[$ZEUS]

The Basics of Day Trading Cryptocurrency

Before we begin, take a look at these two threads. They go over the basics on how to trade and can teach you some of the terminology I may use throughout this guide.

• [FAQ] Cryptocurrencies: Most common questions answered
  


• BTC-E & BitcoinWisdom Explained & Tips On How To Trade And Make Profit.
  


• List of Cryptocurrency Wallets
  

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   


2. Disclaimer
   


3. What the hell even is day trading?
   


4. How do I day trade?
   


5. Why day trade?
   


6. How do I day trade? v2
   


7. Getting around the Poloniex GUI
   


8. Getting around the TradingView GUI
   


9. Creating your first watchlist
   


10. Resistance/Support Levels
    


11. Trend Lines
    


12. Market Depth
    


13. Using Indicators
    


14. Conclusion
    


15. Examples work in progress
    

1. Introduction
So, who am I and why am I even remotely qualified to give advice and tips? Well first, my name is Cole. Two, I'm not qualified whatsoever. I'm an avid investor and trader that particularly likes day trading. I come from a stock market background and have traded stocks, options, penny stocks, and have played around with Forex a bit as well. I've been involved with the markets for about 4-5 years, and I started with Forex but quickly move into the stock market. What has trading and investing gotten me in life? Well for one, it was able to move me out of my parents house in Dallas and got me into a nice apartment in Clearwater, Florida (Tampa Bay) right by the beach. It's also given me a lot of self-control and a lot of personal skills that I never had before. I've recently started to put a light on the day trading scene in HF and would like to turn on the spot light and see what some of you newer traders can make happen! Why am I creating this thread? Well for one, I'm tired of giving someone a tip on their thread and getting two or three PM's looking for advice on day trading... Nothing against the people who have messaged me, but I do have a life and don't like spending it repeating myself over and over to multiple people. Yeah, I could probably create an eBook, sticky it, sell it, and make a fuck ton, but I think Omni has enough bullshit eBooks to deal with so let’s just be honest here. Before we move on, this thread will probably grow over time, just starting out it will be small and have a few examples. As time goes on I'll start to expand it and will probably get the help of other intelligent individuals here. Now, let's get started.

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2. Disclaimer
Trading and investing is very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, and even when you know what you're doing the risk is still there. With cryptos especially, markets are volatile. Coins pump and dump every day, you need to control yourself. Create a strategy, and stick with it. Do not use your rent money to trade, or any money that is set aside for something else. As well, only trade with what you can lose. Hopefully by reading through this guide you'll gain some pointers, but there's always going to be that day when markets crash and everybody loses. Be careful out there, they don't call cryptos the "wild, wild west" for nothing.

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3. What the hell even is day trading?
Day Trading is a term used among traders and investors that basically means someone who does not hold positions for a long time. Different from an investor who may hold onto his position for months and even years, a day trader usually does not even hold over night. Day trading is a global term, it's used in Stocks, Forex, and Cryptos. In cryptos however there is no open/close times unlike in Stocks and Forex, there are also no holidays. Crypto trading is a 24/7 365 operation, so holding a position over night is really not an issue as long as you have your sell and stop limits setup when you go to sleep (will go over this more later).

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4. How do I day trade?
Woh, it's not that simple... I can't just explain it in one section. Before I go over how to day trade, let me first tell you what it takes to day trade. To keep it simple and organized I'll list it, then explain it.

• Time
  


• Money
  


• Understanding of chart analysis
  


• Self control
  


• Loving what you do
  

Time- This seems small, however it's the #1 thing that pushes most people away. You need to have time. Luckily, unlike Stocks, this market doesn't close. That means you can work and/or go to school and still be able to have plenty of time to trade. With that said, you'll be spending hours on top of hours looking at charts waiting for the right coin to hit that perfect spot.

