I have never feared for crypto as much as I am fearing for it today. The state of the market is abysmal. Quite frankly It’s crippling my sleeping pattern, it’s destroying my productivity at work. I’m torn. Do I sell or do I hold? You’re the same way, I know it.
You can’t pull yourself away from the graphs. Every 5 minutes there’s this little voice in your head.
“Cheeeck the graphs, maybe things are okay now” says the voice.
You know things are not okay now. You also know that checking those price graphs isn’t going to make you feel any better. But you do it anyway. There’s money on the line, A LOT of money.
That’s not the first time you’ve done that today. Maybe it’s the secon.. No no, it’s at least the third. It’s painful trust me, I know.
What I’m about to tell you is going to change your trading techniques forever. What you’re about to learn is great for trading in any market, but in a bear market — like the one we’re facing now, it’s absolutely essential. I’m about to tell you how to keep cool when the fire alarm is blazing.
I’m about to tell you what coin and crypto learned after a week of interviewing 19 crypto trading professionals.
The first rule of trader club is…
*actual scene from fight club
Now I know what you’re thinking “19 traders. Damn that’s cool, how did you swing that one?” — long story short, we were doing some market research for an entirely different project and we saw an opportunity for some investigating of our own. Sneaky, I know. But it was for a good cause.
Let’s begin.
1 — Always have a game plan
Now to me, this one seems obvious.
But I mess this one up so many times. It’s too easy to say you have a plan, most of us have one loosely defined before we enter a trade or purchase a coin. But there’s a world of difference between having a plan and sticking to it.
I know you’ve probably made the same mistake before too. You decide to change the plan on the last minute and as a result you sell too soon or too late.
You need to set a criteria. Clearly defined rules you will abide by when the market goes one way or another. Every professional has a trading plan — and they follow it religiously.
So it’s time for us to think like the professionals. It’s time to make a game plan. To help you get started I’ve attached the template our team uses when making trades. It hits on all the key points the professional traders taught me.
After you’ve filled that in, I want you to print it and stick it wherever you do the most of your trading. It needs to be in plain sight, and when the market meets any of those thresholds all you need to do is execute.
Having your strategy written down and in front of you makes it much harder to ignore.
Side note: It’s also helpful to, on occasion, run through a sort of fire drill. Frequently question yourself “If the market were to crash right now, and I lost everything. Would I be okay?” — if the answer is ‘yes’, continue what you’re doing. If the answer is ‘no’ however, consider rethinking your approach.
2 — Consolidate your portfolio
Go through your portfolio and separate the coins that have long-term potential from the coins that don’t.
It’s a bear market. The ship may not be going down just yet, but it’s definitely going through a rough patch. Any unnecessary weight is just going to drag you down.
Henry, A trader with 7 years of experience in stocks and now crypto, told me all about his procedure in the event of a major market downturn.
“Cut the dead weight. In a bull market, go nuts. In a bull market, it really doesn’t matter what you choose to invest in — the market goes up and everyone wins, some more than others.”
Because in a market like this everything changes. You have real money at stake. If you don’t move fast you will ACTUALLY lose it. Gone.
Henry stressed how important it is to act decisively when the market goes down. Consider what investments you have, consider the shitcoins — and be frugal.
Even look at coins that you genuinely think have potential in the long run. Ask yourself, Is it worth the risk? Because if it isn’t pull out. Put your money into a coin that has better trading groups, or into something that you truly believe is going to withstand this crash.
Henry knows his stuff.
ACTION: Add this to your game plan document, list all your coins. List them in priority. When the market crashes, at what point will you begin to make cutbacks?
3 — Cut the noise
You need to stay away from all the mumbo jumbo.
Out of the 19 professional traders I spoke to, all 19 of them stressed this exact same point.
Long term profitability means positioning yourself either ahead or behind the crowd. Never in the crowd. Stay away from the chat rooms and the discussion boards. Everyone in these groups has an ulterior motive.
