[module0000]

>> The rational thing is to buy more cheap stocks during a downturn

Are you sure? If the price is decreasing, you see buying as profitable? When the price is decreasing, I see profitability as selling. The path of least resistance is the one your money needs to travel.

[wongarsu]

It would be ideal to sell the moment before prices start falling, and buy the moment before prices start rising again.

But since predicting the future is difficult, and fluctuations make meaningful "rising" and "falling" only obvious in hindsight, you might as well sell when prices are unusually high and buy when prices are unusually low. Which probably means that you will be buying when prices are still falling.

[nwatson]

Contrarian Investing ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrarian_investing

[sigstoat]

> The path of least resistance is the one your money needs to travel.

what is that even supposed to mean?

if the price is dropping, the market is full of shares for sale. it is somehow easier to sell your shares when there is an excess for sale?

[module0000]

This needs another reply, I didn't answer your question about what the "path of least resistance" meant.

So if you are prices are rapidly climbing, the path of least resistance is up. If you buy, there are currently many other people buying, and that supports your long position. There isn't an abundance of people selling(otherwise the price would 1) stop or 2) fall), so the path of least resistance is not down.

There is something in new(and some old) traders mind, that causes them to sell into a rally, and buy into a crash. They think "this is the top/bottom! yea baby!". The probability of them being correct is very low, since being "correct" means you are accurately predicting the actions of thousands or more individual traders with no evidence. I say "no evidence" because if the everyone is buying, there is no evidence that selling is occurring beyond the short limit orders that buyers are consuming.

I'd guess you know the term "pullback". A pullback occurs when many people(or few people with large size) have the thought that "This is the top/bottom!" at the same time. When the pullback stops and the trend resumes, that's all of those people being wrong at the same time.

[module0000]

It's not easier to sell, it's easier for the price to move down..since as you said, the market is full of shares for sale.

You don't buy into the sell off unless you have an incredibly high pain threshold with your equity(ie you are an institution or a market maker, and chances are, you aren't if you are reading this)

[mathgenius]

> buy into the sell off

I've been doing this with crypto lately.. Man it is brutal. But I'm not leveraged, so my only pain threshold is "can i sleep at night?"

I'm such a contrarian, i f*ing hate going with the herd. So what can i do?

[module0000]

As a great trader(John Grady) once said, the trick is to run with the herd....and to stop right before they head off the cliff.

But in all seriousness, going with the herd is the low-risk move. Depending on your trading platform for the cryptocurrencies you are trading, you might have access to cumulative delta information. That's the best way I know of to accurately gauge what the "herd" is doing. Once you see the price is reacting to match the delta(ie, if delta shows buying, and you wait until the price begins to react upwards), this is the moment to join the herd with low risk. The price reacting upwards means that sell-side liquidity has either been consumed, or has been pulled in response to the buying. These are when you can expect those quick bursts up in price, and that closes your scalp trade for a quick profit with minimal risk.