Money- Obviously you'll need money. The amount is up to you. Think of it this way, a day trader thrives on small 4-10% gains. Anything more than 10% you can slap yourself because that's just greedy as hell. Don't think of day trading as a "I'll turn this $200 into 10k in a month!" No sir. Think of day trading as "I'll turn this $200 into $300 in a month!". Why $300? Well, on average there's 30 days a month. At the least you should make 4% profit each trade (not counting losses). If you do one trade of $200 for let’s say 20 days in a month, then that's $160. Now you're going to lose some, maybe even loose entire days. Some days may yield 8%, some may give you 5%, others may give you -5%. $300 would be an okay number to set with this type of financial setting.
Obviously, once you gain experience and learn more these negative days will go down (no matter what they'll be around though). I'm sticking with the $200 example because many here that's probably around what they'll be doing. For you guys that have more or even 5k+, don't feel afraid to trade with it, just set limits. Luckily unlike stocks that have a $5+ buy/sell fee, cryptos have a very small fee around 0.02%, this allows for very small trades and still easily taking profit.

Understanding of chart analysis- This one is super important and a quick Google search can teach you everything you need to know. I will go over this later, however be prepared to use it for the rest of your trading AND investing life. This will never go out of date and is what makes you the money.

Self Control- If you can't control losses, pocket gains, and not get upset when you lose out, then you need to close out of this thread right now and never touch any investment forum again. You NEED those things to even have a 1% chance at making money in the financial market. Like everything else, it will be taught later.

Loving what you do- This goes hand in hand with time, but is by far the most important thing on this list. If you don't absolutely love looking at charts, studying them, analyzing every bar movement, order book, and buy/sell walls then you're going to hate day trading. This alone pushes a lot of people away. The profits are big, but your life is more important, don't spend it doing something you hate. Why do I do it? Because I love analyzing charts and don't get bored of it. I lose track of time when I'm watching 4,5,6,10 charts at a time. I can't count on two hands how many times I've been late to things due to my chart addiction. It's like heroin for me, I touched it and get sick if I'm away for too long. You need to love this shit to do this shit.

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5. Why day trade?
Day trading is for people who like to be more involved with their trades. If you love reading and studying charts for hours, then day trading just might be for you. With day trading you'll be skimming profits off the top of trades. Little percentages equal big money.

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6. How do I day trade? v2
If you've made it this far, I congratulate you, 75% of people fail section 4. Now let's see if you can get through the rest without saying "fuck analysis".

So, you got money, time, self-control, love charts, and are willing to learn chart analysis... Then let's get started. First, you'll need an exchange, or as the rest of the world calls it, a broker... However, for cryptos, these people are unprofessional and not politically correct as Mr. Trump would put it, so we stick to exchanges around here. A good exchange you can use is Poloniex, https://poloniex.com/. Yes they've been hacked, yes they go down during very busy times, and yes order execution can get on the slow end, but in this world you need to work with what you can, and unfortunately Poloniex is about the best we got at the moment... Yes I promise there's better one(s) coming, but that's under NDA that would tear my life apart and can't be disclosed for a very long time.

Next I recommend signing up at TradingView, https://www.tradingview.com/. In fact I don't recommend it, I'm telling you to. If you think those Poloniex charts are at all good, then you need some serious counseling. With TradingView you can also pay, however that's up to you. Personally I do pay because I like having more than 1 alert, as well as having multiple charts open at the same time and being able to login to multiple devices at a time... As far as the "real time data" vs the 1 second update with the free account, you won't usually notice a difference. Unless the orders are coming in fast then it's not a huge issue, plus TradingView is not where you actually place your order at, it's simply used for charting. Check their pricing page, look at the compared tables and prices and find what you need... How much you pay or don't pay is up to you. One thing to note, when using TradingView and you start to type the alt, keep in mind different exchanges have different price. For example, you start to type STRBTC, it may show two or three different options for STRBTC, you want to look to the right of the drop down and make sure you choose "Poloniex", not doing so will direct you to the wrong chart.

The rest is up to you, follow the guide and I hope you do well.

