My BitMEX Journey
My BitMEX Journey
BitMEX is a cryptocurrency trading platform in which you can utilize leverage of up to 100x, enabling you to make large orders with a smaller relative equity. I have been intrigued by trading for a while now and have decided to bite the bullet and create a BitMEX account dedicated to my day-trades. I am to provide updates on my blog to hopefully provide an insight into trading for others, whilst also acting as an accountability for myself, so I can learn from both my winning and losing trades.
My experience with trading previous to this is very limited, whilst I have made the odd trade on occasion, I HODL 99% of my portfolio. That being said, I have had a keen interest in trading and have learnt key indicators such as trend-lines, support/resistance, MACD and RSIs. I will hopefully utilize this TA to my advantage, whilst learning other techniques as I go along to further develop and improve upon my ability to make a profit.
As mentioned previously, I will ensure to stay accountable for my actions in these posts, documenting both my profitable and not so profitable trades, alongside analysis and after-thoughts of how they went.
So, without further ado, let's talk about my first ever trade on BitMEX!
Trade 1
The image above displays my account on BitMEX, and the associated first trade that I conducted in my order history. I won't go through all the details here but if you have any questions regarding to anything in the picture or how to trade on BitMEX in general, please leave a comment below and I'll try my best to help you!
So, in essence, I'm not proud of my first trade whatsoever.
All the TA I had learnt went down the pan, I was purely listening to opinions on a discord channel and the Trollbox on BitMEX and the general market sentiment seemed to be that it was definitely going to go down from 9021 so I decided to short one contract (equivalent of $1).
Much to my dismay, the price started to rise, even though the general atmosphere around the situation was indicative of a price drop. With this in mind, I increased my contract amount along the way up, similar to dollar cost averaging, meaning that my short position changed to an average of around 9130 or so.
Even though a mere $10 was at stake here, I couldn't leave the screen, I was hooked to the charts and was constantly hypothesizing about potential movements. Thankfully, it dropped to 9047.5 in which I was able to buy 10 long contracts, cancelling out my position with a tidy 1% profit and a successful first scalp of the market.
Due to my risk-aversion I will aim to scalp for the most part, opposed to longer swing trades, as it suits my personal trading mindset.
To summarize, I made around 1% gain on the $10, equating to 10 cents profit.
What Have I Learnt?
I have learnt that this stuff is hard!
The more you think you know, the more you realize you're in the deep end. I felt helpless in my first trade and I was just lucky that it went in my favour. In future I will ensure I do more TA before I execute a trade, drawing my own graphs on trading view etc.
Going forward I will also start to utilize leverage as I become more confident with my strategy.
In the near future, I will probably start trading with approximately 100 contracts on a 10x leverage. This would mean that, a successful trade with 100 contracts on 10x leverage (i.e using $10) in which I managed to gain 2%, would actually equate to a 20% ROE, so $2 in this case.
Closing Thoughts
One thing that I need to remember to bear in mind, and I think it goes against natural human psychology, is that it's okay to lose sometimes. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, even at the prospect of losing a mere 10 cents and I think this is purely because I have an aversion to lose at anything.
But in the day-trading game, you will lose.
I just need to develop risk-management and portfolio management skills to ensure the best long term profits. At the end of the day, if you have 3 winners and 2 losers, and you've set good stop losses and let your winners run (within reason), you're still going to profit overall.
If you are tempted by day-trading on BitMEX, even if it's just for a bit of fun or as a side hustle, you can use my referral link here : BitMEX to enable a 10% discount on fees for 6 months!
Please do your research though before trading, it's a difficult and volatile market so beware and only trade what you're willing to lose, especially if you're using leverage!
If you enjoyed this post, please don’t forget to up-vote, follow and comment! Thank you for taking the time to give it a read and I hope you have a nice day.
DISCLAIMER: This is NOT financial advice. The cryptocurrency market is volatile and you are at risk of losing your money. Only invest what you can afford to lose.
