It's no secret that the cryptocurrency markets have overall been bearish for the past 6 months now. Sure there have been up swings here and there. But we're all used to seeing red by now. The past 2 weeks have been particularly brutal. If you're a long term HODLer, perhaps you don't care all that much with regards to how the markets perform in a few months, as you believe in the long term, this bear market will just end up being a tiny blip.
But not all of us are long term HODLers. Some people make their living out of trading, and when markets are in the red month after month, it's hard enough to break even, much less actually turn a profit with you can use as to pay your monthly expenses. Plus, some people don't have enough money invested to make any return they see noticeable affect them.
One of the ways you can over course profit in a bear market is by short selling on an exchange list BitMex for example. This is highly, highly risky, as your funds risk being liquidated at any time should there be a jump in the price of BTC or whatever other cryptocurrency you're shorting. Many crypto investors have lost ALL their funds by leveraging funds on BitMex when they think the market is going up, and shorting on bitmex when they think it's going down, only to get completely liquidated and eaten alive on interest charges.
There's a couple of other ways of profiting during bear markets, although you'll no doubt profit in bull markets as well when the time comes. Algorithmic trading and arbitrage trading, the former of which you need a trading bot for and the latter of which can be done yourself, but it's a lot more efficient if you have a trading bot.
Crypto markets are naturally volatile and swing considerably. An algorithm, if coded properly, has the ability to time the buys and sells efficiently to maximize profit. That's what Countinghouse Fund is doing. They use mathamatical models and algorithms to force profit even in bear markets. And it's been highly successful for them; they made a 613% annual return in a trial run they did last year.
Countinghouse Fund isn't just doing arbitrage trading though via their trading algorithm. They're also doing arbitrage trading. Arbitrage trading involves essentially selling an asset at a higher price at one location (or exchange in this case) and buying at basically the exact same time at another location (a different exchange. Countinghouse also has coded algorithms that are able to maximize arbitrage opportunities that appear in the market - it's not uncommon to see 2-3%, and I've personally seen as high as 45% in one scenario. Their algorithms are able to force profit even in a down market here as well. Overall, Countinghouse is allocating 60% of the fund to their trading algorithms, 30% to arbitrage trading, and 10% to ICO investing & loans. So by investing you get exposure to 3 different areas.
Ultimately, coded algorithms, when built properly are more efficient than human traders as they take human bias out of the equation. Plus computers can also trade much faster than humans of course. I'm excited to see just how successful Countinghouse will be with the new funds they're raising. Just be careful and DYOR. There is no guarantee of a ROI with Countinghouse; you could lose ALL your money.