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7. Getting around the Poloniex GUI
Spoiler (Click to View)

1. This tells you what pair you're trading. Right now, mine just happens to be set on BTC/USDT. Fairly simple to understand, not much really happens here.
   


2. I'm just going to actually merge 2,3,4 because there simple buttons, not sure why I separated them in the image... Basically you'll be on the exchange tab most of the time, that's where all the action happens. Next is the margin tab, Poloniex doesn't offer much to margin, but either way as a beginner you shouldn't touch this tab anyways. Stay away from this stuff, it's like a drug. Only start taking drugs when you can afford it. Next is the lending tab, just don't even bother. If you're looking for a steady income and have that much money to sit for you should put it into an IRA or something similar.
   


3. Refer to 2.
   


4. Refer to 2.
   


5. Okay, now let's get into the juicy stuff. This is a quick glance at the last price, 24 change, 24 High/Low, and 24 volume. As a day trader volume is everything. If the stock does not have enough volume, then you'll have a hard time getting in, or even worse, getting out. The worst thing to happen to a day trader is not being able to get out of the trade when needed.
   


6. Now we'll move to the far right, this is the market list, or a more technical term is a scanner. This shows every alt you can trade on Poloniex. You can sort by coin, price, name, volume, and change. I usually set mine to sort by volume (greatest to least). This is going to be your best friend, maybe even your mistress. Using this column is my first step to identifying the coins that I'll be watching for the day or night. This column will be explained in depth more later.
   


7. To the bottom left we have the Buy Order box. This allows you to buy the currency in question, makes sense. You set your price, amount, and it will calculate your total. By default it will automatically set a Buy Price, however you should change it to what you want to buy for, not what others want you to buy for.
   


8. Next to the right is the Stop-Limit. This box is super important especially if you're wanting to protect your losses in case you need to step away for a minute to use the restroom, grab a water, or maybe even go to bed. This will protect the price from dropping any further below what you want. Very important, and will go into more detail later.
   


9. Next is the Sell Order box. Just like the Buy, this will instead sell. Rules are the same. Set price, set amount, sell.
   


10. Other things that aren't listed is of course the chart. While the chart is important, I could give a shit what Poloniex's chart says. As I said earlier, despite what others may say, their chart is complete shit. I use TradingView as you should of read above.
    


11. Next you have the "Trollbox", why do I keep it closed? Because it's a huge space waster. Nothing more to it. The creators put it there because some people like to communicate with others while trading, however I have my own people to talk with and don't need advice from someone who started trading a week ago.
    


12. Below the Trollbox is a more serious side of things, the news. Yes, as a trader you're going to need to stay up to date on the news. At the time of typing this, the SEC is still reviewing the ETF for Bitcoin. I think it's going to be denied, again, so I actually have all my money in USDT at the moment (hence the USDT chart being open). That's news. Stay informed and read up.
    

Part 2:
Spoiler (Click to View)

1. These are the Sell Orders. Here you can see what people are trying to sell for. It goes from cheapest to most expensive. To the right is the volume of it, currently sitting at about 1068 BTC.
   


2. Similar to the Sell Orders, this is now the Buy Orders. Like the previous box, this shows what people are trying to buy for. Keep in mind, these orders have NOT been executed yet, simply placed.
   


3. Below those is the Market Depth. This look intimidating and confusing, but it's actually fairly simple and useful. Rather than going over it now, I'll explain it later.
   


4. Last is the Trade History and Open Orders. Trade History is simple, it shows all the orders that have been executed. Remember the Buy/Sell orders? Once their fulfilled, they now get moved neatly into this box. There is also your trade history tab, which of course shows your trade history. To the right is the your Open Orders. These have NOT been executed yet. If your trade is in here and not moving (and you want it to), then you need to look at the Buy/Sell order section to see what everyone else is doing and match or better it.
   

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8. Getting around the TradingView GUI
Spoiler (Click to View)
This one is actually a little messy because it's a good 6 hours old and as you might be able to tell, has broke every resistance I drew. Not going to put boxes and numbers as it would only make it more messy than it already is.