Donations:
BTC Address - 1JQGxuVLQf1hAz6i2dpitvGNvkTSKD8xAC
LTC Address - LdHvzzi5ZhZZr9Ce5gek9rgmJXbk78tQD7
ETC Address - 0xae041220e640Ca52BCa8644B178682fC12705cBA
NAV Address - NgQtdkT6kQaYNqEMrhc9ainga3eRv9xzXR
I think you are not alone in this one xD
Good luck on your day trading, i've also thought about entering this, maybe when the summer arrives i can actually learn all the graphs and trade lines ,etc... the only time i did something like this was on a game, where i flipped items for months to make a steady 1kgold profit, but it took months.
Carefull with the leveraging, people get addicted to that stuff!
Keep doing this posts, i'm going to check up on them and see if you are a millionaire yet, you might need it to counteract all the Brexit stuff xD
Haha thanks man, well making the odd 10 cents on a trade isn't going to get me to that lambo so I'm gonna have to up my game I think, it's so intimidating though xD
Yeah it'll definitely be interesting to see how things go... If I consistently lose every time then I may have to rethink hahaha but hopefully I'll get decent at it.
Next time, if I remember, I'll probably try to include more graphs in relation to my trades, pre-supposing I've managed to successfully draw something of use lol
If you consistently lose every time than it's not that hard... just do the opposite of what you want to do xD
I lost .3btc on bitmex.
Damn man unlucky, yeah it's really bloody hard, I just lost my first trade, made a stupid mistake.
What was that 0.3BTC worth at the time though?
I'm determined to improve as a trader and start making a profit. But I've only given myself $45 to play with so even if it all goes wrong, it was money I was willing to lose.
6k. You need to wager more to make any worthwhile bets. The more you wager, the lower the chance of getting liquidated, also. Only use 1x leverage and make the largest bet possible. The only reason I lost is because I put in a long bet at 19,000. My liquidation price was 12700. The ensuing two weeks saw the price drop to 6000.
Depends on the definition of worthwhile, I'd rather play small for educational gain and when I am consistently profitable, then use higher amounts.
Not being funny but why wouldn't you close the trade to stop your losses? If you longed at 19000 and let it ride down to liquidation at 12700 then that's an extremely risky move.
Going forward I hope to utilize logical risk-management techniques using a sensible bank-roll and cutting my losses short whilst letting my winners run.
I like the idea of scalping, so getting a good entry point based on chart analysis and hopefully riding it around 100-300 pips before taking profits. Likewise if the trade goes against me, cut my losses at around 100 pips to minimize potential losses.
Well a 50% loss on anything in two days seems almost impossible, no? Bitcoin fucking did that. Also, when I say worthwhile, I mean lucrative enough to not have to work a day job.
If I had put more money into the bet and lowered the liquidation, I could've survived. But I didn't think it would continue to lose like it did. Futures are a zero-sum game, and are therefore the equivalent of gambling at a casino, albeit with much better odds.
Bigger bets are safer. Small bets are a great way to get liquidated over and over again, or otherwise masturbate with nickels difference.
Did I mention that .1 of the .3btc i lost was won on bitmex?
That's very true, hindsight is 20/20.
Ahh yeah I suppose, I guess you've been put off trading then or do you still dabble?
Yeah it's a zero-sum game, but if you can play better than the average then you're gonna do alright. Become a TA pro and be careful with managing your funds and you should be able to make a profit quite easily.
What leverage were you using? Did you have any particular strategies or just generally longing the bull run?
No you didn't, congrats haha. But yeah, don't get me wrong, I appreciate this shits hard, that's why I'm only dabbling in it for now while I learn, but I'm still optimistic I can be profitable out of it in the long run.
Same thing with poker, tempted to dabble in that in my spare time as I enjoy it, and have made a bit in the @spl freerolls in the past. Nothing major, just small-time with money I can afford to lose, but hopefully turn a profit.
I don't have any more money to waste on futures (lost my job and my coin within 1 week of each other), so yeah I'm put off for sure.
Poker might give you more because it teaches you to bluff... But online poker won't develop that skill.