I wanted to share a quick trading tip that I was thinking about while on CoinMarketCap today. If you are like me, you often feverishly scroll up and down the main page of CoinMarketCap to get an overall feel for how the coins are performing each day. Maybe your eye (like mine) is often focused on the "% Change (24h)" column while you absorb. I highlighted it below so you know what I'm talking about.
When you see the 24h % change of a coin at a large value or changing rapidly throughout the day, initial instincts scream either THIS COIN IS MOONING or THIS COIN IS CRASHING, and we assume the price is undergoing large fluctuations in the present moment. But there are many times that I have seen this, and the current price and market cap of the coin are holding constant for hours at a time.
How can this be?
The reason is due to large changes in the previous day's trading, as opposed to trading happening in the present moment. If the price of a coin 24 hours ago experienced large fluctuations, then that will be reflected in the % 24 hour change that is currently being shown on the page.
This is something to be aware of because it means that seeing large swings in the % 24 hour change column does not mean that the coin is currently undergoing a value change - there is equal probability that those swings actually happened 24h ago. Don't be misled by this when trading. Always check the price/market cap and ideally a chart to get the best picture of how markets are currently behaving.
I hope this helps some of you n00by traders out there :D