Majority believes that markets move randomly and reflect the collective wisdom of investors, the truth is quite the opposite. The invisible hand is a myth. Market prices has always been manipulated by the government's visible hands through influencing laws and regulation. Insiders control markets and manipulate them up or down for profit. Manipulation is everywhere, undeniable and unavoidable. It happens on a very large scale throughout every single financial markets out there, stock, bonds, commodities, currencies and so forth. There are other types of manipulation, such as social and news manipulation, hence I called it: The Game of Deception.
"Whale watching" is a trading strategy of monitoring the trades of the most influential or wealthy investors, known as "whales". "Whales" refers to traders with significant bankrolls that their actions impact heavily on the markets. The purpose of this book is to trade in the shadow of the smart money, understanding how market manipulation works, and become profitable by understanding.
Most traders do not understand volume implications and how vital it is in their analysis of any of the markets. Given at any point of time, traders are constantly long, short, holding, some waiting to get into the market, some already in profitable positions. "Long" means when a trader buys, in this example: DOGE/BTC hoping that the value of Doge will go up against BTC, the "Short" means the opposite. Whenever a trade is entered, the exchange will register this as volume on a continuous ongoing basis. Volume represents activity and it relates to the price bar on your chart. Chart reflects clearly and is the reason why it is behaving the way it is. "Whales" contributes 70-80% of the volume you see, which is why it is large enough to alter the direction of a market. I will not go into identifying the traces of a whale activity in book one, but rather my primary focus would be explaining how manipulation works, and the thoughts of a market manipulator.
"If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles" - Sun Tzu.
Individuals trade the market for a purpose, and that is to profit. Many of you are meticulous in entering a trade, cracking your head whether the price you are about to buy or sell is too high or low, although some might possess knowledge of technical analysis, you are still at a loss in the end. This is quite common, for you have not understand the characteristic of a "whale". They are ruthless, swift, cunning, very very patient and most importantly, they do not obey the rules of the game. A price will never be too high or low for them. Prices might have soar 100%, 200% and it will never be too late for them to enter. Buy high? Sell higher! Sell low? Buy lower!
To almost everyone, it is simply just pump and dump. However, the truth is, there are many stages to make a pump and dump successful. The stages includes:
- Position Building
- Suppressing prices
- Test Pump
- Actual Pump
- Shakeouts
- Re-allocation and distribution
- Exiting - The Dump
Position Building
There are multiple ways to build a position. This is the stage where we will require a significant amount of market share to do pumps. The most common method will be micro buys. Through placing of buy order in relatively small amounts, it avoids driving up prices and also masked our existence. Some alternative coins, however, has really low amount of volume, and it will take ages to build up our position through micro buys. In such cases, we will be force to do a pump up, to encourage sellers. Pump waves will be gradually decreasing, smaller and smaller, forcing out all sellers so that we can have what we want - market share. This has happened many times in fact to date, such as Doge/BTC, UNO/BTC, Dev/BTC and GLC/BTC.
Suppressing prices
Contradicting isn't it? That we are willing to pump altcoins up a few times of its value worth before driving down it prices. And yes, like I have stated earlier on, prices does not matter to us as long we can sell higher. However, like every other business on the industry, everyone would want their costs to be as low as possible. In this very stage, we will pile up whatever we have bought, to suppress prices as much as possible through sell walls so that we are able to do our buying cheap. Our sell walls are usually just enough to appear as though as it's the invisible hands of the market, minor supply over demand.
Test Pump
Before a real pump happens, whales like us tends to test the market. Why? Reason is simple. It is to ensure that we have absolute control of the market. Test pump, like shakeouts, actual pumps, re-allocation and distribution, happens many time throughout the pump and dump process. By doing a test pump, we will roughly get an idea on where our next resistance will be and how much floating chips are around (Floating chips refers to weak hands). Whales hate weak hands, they do not act as any form of support for us during a pump, and we will are always determine to get rid of them in the early stages, no matter how long it takes.
Actual Pump
The term pretty much explains everything. When weak hands are being forced out, and we have gain the market share that we expect, we are ready to move.