1. Looking at the top left you'll see where it says STRBTC, this is the symbol I'm currently viewing. You can easily change this by clicking in there and typing a new one... After a while you'll start to remember symbol names like your family members, maybe even better.
   


2. Right beside the symbol name to the right where it says "5" right now is time chooser... Basically allowing you to control how much each candle represents. 5 = 5 minutes, 30 = 30 minutes, 1h = 1 hour, you get the idea. When day trading I'll usually stick to 5 minutes and 15 minutes. I never go below 5 minutes, and never really even go above 15. Very rarely will I look at 30 or 1h, and only do so to figure out resistance/support levels.
   


3. Skipping the chart type selector, we'll move onto the gear. This is simply your chart settings. By default, your chart is probably going to be white. However I'm more of a nigh owl so at night I prefer a dark background. This is all personal preference, whatever you like. The main color schemes people use are white, blue, and black. However, it's your chart, do whatever you want.
   


4. Next over is indicators, which I won't even begin to go over right now. This will be discussed later.
   


5. The next two over are Alerts and Ideas. Alerts are simple, they allow you to create pricing alerts... Depending on your payment plan, this will determine how many alerts you can set and what type (simple popup, email, text). As a free user, you can only set one alert at a time and it is only web alert based, no email/text. Ideas, as a day trader not too many people give ideas as 90% of the time it's too late for someone to grab on. However I keep it on as a random idea from someone else is never a bad thing, as long as you do your own investigating.
   


6. The buy/sell options are useless to you as TradingView does not integrate with Poloniex and probably never will.
   


7. Moving to the left column going down, is a bunch of tools. I'm not going to go every one, but some will be explained later throughout. Most of them you'll need to do your own Googling on, they're all really simple once you learn.
   


8. To the right you'll see my watchlist. This changes everyday, however some symbols tend to stick around for what seems like ever. Later on I'll get into how to find your own symbols and how to create a good watchlist. I didn't trade at all today, so mine's looking a bit weak.
   


9. Below the watchlist is the market depth and news, which are not loaded because I took this screenshot the second I opened TradingView. I usually don't look at the market depth on TradingView, I'll instead go to Poloniex's website to look at theirs. News is news. You can get it from anywhere.
   


10. Finally, the chart. Mine's a bit messy, but it will give you an idea of how you might be working. Every trader has their own style, and it's best to just let everyone have their own opinion on setup. As such, don't simply copy mine without at least knowing what it means. Just by looking at the basic chart you'll see the candles, and this is actually more zoomed out than normal so their a bit tiny for me. The dark green line at the very top is the current price. The light green line was the resistance it had to break to get that high, which it eventually accomplished its goal. Red line is the support, if it broke it then the price would go down... Simple stuff which I'll explain later. The purple lines shooting in every direction possible are my wonderful trends, once again, will go over later. Then at the bottom it shows volume. Below that is my Stoch RSI and MACD, both of which are popular indicators which I'll go over later too.
    


11. The rest you'll either find out along the way or have to look for your own. I'll be here for three hours trying to explain it all.
    

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9. Creating your first watchlist
Creating a watchlist is essential to any trader or investor that wants to quickly scan the markets without having to type in the same symbol over and over. In this section, I'll walk you through step by step how I go about creating a watchlist. I usually do this once or twice a day, once during the day, and then once at night if I trade. I'm only going to get a few pairs together to speed this up.

1. So first you're going to take a look at Polo's screener and let's just filter by % change to make it easier, this is what I see.
   Spoiler (Click to View)
   By looking at this I can see that DGB is clearly on the rise, however let's look at volume. It has about 6.2 volume, which is good. I usually will not trade anything below 1000 because it can sometimes be hard to get in/out, and as I said earlier that's a very bad position to be in. To make this go quicker let's go ahead and find at least 3 pairs that look interesting by simply looking at volume and % change.
   


2. Okay, so by using that same list shown above I was able to pick out four, DGB, GAME, XRP, and STEEM. There's a lot more I could of done, but for the sake of both your and my time, we'll stick with what we got. Be sure and write these down, or add them to favorites. Now it's time to weed out the bad ones.
   


