer the same level of market coverage or substantial knowledge as these guys. I learnt what I know from MarcPMarkets/Goldbug1 at 'Greenbridge Investing' & Phil through 'Pro_Indicators' so go check them out.

PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS POST AS A CALL FOR ACTION. IF YOU ARE INEXPERIENCED, READ THIS AND DECIDE TO OPEN A TRADE THAT IS EXACTLY THE BEHAVIOUR I AM ENCOURAGING YOU NOT TO DO. Go away, learn technical analysis and probability trading, learn a strategy and practise that. Invest in yourself as you aren't investing otherwise.



Comment:
For those wondering - I use a grey, dull charts to avoid the natural bias that seeing huge green candles brings or the instinctual fear that red candles might instil. It is one of many tricks you can use that help to dull the emotional side of trading.
Comment:
Bitcoin produced something that looks somewhat like a "Doji" candlestick pattern. While it is not a perfect example and that's up to interpretation, unlike the hammer candlestick pattern where price opens and closes near the high signifying price reactivating off of a lower level, a "doji" demonstrate that price opened relatively high, pushed down to some kind of support where buyers were found, pushed back towards the high (like the hammer) BUT seller then stepped back in to close the candlestick near the middle of the price action. This means that rather than shifting probability bullish, it tells us that both sellers AND buyers are active in this price area and so probability remains neutral 50/50.

This is non-actionable information. Remember - like the casino boss you choose which games to play and you only choose the games that favour your probability of winning. The very fact that the candlestick is relatively unclear undermines the probability of your trading being successful. But even this gives us something: it allows us to understand the potential probabilities of future price action by combining it with the context of the wider area that the asset may be in: A support area is nothing more than a price where the value of the asset becomes attractive to people. If we spend a very short amount of time at a support area, that tells us that buyers are strong and again informs us of probabilities. This is what we want to see and what a clear hammer candlestick often demonstrates.

The opposite is true if we linger at support. A "doji" candle or something that is unclear but kind of looks like one, forming at a support area is generally seen as a relatively neutral to neutral bearish sign. If there were a lot of market participants interested in buying Bitcoin at the 41k area they would have quickly bought up supply and price would have reactivated bullish by now forming a clear hammer. Instead, we remain here, meaning supply matches demand, some relatively undefinable candlestick has emerged and probability does not favour us so why get involved?

Maybe they are waiting for below 40k? Maybe there is some other reason? We don't actually need to know why, all we need to know is that this SHOULD have been an area where Bitcoin should have become attractive to more buyers than sellers. Over the past week this has proven to not be the case and while that might change, currently the chance of sellers outstripping demand is rising. The longer we linger the more this becomes true.

Maybe we see a hammer develop over the next week with a quick short bear trap below 40k and buyers step in. Maybe we break down. Maybe we shoot up without forming any kind of pattern. All of these are distinct possibilities BUT crucially knowing what you now know - do you really want to YOLO your life savings in? Will you perhaps close out a trade and just take the loss that would have bankrupted you had it broken the 41k are?

Alternatively - do you really need to check the market every 15 mins / in the middle of the night? Or can you chill and wait for next Sunday before even thinking about crypto, getting on with your life and (hopefully) enjoying those profits.

Life is too short to worry, so let probability be your friend and be kind to yourself.
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