Crypto trading - some personal takeaways from 2020
Disclaimer: my job requires picking investments, at times with short/medium term view (days-months), many times with a long term view (years).
This is mostly a thread on reminders to myself relating mostly to the former.
Watch out for decisions based on fear & greed
Confirmation bias (ignoring contrary signals), anchoring bias (married to entry, trading PnL), sizing too big on low r/r trades, hesitating to buy cheap assets because "it's fallen/rallied too much".
/1
Minimize regret
Constantly question whether you have done all you could to maximize returns in the past month/quarter. Review all tools at your disposal (vol strats, momentum strats, fundamentals) but don't Dunning-Kruger yourself. There are no jack of all trades.
/2
You can't catch them all
Don't regret missing out on a few trades/ investments. Better to win big on 1 high conviction idea then win big on 100 small ones. Be ok with missing out but be ruthless with not learning from it.
/3
Don't always work harder
Optimize for 4-5 GREAT decisions a year over 50 mediocre decisions. If you're on tilt or in a rut, doubling down will compound your losses. Take time off, re-assess your strategy, then return. The market will always be here.
/4
Create scalable processes
Re-read Fooled by Randomness. One good investment is a lucky bet. One good quarter doesn't make you a fund manager. Find out how to be consistent and constantly evolve this.
/5
Find your brain trust
Everyone talks their books. Recognize who is only out to "pick your brain" with no intention to reciprocate. Watch out for groupthink, but play iterative games with long term people. Always seek dissent, but ignore uninformed people with loud voices.
/6
Distinguish between investments and trading
Trading is exchanging time for money. Investing creates wealth when you sleep. Former is what you know. Latter is what you know and who you know. These skills seem ostensibly similar but require different inputs to nurture.
/7
Find your North Star
Crypto is small; place your reputation above all else. Never let short term profits, regardless of how enticing, come before decisions that optimize for longer term value creation.
/8
Finally - remember "學如逆水行舟,不進則退"
/fin
Really grateful to have "met" many who helped me improve on the above this year - just to name a few who all deserve your follows:
One strange thing I noticed in myself in the beginning of my career and among other young investors is the tendency to size too small on ideas with conviction, and size too big on ideas with lower conviction.
It's counterintuitive but it seems common.
1/x
"Dammit I should have sized bigger! I had a strong thesis. I don't know why I didn't."
"Why did I bet so much on this? It's all XXX's fault for fomo'ing me into this."
Statements like this are manifestations of the above.
2/x
Since launch, @dydxprotocol has made $2.4M in fees at a 30% monthly growth rate.
But they have much bigger ambitions... 👇
"Our goal is to become one of the biggest exchanges in crypto, PERIOD. Not just one of the biggest *decentralized* exchanges." - @AntonioMJuliano
That's ambitious considering centralized exchanges are raking in *billions*. How do they plan to pull this off?
1/x
At a time when DeFi automated market maker (AMM) like @UniswapProtocol are overtaking volumes on industry giants like @coinbase, dYdX is sticking to its guns:
"AMMs are good for long-tail assets, but we fat tail volumes are better for order books"
Synthesizing the AMM vs. CLOB debate going on currently.
These are unrefined thoughts and there are much more informed MMs, LPs, devs out there than me.
So feel free to tell me if I miss anything!
1/ First:
I think it's important to think of what you can/cannot do with either to figure out what the USP is for both. Apples to oranges if compare AMM IL with CLOB spreads.
2/ AMM's gamechanging feature #1 is anyone can be a market maker + earn passive fees!
Most people who fit the LP profile probably don't care too much about IL unless asset prices diverge significantly over time, in which case fees need to be sufficient to cover.
Short sellers have been getting a lot of flack on Twitter lately.
While I'm bullish about crypto/ DeFi, here's a devil's advocate take on shorting 101 and why it's not as evil as crypto twitter make it seem to be.
Obviously not financial advice, just personal opinions.
1/ There are a lot of misconceptions about shorting. It's seen as "manipulative", even "evil".
In a space where most retails are long-biased and only want number to go up, shorting is seen as something conniving and devious hedge funds and traders do to "screw over" retails.