RickyAnalog 🐢

BTC trade from 51k to 64k. Will focus purely on the BTCUSD side of things, though hopefully it will explain why I thought the BITO options were good as well. First, focus on the big picture: - Historically when BTC gets going it can easily put in 7 green days in a row. Studying prior bull markets, and even the moves in 2019 make this very clear. Furthermore BTC tight supply and cult-like/viral nature (don't mean this in a bad way) make it extremely reflexive. - Very clear uptrend since start of 2023. Clear but not clean. Plenty of undercuts and reclaims within the uptrend. This part of the uptrend peaked with a 10/10 sell the news trade off the ETF news. - The sell the news setup had a very real potential to mark the medium term top for BTCUSD. The first sign that it might not be was the fake breakdown below 40k, which almost immediately reclaimed. In this case it wasn't enough to get me long, but definitely a spot to consider it. If I had a strong bigger picture bias I would definitely get long here. - Next the 44k breakout is of extreme importance for two reasons. (1) It represents a pivot where the "sell the news" has been completely negated. (2) There was a substantial change of character in the price action - the personality of price behavior had changed. I alluded to this on a post (linked in first reply). Trade planning/thoughts: - This trade would have been substantially easier and bigger if I hadn't sold my initial long from 45k. Paraphrasing reminiscences "I lost my position". This started to become incredibly obvious when I wanted to rebuy on a 50k flush and it could only retrace 2k after a 10k move and 9 green days. Roughly here I realized my mistake about selling. - My expectation from recognizing the change in character of price action is that there was a substantial chance of a return to price characteristics from previous bull markets. - This price action is the exact type of price action that favors pyramiding. In this case I decided that because my "trade idea" was A grade, I was going to take every C grade setup with small size, trailing the old stops as required to keep risk in check and essentially disable the sell button. Actual trades: This is from memory because Bybits historical execution charts are crappy and I cbf digging through my trades, and cancelled orders (stops) won't show. - First pic is daily chart just for reference, you can see the shallow pullback forming an absurdly tight flag around 52k, this is something that is screaming to be long. - Second pic. I felt that the pullback on the 21st Feb below the previous wick low of the flag had shaken a few weak hands, so even though I preferred to get long sub 50k I felt it was time to start actively looking. - Third pic. Due to mentioned reasons I was looking for any excuse to get long. The pullback from 51500 to 51200 was caused by announcement Saylor had bought more. Historically it has been a good short, so when it reclaimed his selloff point I knew I wanted to be long. Got long 25BTC 51500, stop 51200, risking around $8k. Due to the sharp reaction and 52k being a minor level I added 10BTC through 52k with a 52600 stop, so total risk rose to approx 12k. For frame of reference I might risk anywhere from $20k-$100k on something I consider truly exceptional, so not there yet, and I never got there. - 4th pic. 53k was the true trigger for the breakout of the flag so I added another 10BTC there with a $500 stop. Rest of stop was trailed fairly substantially here. If this trade is going to work, I don't want it to fail here. Iirc I think I went half at 52344, half at 51944. - Added 10BTC on the lower timeframe flag break at 53600, stop 53200. This one in particular was well worth it due to the proximity to original true breakout. A classic continuation setup within a strong breakout. The rest were very C grade lol. - Took the lower timeframe continuation setup through 55k 5BTC at 55k, then another 5BTC at 55500. Stop on this was 54500 and 54800. - 4th pic. Took the continuation setup through 57000 for 5BTC and got stopped on the wick through 56500. Then eventually took it again through 57500. - Shoutout to @Valckrie for slamming the table on the parabolic as I was fairly biased and was afraid of losing my position again, sold 1/2 on the failure at 64k. Perps got above spot, exchanges failing. It was a very clear signal. Notes on pyramiding: I know this is something everyone is interested in. - @tradingpepefrog comments on pyramiding in reply. Some great points. - I need to be clear. This was a unique situation that I felt called for it. You try this too often and you will absolute destroy your consistency and profitability. You can clearly see how degenerate this looks right? I could have easily round trip a tonne of pnl at any point here. - I felt it called for it due to the reflexive nature and strong read I had on price action. Pyramiding works well when reinforce the validity of your original thesis. By definition these continuation setups couldn't occur if I hadn't been right on my initial trade. - Other examples include a stock at the lows where you suspect heavy dilution - being at lows increases probability your idea is right. SMCI recently, you might short through vwap, and your original idea is more likely to be right if it trades through the lod, and then through g/r. - Options often work well to express a trade that calls for pyramiding due to how price action usually gets modelled by the MM, the nature of how gamma works means you are naturally adding to a winner. And the MM has likely underpriced the gamma risk. - It works best where you have clear momentum triggers that should never be revisited. Any questions feel free to ask.