3. So once you have your initial list by using volume and % change, it's time to look at the charts using TradingView. Now I'll go through each one and explain why I'll stick it on the watchlist, or why not.
   DGB
   Spoiler (Click to View)
   Just by looking at this chart for a second I can tell you it would be a very bad time to get in. While pumps like this are easy to trade off of, you need to wait a few hours to do so. Right now there are no solid trend lines to go off of, and it's just too volatile right now. So we're going to scratch it off the list.
   GAME
   Spoiler (Click to View)
   This one is a bit tricky, however we're going to put in on our list. I've made some pretty basic trend lines to help you see a little bit better. The red is going to be our support level, sitting at around 1188. Our resistance is going to be the green line which is slanted down. This figure here is a triangle (flat top/bottom), TradingView has it's own tool to help you map out triangles, but I just stuck with basic trend lines. As you can see, the trend is getting tighter and tighter. By looking, I can probably say that this trend will maybe jump up a (tiny) bit more, but then start to go down. Usually in this case I would zoom all the way out to see if there's any history of spikes like this in its past... However, this coin has no history of large pumps like this, so I am unable to grab any resistance levels. Still a coin to watch if you're in for a long day because once it breaks the triangle and settles down you can ride the waves.
   XRP
   Spoiler (Click to View)
   Oh Ripple... This coin has exploded that past 36 hours and has made many people money. This is one of those coins that I usually have always kept on my watchlist by default because it's a huge coin and can be pretty easy to spot the trends. I haven't added anything to this chart today, but most of these trend lines come from the night before. Needless to say, this will stay on our list. It may be on to stay out of though for the next couple hours due to the fact that it may of just broke that orange support line. It will most likely be testing 170 now.
   STEEM
   Spoiler (Click to View)
   This one is a pretty clear uptrend and we'll be keeping it on our list. By zooming out I was able to see a similar event happened a week ago with this coin. That's where the very top red resistance line comes from, and then the orange resistance line. This one seems to have no issue getting through the orange line, however it's still a good thing to keep there for reference.
   


4. Okay, so now you finally have a list. We started with four, and eliminated one, leaving us with three. Now go ahead and add all your symbols to the watchlist on TradingView, that way you can easily switch between charts. One nice thing about TradingView is that your chart trend lines save and don't go away, and your indicators and chart style transfers over from each chart.
   


5. Now it's time to move onto resistance and support levels.
   

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10. Resistance/Support Levels
Okay, so you've got a few neat looking charts setup and ready to go, but you're still missing a few things... One of which is resistance/support level lines. These are crucial to spotting break acts and acting on them accordingly. When the price breaks these levels, it will usually go up/down (depending on which level it broke). Resistance is the roof, or top level. If it breaks resistance, price goes up. Support is the floor, or bottom level. If it breaks support, price goes down. That's about as simple as it gets. To draw a resistance/support line in TradingView, simply look on the left hand side, and click the button below your pointer. It should bring up a list of items, then choose Horizontal Line (or Ray if you prefer it). I encourage you to explore these menus more in depth by yourself too. Google can help you learn each and every tool.
Let's take a look at the images below, all are good examples of what you will see in the real world.
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11. Trend Lines
Now that we've covered support/resistance you're now able to get into trend lines. Trends are important because just like people, crypto and stocks like to be trendy too. Learning the basic trends are very straightforward, they're just about the same as support and resistance. There's uptrends, downtrends, and trends that move sideways. Below are images of them all. Like with resistance/support lines, simply click the button on the left, but this time click Trend Line... Of course depending on what type of trend you see, you can also click Trend Angle, Parallel Channel, Flat Top/Bottom, etc.
Here are some examples of what the real world will look like.
Spoiler (Click to View)
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12. Market Depth
So we've covered trend lines, support and resistance levels, next is Market Depth Chart. The market depth chart looks complicated to most when they first see it, however it's actually not all that bad. Basically it simply visualizes the buy and sell orders being placed.
Let's take a look at this chart below.

