5 was me being somewhat sarcastic. I see so many people on bitcoin forums saying something like "Wow, the price has really gone up, it's going to the moon now, I just spent my retirement betting everything on bitcoin with 25x leverage on some shady chinese exchange.
Then a week later they're on suicide watch because the price went down 5-10% and they lost everything.
On some level, it's just common sense. A bitcoin is a bitcoin. If bitcoins didn't suddenly become more valuable for some obvious reason, then if the price has doubled in a few weeks, then that makes it a worse time to buy, not a better one.
I will never understand why people suddenly want to buy something after the price has gone up a bunch, because the price has gone up. You want to buy it before. Obviously if the price went up because the reward halved or, i dunno, citibank started taking bitcoin deposits, that's a different story, but just jumping in because of FOMO is stupid. (I saw the same thing with Nvidia, and warned people out of buying it and sold most of mine to lock in profits after the hype train started getting out of control in the past few weeks.)
I agree with you. But it's ironic because what you are saying (educating people when you have already figured out a pattern that you could exploit) doesn't seem to be in your best interest. And sure the actual harm is nominal (people reading you HN comment) but...
I knew the housing market was going to crash, but I had no clue when. That's enough not to buy into a bubble, but not enough to make money from a bubble.
Not really. Knowing that it's going to crash is different from knowing why it's going up or down.
In particular, knowing that it's going to crash is just a standard observation about markets in general: If you buy because it's going up, you're already too late, and you're likely to lose your shirt.
Number 5 is a recurring pattern on financial markets. But it tells you nothing about timing, and there's always the "this time is different" risk that although low can easily eat all of your money.
Or, in other words, #5 is a recurring pattern on financial markets. If you rely on it alone for investing your money, you are crazy.
Then a week later they're on suicide watch because the price went down 5-10% and they lost everything.
On some level, it's just common sense. A bitcoin is a bitcoin. If bitcoins didn't suddenly become more valuable for some obvious reason, then if the price has doubled in a few weeks, then that makes it a worse time to buy, not a better one.
I will never understand why people suddenly want to buy something after the price has gone up a bunch, because the price has gone up. You want to buy it before. Obviously if the price went up because the reward halved or, i dunno, citibank started taking bitcoin deposits, that's a different story, but just jumping in because of FOMO is stupid. (I saw the same thing with Nvidia, and warned people out of buying it and sold most of mine to lock in profits after the hype train started getting out of control in the past few weeks.)