There was an epic pump in HBD this morning - about as large as I've ever seen on my time here on HIVE.
Credit: Coinmarketcap.com - taken at the time of posting
The price pumped to just above the $1.45 - coming well of the peg. The peg algorithms then kicked in and started dragging it back towards peg, with it currently sitting at around the $1.06 mark.
Although its probably not great from the perspective of HBD being a stable coin, it does present opportunity for trading between HBD and HIVE.
I normally have a number of Hive/HBD buy and sell orders set up to take advantage of pumps. There has not been any great ones recently, but last year there was a number, particularly with HIVE (going up to around $0.60- $0.80 mark), and a couple with HBD (going up to around the $1.25/$1.30 mark) - from memory.
I actually had a couple of low placed HIVE orders to buy in with HBD at $0.29, $0.293, $0.361 and then $0.399 (this latter one being not so low). The lower ones were a hangover from when the price of HIVE was lower a few weeks ago, and I was already thinking they would not go through with the markets picking up in general. However, with the price of HBD spiking, and Hive sticking roughly to where it was, it meant HIVE became cheap when using HBD to buy it, and the orders all went through. I was at work when it all happened without access to trading - I could see it happening, but I could not place any more orders.
Now to be fair, I didnt have huge amount on this, but it was a nice gain, at an unexpected time. And now with the peg returning, I could simply resell, buying back into HBD and book a profit all in the same day (except for the last trade which will need a slightly higher HIVE price).
By having the sell/buy orders already set up across a range of prices, it means you dont have to be physically present and online when a pump/dump happens to take advantage. Yes it means you have to wait it out, and I'd had to wait a decent amount of time for this one (around 1.5 to 2 months and was beginning to loose faith), but they do occur - so its worth considering.
The other aspect of it is being able to track your buy/sell orders and the price to convert them back at. That has taken me a bit of time to work out, but I have a spreadsheet set up now to help me do that, and I can dial in the % gain I want to target and it calculates the buy/sell order prices for me.
There is a risk of the price moving gradually away from your extreme orders, which I thought was happening for me with those lower placed orders. However, I would have simply cancelled those orders and moved the HBD to savings to gain from the 20% APR and wait it out until the time for trading was ripe again (however, the HBD spike meant I didnt have to wait).
I think large swings provide opportunity, as long as you are set up to take advantage - and this has reminded me that I should continue to consider this method.