So the green is the buy orders, and the red is the sell orders. As you can see, the green has a nice wall built up compared to the red, however this could quickly change if a huge sell order comes in... Otherwise known as a whale unloading. By looking at this graph you can see that that price will probably go up, so it's a good time to buy. If it's the opposite and the sell wall is big, then you might want to hold off.
Here's an example of a spike which would cause resistance in the buy/sell orders.

This is a zoomed in picture of another pair, however these are something to watch for. Basically means someone came in with more volume and a higher price, which in turn caused a spike/cliff in the chart.
You can get pretty in depth with this chart, however since this is a basic beginners guide I'll leave it at that. YouTube and Google can help you a lot on depth charts.

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13. Using Indicators
Indicators are toys used by traders and investors. They help tell us whether the price is going to go up, down, sideways, or in a circle (get the reference?). These tools are used everyday and you need to get familiar with them. Now, at the same time there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of different indicators out there... People create their own for private use, public use, etc. You don't need to know all of the thousands TradingView offers, however you need to know the basics... RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, and Moving Averages. To save time, I'm not going to go over them, however I will make it easy for you and link you to guides that can go more in depth than me, they'll explain the math involved as well if you're interested.

• MACD
  


• Moving Averages
  


• RSI
  


• Bollinger Bands
  


• Keltner Channels
  

Those are about the most popular ones you may find yourself using. Everyone has their own preference and just find some you like. Please remember this though, indicators can be dangerous, while you don't want to rely on one indicator alone to tell you to buy/sell, you also don't want 6 different indicators each pointing you a different direction. Get a good set that works with your wants and needs. Me personally I stick with my MACD and Stoch RSI.

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14. Conclusion
If you managed to read all of that, and even the parts where I may have gotten off topic, you deserve a pat on the back. Before you continue onto trading, do some more research. I've only covered the bare minimum of what trading is and I hope you continue to read on past this thread. Google is honestly your best friend, there is no college for this stuff. You read and learn, and sometimes live and learn. Losses happen, that's part of this hobby/life style. I hope someone found this thread helpful and can go on and continue to learn and live the lifestyle they dream of. One thing to remember however, and I've personally learned this myself. Don't let money distract you from the things money can't buy.

If you have any questions feel free to post below, or PM me!

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[$ZEUS]

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I think you fucked up with the reserving posts for further expansion. If you want to post below me, I can delete my post.
Nonetheless, an amazing read. I just got into day trading and this helped a lot!

Yea... Can't even edit the thread now, o' well! I was planning on doing a bit more, but I can figure something out..

[V For Vendetta.]

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Yea... Can't even edit the thread now, o' well! I was planning on doing a bit more, but I can figure something out..

Deleted my post. If you need more, let me know!

[OneEightSeven]

Thank you for this! I am gonna read up on this tonigh

[BTC BTC BTC]

Really good read. Knew some of this but refreshed my memory and learned a few things. May delve into crypto day trading soon.

[Suply]

Can't thank you enough for this. Exactly what I needed to start out! Good luck in the future!

[THE NORTH FACE]

This looks Great! Ill be looking over this tonight. P.S. I've made about $30 since the other day you helped me out🤝

[xatt]

I'm keeping my eyes on Ripple and Sia at the moment. Already have Monero, Ethereum, Stratis, Bitcoin, Augur REP, ZCash.

[ingenious]

Thank you for this
Will be diving into it soon

[Trappy]

Thank you, great thread. Mistook you for a normal member for a moment haha

[Blockys]

Looks like a good guide, will fully read through later.

[VirtualMon3y]

Looks great Op. Definetly going to spend time reading this over a coffee later today.

[d4rkj4y]

Awesome OP, thanks for this.

Have you heard of Coinigy before?

[Mr.Motivation]

You will need like 25k so daytrading would be worth it.

[Banadmin]

Awesome thread, dude! Very informative. 🙂 +1