As some of you may know I am a younger trader both by age and experience. Two weeks ago I started trading with a volume of $2800 dollars or at the time 1 BTC as a 17 year old. So far I've made a variety of trades some gaining me 1.5-3 x and some costing me half my total profile in the matter of a week. When I began trading I was on a hot streak by researching particular coins that were new to Bittrex, (my exchange of choice) seeing if they had attracted any whales by checking buy orders and seeing if the volume was increasing to support outbreaks. I successfully did this a couple of times and turned my $2800 to a nice $3400 by holding these winners for a day or two until I saw a v formation peek. At this time I always sold when I found this peek and as a result I had took barely any losses in my first week!
(How I felt after my first week)
Unfortunately I decided to shake up my strategy investing my entire portfolio in CreditBit (CRB). Looking into the coin, it's whitepapers and road map I thought it was a good coin that was still in it's infancy and had the potential to give at least a 20% gain within a day. I made a 33 % gain at the height by buying in just after the pump had started. Although after I saw the peek I decided that the coin had a lot of potential since it was rumored to be released on Poly as well in the next couple of days.
So I thought I was being so smart and held past the peek, expecting the next leg to be a downward trend till the coin was added to the next exchange and having exponential gains. After waiting a whole week for the next exchange to come and not taking any profit while a multitude of other coins went to the moon, I watched as my coins slowly got devalued to about .56 bitcoins. I then after being frustrated, seeing an absence of devs and a delay in the road map decided to sell my position. Holding this position in $CRB killed me and taught me to never hold dips and always sell at peaks or at least take profits to minimize risk.
(how I felt after week 2)
Desperate, trying to reacquire my lost $BTC, I recklessly made quick plays on small bounces in certain coins and ended up taking even more loses due to fees. I finally decided to take a breather from the market for a day and leave my portfolio as $BTC. The next day I stumbled upon Numeraire (NMR) at .03 BTC a coin. I saw that it was the first hedge fund coin and that the whales on Wall Street were diving in and as a result, I once again dumped my entire portfolio into a single coin.
Although this time I was fairly confident in at least a 2x gain. I vowed to go back to my original strategy of finding coins that were promising enough to have a stable rise and to commit to these coins until I found their peeks. $NMR had its peek yesterday which I sold at .07 and took my 2.3x gain and then diversified my portfolio in promising coins for gains over the next week while keeping my initial .56 BTC to reinvest in NMR.
Through these two weeks these are the biggest lessons I have taken away. Commit to promising coins (generally the fewer trades you make the higher your profit margins), don't play small bounces, Sell or take profit at the end of upward legs and do not hold long term after a coin has been pumped due to speculation. If your new to trading like me avoid these mistakes, spend a lot of time learning how to trade effectively and maybe just maybe, me and you both can turn our dumb money to smart money!