Who Knew?

This week has been a voyage of discovery!

Move on!

I have a friend/acquaintance/social media buddy who is a brilliant trader. He is one of those guys I talk about sometimes who is the epitome of the human chart. He can look at a candlestick pattern and determine so much without ever having to add in any kind of analysis. But what makes him “special” in my view is appreciation of what is going on around him.

This week he wrote a piece describing the fact that he had found the perfect formation on the USD/JPY four-hour chart and had positioned himself accordingly. Then, totally out of left field the support level he had identified melted like butter in a hot pan and he lost money. But, and here lies the moral of the story. He was not filled with angst about banks searching out stops or beating himself up that his formation wasn’t as perfect as he thought, he simply took it on the chin and moved on.

This is a great of example of what makes a great trader. You learn a lot more from a losing trade if your analysis stays real and doesn’t disintegrate into a tirade blaming yourself for something out of your control.

My Crypto nightmare

I own a few Bitcoins. Don’t we all? I had them in a wallet that was recommended to me by someone who knows more about it than I do. Being a little inquisitive I then branched out and opened a second wallet used by a guy in a Youtube video I watched in my quest for knowledge. I then thought it would be fun (I clearly live a very sheltered life) to transfer my coins between wallets to forge an understanding of the process.

So, I transferred my meagre holding to the new wallet. It just sat there staring at me, so I decided to transfer it back and that is when my nightmare began. I entered the destination address for my original wallet and the amount I wanted to transfer but for the life of me I couldn’t find the button to press to “send”. No matter what I did I had the same result. Yes, I even proved Einstein’s Theory of Madness by doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

There I was, the proud owner of cryptocurrency but no way of spending it. It was starting to dominate every waking hour!

My White Knight

I started to read forums online, asked social media contacts if they had used this wallet and continued to prove Einstein right. Nothing worked. I had even read on one forum that someone else had had the same issue that this wallet should be avoided since it accepted coins, but they couldn’t be removed. Cue anger!

I eventually typed the name of the wallet into one social media platform and it produced a single name. This guy had created the wallet and was now a seeming superstar of the Crypto community. I thought “why not” and sent him a message asking for his help. To my amazement fifteen minutes later he replied asking me to first backup my wallet which I did. He then asked me a few questions and requested a screenshot of what I was looking at.

My nightmare was complete when he simply said to me “It seems you have the resolution on your smartphone turned up to such an extent that the send button doesn’t appear”. I turned the zoom feature back to normal (I didn’t even remember changing the setting) and there it was “Send”.

To quote Robin Williams as the Genie in Aladdin, “Boy, did I feel sheepish”

I thanked him profusely for taking the time to contact me and we went our merry way.

The Moral (There is always a moral) of the story.

When I was plumbing the depths of self loathing about my lack of knowledge of how the whole market worked but desperately wanting to be involved, I realized that I am probably not alone.

I felt trapped. I had no idea who to turn to. I started to worry that I had no “official body” to provide the answers.

My issue turned out to be something simple and as the use of cryptocurrency evolves, the knowledge base will be shared, and no one will feel left out or lacking the tools to perform their daily financial chores.

I am on the periphery of the game, but it excites me to be able to at least understand why this is exciting so many people.