$1M Trading Challenge: Week 6 - Short

For years, I was against the idea of opening short trades in the crypto market. From my point of view, it is much more logical to buy assets and stay on the bullish side. Why? Because the nature of the crypto market, as well as the stock market, is bullish. The crypto market has more fundamental reasons and the potential to move upward than downward. There is much more room for upward movement. That's why we see coins which could give us hundreds and thousands % profit.

Mainly, I ignored shorting as a swing and position trader. Of course, day traders have the right to trade in both directions as they need volatility and don't care about long-term trends and potential.

I started the week with profitable long positions, which I had opened before following reversal signals from the local bottom. The floating drawdown was about 9-10% from the initial capital. I kept holding 5 tokens with long-term targets.

The idea for the week was simple. I planned to fix long positions as soon as the market would become bearish again. The continuation of the downtrend was logical. And the market gave such an opportunity! So I followed the bearish sentiment and decided to fix several % profit from the long positions.

What was the next step?
At the beginning of 2022, I opened long positions trying to catch the reversal from the support. Unfortunately, this idea failed, and I had to close the part of long positions. I remember there was a question, why I hadn't opened short positions? The question made sense as the market moved downward and confirmed the bearish trend. But I didn't open short positions not only because I ignored such type of trading. There were other reasons. The market was not overbought, and the price was far from resistance.

I do my best to follow an important rule:
- go long from support when an asset is oversold
- go short from resistance when an asset is overbought

That time the price was far from resistant, and we didn't have overbought market conditions. So, I didn't have enough reasons to open short positions.

But this time, the price bounced from MAs and the local resistance when we had the bearish trend. The market gave an obvious bearish signal. It was not far from the overbought market conditions in the daily time frame.

There were reasons to go short!

Also, I stayed in 10% floating drawdown and with 20% monthly goal for profit. The market didn't give good bullish opportunities for swing and position trading. There was no workable alternative to short positions. And I decided to short some altcoins.

The time shows that I made a timing mistake. I rushed and opened short positions at the resistance, following the local bearish momentum. But the market didn't move in my direction. I could see a reversal and a new attempt to break the resistance. The market could continue the upward movement! It pushed me to close the short positions at the breakeven.

I like how the market teaches us.
As soon as I closed my short positions, the market moved in my direction)))

It can be like that, and we have to use this experience to improve our trading. I followed the bullish sentiment and tried to predict a possible breakout with further upward movement. That's why I tell you again and again - don't try to predict the market movements! It is useless! It is the source of mistakes and sometimes very stupid mistakes. It is much better to follow the market! Always do it like that!

The crypto market moved downward, and I decided to open a new short position. This time, I picked Bitcoin as the main asset for my trade.
The entry point was around $42 000. I placed the hard stop above $46 000. The main profit targets became $34 000 and $30 000.

It was the week when I had to ignore my preferences and open short trades against my bullish nature. But, sometimes, you have to do it to use opportunities that the market gives you.

The trading result for the whole week was about breakeven. I stayed in the floating drawdown of about 9%, with 1 short position in the BTCUSD market and 5 tokens in the portfolio with long-term targets.



I hope you could get something valuable from this post. As usual, I publish all my trades and descriptions of each step in the financial market in the "Trader's Notes" journal. It is available for everyone.
I will be grateful if you support my work with your feedback! Thanks a lot for your attention!