Shakeouts
Shakeout is a deliberately forced price reaction, whose purpose is that of stimulating public selling in order to facilitate the accumulation of speculative positions. This is the most aggressive part in wiping out weak hands of their positions. Sometimes during a shakeout, we can be so aggressive that we drive prices so low that's its way below our cost price. Losses does not matter to us, it is only on paper, and we have enough bankroll to pump prices back up. Individuals who have no experienced or unable to withstand such psychological torture will usually exit the market at this stage.
Re-allocation and distribution
Re-allocation and distribution usually serves the purpose for us to re-balance our portfolio. In a test pump, we might distribute you some of our shares (coins). The logic is quite simple, sometimes during a pump, buying into our own walls and others, we bought more than expected. We will have to release a few back to the individual traders. At times, it serves as a support, and reduce our risk exposure or being a "safe trap". What do I mean by that? For example if we were to distribute you at $5 and then we were to drive prices back down to $4.50, we will know that the total amount of shares being distributed at $5 will not be selling at $5. Traders tends to exit when in profit and are unlikely to exit with breakeven costs. I used the word "safe" is because, this is not the part where we will be dumping. There are a lot of re-allocation and distribution, like shuffling a pack of cards throughout the entire process, and prices tend to go much higher than the price that you are "trapped" at.
Exiting - The Dump
This is usually the last stage. The part where we take our profits and completely exiting the market. There are many exit strategies available to us. I will be revealing some of it and explain. The most common mindset everyone had is that we either micro sell or massively dump into buy walls during a dump. These are just the basic. Usually by exiting via this method, gives us really a bad price to sell at.
One of the exotic methods we used: "Exit during a pump". This works by having sell walls in place, and buying into our own walls again and again aggressively until the crowd follows. Once they follow, they will be biting into our walls. Hence we are able to exit portions of it, bits by bits, rinse and repeat a few times, we will be able to exit the market completely.
Another method is known as "Exit by putting a sell wall". Well, many of you who follows my trades on #dogecoin-market, knows that I like having sell walls up to suppress prices and buy doges cheap. However, I am able to imply this strategy by deceiving everyone into thinking that I am merely capping prices but the fact is, I am micro selling my way out. Exposing and unraveling the secrets behind my pumps and dumps.
By now, everyone should be very curious and if not dying to find out how I orchestrated my pumps and dumps, especially with dogecoin. I will give a very detailed account on what actually happened and how I played the Game of Deception using the art of war to my advantage.
I must admit that I got into Dogecoin few weeks late, that was when prices were trading about 120-140 satoshi. I started out with only a few MH/s as GPUs were really hard to get. Prices fell to 90-80 satoshi, it appears to be normal to me at first, but something caught my attention. Things were not right. Based on years of trading experience I had, it seems to me that someone is intentionally suppressing the prices to buy in doges. There are whales playing around with dogecoin!
Well, like many others, I siezed the opportunity by contacting by ultra-rich friends to be involved in this pump and dump process. Doge was dead cheap, everything was right. The increasing growth in subscribers on reddit, the tipping community, were a perfect condition to manipulate doge prices effectively. The fundamental factors and elements determine the outcome of a military engagement. A battle is won before it is even fought. All the conditions were met. Pricing, volume, the community backing it and the growth that is gradually increasing.
I heavily bought into dogecoin 26-50 satoshi. I shared my trades on #dogecoin at first. Why? Simple! I am nobody there. I have expected and predicted that no one will listen to a trade recommendation by someone new in there. It will not affect any of my position building but rather gain me some sort of fame and reputation for future use.
While dogecoin hits 50-70 satoshi, the truth is, I did not owned 10 billion doge, but rather a mere total of 4 billion. The amount of holdings I had were overstated so as to aid me and mask by exit strategy in the near future.
Now, came the part of Jamaican bobsled team. It was a perfect time for other whales and myself. We signal through buy/sell walls that we are ready to move. It was a test pump. We wanted to see if the dogecoin community were gullible enough to think that it was the Jamaican bobsled publicity that have drove dogecoin prices up. The bobsled team brought value and publicity to dogecoin, but people are always confuse with prices and value. Having value does not mean having a price, and having a high price does not mean it has value. In the world of manipulation, we used the news, the social network as our advantage. We were right, by droving prices up, the community gave credit to the bobsled team for moving dogecoin prices up, which is what I wanted.
