1. Losing or earning money on an investment will mess with your head, be prepared for it
This was the biggest revelation for me. I didn’t think investing was going to take over my life as much as it did. I severely underestimated how much it was going to play with my emotions.
If you invest, prepare some mechanisms so that the status of your investments isn’t the status of your life.
2. Don't just invest randomly, clarify your goals and have some "STRATEGY"
You might have heard or seen "Buy and Hodl" but let me tell you this straight - it's not that easy. When you have a few thousand dollars invested in cryptocurrencies you will be pulled into this game. You will check coinmarket 100 times a day( if you are an exception then you might invest and forget about it).
So better set some buying and selling rules like
- Don’t buy when it is at an all-time high
- Don’t sell for a loss, wait for the right moment and with such large swings I would recommend waiting is worth.
- Don't forget to take marginal profits, set your target like 25% or maybe 30% profit.
3. Do not day trade.Period!
It looks very exciting to make a ton of money within a day but 99% of the time you are going to fail.Even if you win at once you will come again to play the game and you will eventually lose. Don't forget you are trading against machine learning algorithms that have been modeled with large datasets.
4. You will never trade at the best moment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make money
This is the best advice I have come across in investing
"One of the biggest problems with investing is that everybody is trying to buy at the feet and sell at the head. The thing is, you never know when you are at either. Instead, aim for buying at the knees and selling at the shoulders. Don’t beat yourself up if it goes higher, be happy with what you made. If you get greedy and try to go for the head those investments will ruin your life."
Stick to your buying strategy and don’t worry about what could have been. Focus on what you should do next.
5. Get your skin in the game
Having studied properly about investing is one thing but being in the market is a totally different thing. It's all about the game of emotions. How much patience you have? How you deal with the fear of losing?
So before playing your big shot put some small stakes in the market and learn to deal with your emotions. Buy some bitcoins or ether, how much doesn't matter but having some is a must.
6. At least one big swing every month, so don't curse yourself for missing wave
Warren Buffet says "more the swing - better the opportunity to make money" and nothing else can provide you a better opportunity than bitcoin or altcoins.
There is always a wave coming so don't try to catch a wave - wait for the next one.