Far too many people spend their time in huge discussion feeds like Slack, Reddit, Telegram, Facebook, Discord… the list goes on. You need to distance yourself from these groups, there’s too much misinformation being spread and this will cause you to make rash decisions and sell too soon.
Your only job as a trader is to watch the graphs and make predictions. To make accurate predictions it’s not about gathering as much data as you can fit in your head. It’s just about getting quality information, it doesn’t have to be too much — it just has to be right.
For those of you who still want some informed data, some traders suggested joining VIP groups. These are close knit communities looking to share insights with one another and to make better trades as a collective.
ACTION: Question the sources you follow. Ask yourself — is this necessary? Am I following sources that really aid my trading predictions? If not, cut ‘em.
4 — Find your dream team
This technique comes from Sparky — a trader from Sweden. Sparky is 43 years old, he has a wife and 2 kids. Time for him is limited between his family and trading. So he came up with an ingenious solution.
Sparky has a small team of 5 traders. Each of them are subscribed to 2–3 primary sources of information. Everyday, it’s each person’s mission to study those sources and relay the best data back into the group.
Only the best of the best information is shared. Sparky makes 5x better trading decisions because of it. Efficiency.
It’s not that hard to start either!
ACTION: Go out and find a few other people that trade, find people you trust. Start a group chat on Facebook messenger — or on whatever platform you prefer. Each of you should research 2–3 credible sources to begin following and then delegate the sources equally. Each day your team should study their respective sources and relay only the necessary information to the group, focus only on information that is crucial for advising trading decisions.
5 — Tools of titans
“Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” - But fishing isn’t very effective when you don’t give him a rod.
So now that you’re getting the hang of it let’s get you set up. Here are some of the best trading tools I discovered from talking with professional traders.
- Trading View (Pro)
TradingView is a fantastic platform you can use for pretty much everything crypto and stock related. I mean seriously. This thing is more equipped for trading crypto than batman is for fighting crime.
This thing will take you to the next level. One of it’s best features is the split screen functionality.
The software supports up to 4 separate and fully interactive graphs in any one window. Mind blowing. You literally get to control every screen individually, every indicator, every time frame separately.
TradingView is like mission control, but for every coin you own.
- signalgroups.com
We’ve all been there. It’s 4am and your alert goes off. You thought the market was going bullish so you placed your take profit, but throughout the night the price drops. Down, closer to your stop-loss. Your alert goes off but… you don’t wake up. By morning the price is deep in the red and you left yourself completely unprotected. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, it will….
This is where Signal, made by signalgroups.com comes in. You can place take profits and stop-losses at the same time. So instead of having to choose, you can rest easy knowing you don’t need to be glued to your computer 24/7 to keep things on track.
If you’re serious about trading at all, you have got to get Signal.
- Hacked.com
6 out of the 19 traders I spoke to used Hacked.com as one of their primary sources of information. They each paid $400 annually and get access to all of the insider knowledge.
This tool isn’t absolutely crucial. Really it’s a glorified aggregate of crypto knowledge — someone with a good eye for information doesn’t need this.
But, if you’re like me and you just want to streamline your source of knowledge — essentially you want to cut the crap. Then sign up for something like this and be done with it. Sometimes that extra 10% makes all the difference.
All in all…
Trading is stressful — i’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that. But when you arm yourself correctly with the tricks from the best in the game, you will dominate.
I hope you found some of my insights useful. To wrap up — here are some of the key points I distilled from the knowledge of the 19 traders:
- Make a game plan: prepare for every eventuality, and always have an exit strategy.
- Choose your coins wisely: only invest in the coins that will turnover a profit, cut those that won’t.
- Cut the noise: be skeptical of the masses, they will influence your thoughts and will make it more tempting to make irrational decisions.
- Build a dream team: find others that you trust to keep you properly informed.
- Use the tools of the pros: these, along with your careful attention, are going to be the biggest improvements to your trading career.
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