Over a course of a week, I begin appearing frequently on #dogecoin and #dogecoin-market giving trade calls and announcing pumps. To cut the story short, I turned aggressive, driving prices up to 280 satoshi where the crowd bought into my sell walls. I was able to exit near 270 a portion of my dogecoins. I wasn't done with it. Driving prices higher will put me into a risk of buying dogecoin high and unable to exit safely.
This is the part where I gave everyone on #dogecoin-market a floor, 160 satoshi. A precise floor that I will support, and 230 as resistance. I moved prices up and down within this range to gain confidence and support from the community that I am backing it and able to control doge prices at will. Then came the part of which I need more faithful followers, who will ride the waves with me, guarantee a few profits, and act with me. Why? Reason is simple. I sold most of my doges high and I have lost a significant amount of market share. I need to regain the market share, without physically possessing it.
The most memorable event that happened during this phase was that 4chan and reddit laughed and mocked "TheMollyMachine", one of the guys in my private channel. Logs leaked on the internet showed how "TheMollyMachine" was bleeding at that time when someone big dumped doges into his btc buy walls. I had to change a course of actions, to move doge down to 170 satoshi, and with a target price of 130 satoshi in mind. I forecasted that not everyone will act accordingly as they have no idea of what a short sell is (To sell low and buy back lower). One example in this case which is freenode user "hinv". The purpose of me initiating this without giving a clear explanation on what we are doing to followers of mine which holds no knowledge in trading, is pretty clear.
I knew and had reports from OPs in my channel that freenode channel is not secured. Anyone would be able to spoof a nick that is on the invite list to freely enter that channel when the nick is not in used. I took advantage of that again, to create chaos and leak logs that I failed in the dump, of which after the dump failed to 170, I drove prices back up to 190. The purpose of this is crystal clear. I need someone to buy into my dumps high, while slowly driving prices to 130. To those who are in the private channel especially ops such as randomclown, Tuxedage, Sir_Knee_Grows, SuchWow and Taner, would have clearly known that 130 will be the bottom price. Taner appeared to be more excited. He had a bet with me earlier on that prices will hit 80 satoshi, which I told him 130 satoshi will definitely be a rock bottom.
Now, remember the part that I have told everyone that I had no access to investor’s funds during the holidays of Chinese New Year for the traders that listens to my order to buy or sell are away. And the part that I stated dogecoin will be trading above 200 once Chinese New Year ends? Yep, you now you recalled. Well, I orchestrated another plan. Which is to move my people inside my private channel to UNO/BTC for I saw value in UNO and were at a good price to buy at. This serves two purposes. If they are out at 160 and bought in UNO heavily, it will be less selling pressure for me to exit my investor’s funds. At this point of time, investors holding of doge are not yet fully sold. To others, it might have appeared that I used my members into selling DOGE/BTC and UNO/BTC but apparently, it is not the case. I gave them the chance of buying UNO/BTC at a lower price, having sufficient time to build up their position for UNO/BTC has much greater potential and without having worrying that they will be affecting my dumps on DOGE on a later date. Killing two birds with one stone.
Now, halving date for DOGE is now nearer and nearer. People are gullible and naive thinking that during halving their doge prices will be worth double of the 280's initial tops. They forgotten that it is us, the whales, drives prices up. Again, they fell for the deception that I long for. Near halving day, what a perfect day for my dumps. I will have a lot of people that will actively and happily buying out whatever I dumped to them. On Feb 12, I dropped the nuclear warhead. It was what I expected and I managed to exit my position entirely on DOGE.
Sad, but true, I used all bad news on me as an advantage to maneuver and engage the opposing force. And to those who loses out in the end are usually my haters because they are the ones that are arrogant and acted late.
People in my private channel knows how I trade and usually holds even though prices are being suppressed or shakeouts by me. It is usually the people without patience that lost in the end game.