I'll start this off with, this is purely speculation. Nothing here is meant as financial advice. Posted in the spirit of conversation on a public platform. Always seek a duly licensed financial advisor for financial advice, not some moron on the internet who calls himself The Dood. (That should really go without saying, but now that that's out of the way)...
XRP just WOW! I posted last week about averaging down with alts and the people that did would reap huge rewards. Here we are a week later and XRP has jumped from its .14 to .20 cent range to around .70 cents at the time of this writing. Anyone that averaged down over the last several months is pretty happy right now!
I've been staring at charts all day and trying to figure out where we were and where we are heading. If only I had a crystal ball I'd have as much money as Jeff Bezos!
Unfortunately none of us have a working crystal ball. So we're forced to scheme, speculate and devise strategies based on TA (technical analysis), fundamental analysis and of course cyclical market patterns. This post is more or less cyclical market patterns from 2017 to now.
First here's bitcoin 2017 till now. As the bullrun started right around the same time in 2017 the chart is looking pretty darn familiar. Sheesh, it's like 2017 is repeating!
Looking at the Kraken USD chart the bull market really took off around November 2017 and peaked around the middle of December around the 17th. In the meantime there was a ton of volatility to trade with BTC and the altcoin markets were already rocking and rolling. I mean they were really rocking. This was life changing money for most of us!
As Bitcoin rocketed to an all time high in mid December, many alts rocketed along side it. The usual suspects like LTC, XRP, XLM and most of the coins in the top 20 along with several other smaller projects all creating record breaking highs. For the most part the ENTIRE altcoin market rallied like we never seen before.
Around the start of 2018 the slow, painful bear market began for both BTC and just about everything that followed it up. Coins that once traded for 50 cents were trading for $15 or more and began the slow painful journey from all time high to many touching all time lows again. Nobody expected the type of retracement we experienced. Bitcoin finally bottomed out around the $3500 USD range and most of the altcoin market returned to all time lows! Many coins as of yet, have not recovered.
So let's take a look at the XRP chart.
You can see Ripple moved with BTC in close to the same pattern. We rallied from $1.13 on December 17th 2017 to $3.34 USD on December 31 2017. Like most other altcoins we began the slow painful process back down to our bottom of around .11 cents.
I should mention I've been long on XRP since it was being traded on RippleTrade under .05 cents. I held and traded for a long time and waited patiently for the $1.00 USD range. I remember exactly where I was on December 17th 2017. I waited for a very long time for $1.00 XRP.
On that fateful night of December 17th 2017 I was at our annual Christmas sale for our family retail store. As I sat in the backroom trading on my laptop, my mother and father yelled at me to come out and help with the Christmas shopping crowd. I was furious. The plan was to dump my entire position position at $1.00.
Incredibly aggravated I slammed my laptop closed somewhere around the .75 cent range and when I left work that night we had touched on a dollar and came back down. I missed my window and back then I was a staunch advocate of sticking to targets. My target was a dollar and I wasn't selling at anything less. Even at 99 cents I'd wait for the penny. (I learned my lesson the hard way on that, and don't do that anymore either.)
In this particular instance it REALLY worked out for me. As I began to see the momentum build in the rest of the altcoin markets in the following days, I guessed that the $1.00 range wasn't going to be the Ripple top. I began slowly selling at $1.00 and sold all the way up to the top. Selling the last of my position just above $3.00.
I began buying back my position in the $1.00 range and averaged down to the bottom. That's just how I trade. A lot of people frown on averaging down, I'll admit I've had a couple projects bite me in the ass real good, but for the most part the system has worked for me. 3 years of bear market and The Dood's still here and surviving mainly on his trades.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
Honestly, I have no idea. The only thing I know for sure is history does like to repeat itself in this industry. I've already began selling off a lot of my position that was bought up in the twenty cent and below range. I've never gotten mad at myself for taking gains, only when I get greedy and don't and those gains turn to loses.
As far as calling tops, I've never liked that game. For now I'm watching the price of bitcoin. I'd like to think at the very least we test that BTC all time high. I suspect the Ripple price will continue to follow bitcoin up. If we rip past that BTC all time high I suspect we see 2017 all over again in the altcoin market too. Many coins will also hit new highs along side BTC.
I would love to see Ripple retest that $3.14 high back in December of 2017. We're currently far from that at the time of this writing the price is .68 cents USD. I'd like nothing more than to at the very least rise above that $1.00 USD price. Things happen quickly in this game so you have to pay attention!
The Only Thing I Know For Sure... Don't get stuck holding the bag!
Calling tops and bottoms is the most difficult part of the crypto game. Nobody knows where the top will be or how low the bottom will go. The key to this game is to not sell at a loss and don't get stuck holding the bag!
History does like to repeat itself. I'm following these charts closely. I'll be waiting to see signs of a bitcoin top, and then act accordingly with all my altcoins not just XRP.
If I learned anything from 2017 - 2018 it's that what goes up inevitably and eventually comes back down. Gains are gains and I've never been upset with myself for taking them. When the market reverses and you get stuck holding the bag, that's when we should rightly get angry with ourselves.
Be safe and if this is your first bull market, good luck and welcome to crypto!