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Frustrated by missing out on big crypto moves? Tired of scammy altcoins or losing trades? You’re not alone. Crypto trading is notoriously volatile, and most traders either exit too early or hold on for too long…
How many times have you seen a trade you were in take off 3x, 5x or even 10x higher than you expected it to go, while you sat on your hands taking profits just as it was getting going?
Or even sitting on the sidelines watching it take off without you, because you thought it was too expensive.
How many times have you tried to hold out for the big moves only to be stopped out, again and again.
If you haven’t been following me for a few years then you might be surprised to find out that I have been trading crypto for over 10 years now.
And you may have an opinion on crypto that isn’t all that good.
Don’t worry, I’m not shilling a meme coin.
The world of crypto currency trading is a mad house!
A religion.
A cult.
But not for all of us.
At one end you have the die hard Bitcoin folks who think anything other than Bitcoin is a threat to humanity.
Then you have folks who have tried new technology, new improvements in incentives, or outright scams creating their own currency or tokens.
Random nerds scamming investors out of billions, and it happens during every crypto bull market…this time isn’t different.
Every bull market brings a new and creative scam.
And every bull market also brings new experimentation, new technology, new protocols, and new ideas at a rapid pace.
The break neck speed that crypto moves, and the access to capital (when in a bull market), brings all sorts of people.
It’s our parents, it’s friends from school, it’s your neighbor.
When the bull market is on in crypto, everyone is talking about it.
And when it’s moving it seems like everyone is making money… and there’s no time for sleep.
I’ve been there. I spent the majority of 2017 fully immersed in crypto.
I went to the meetups in San Francisco, I had dinners, coffee and drinks with a lot of the big names in the crypto world.
I lived and breathed it.
Up all day and night reading every white paper, in private Facebook (before Telegram took off) groups, scouring miles of code to find an edge.
I started a Crypto hedge fund in October 2017 and returned all the capital (plus huge profits) to investors by January 2018, when it was obvious that it wasn’t sustainable at those levels.
The timing was impeccable.
I was lucky.
It was a wild time.
That was the year when I learned my biggest lesson about momentum trading.
Of course I had studied momentum systems quite a bit over the years, and knew they were a major edge but I had never been the beneficiary of such a strong and sustained move.
Momentum systems are what everyone wants to trade, it makes them super appealing.
Also, momentum systems are VERY HARD to trade, that’s what makes them so lucrative.
Why are they so hard?
Momentum trades go further and last longer than anyone expects…or believes is sustainable.
Let’s take a step back here and talk about the two types of trades.
Mean reversion and trending.
Mean reversion (or a sideways market) happens about 70% of the time.
Look at any chart and you’ll see a lot of moving up and down within a range.
Just when price breaks out to a higher high it immediately is reversed back to within the range.
And when a new low is taken out, price spikes right back inside the range.
Notice how long (wide) the sideways markets are compared to the jumps.
As traders (investors) we get lulled into thinking the moves are over quickly, and are head fakes.
Looking at the chart you can see months go by while prices just bangs around in the range.
Each time it pokes its head out, a wall of sellers are there to take profits, and the more aggressive traders are fading the move.
Eventually either everyone who was hoping for a big move is worn out, and has moved on to trade something else, or they’ve been conditioned to take profits and fade the breakouts.
In other words, no one is positioned for a big directional (momentum/trend) move.
So volume is low, and anyone who is trading it is positioned for a reversal, and they place their stop losses right near their entries.
This creates a very special opportunity where no one is positioned correctly for the big move.
And then it arrives and rips everyone’s face off.
Everyone has a story to tell you about how they got scammed, still have 10 Million SHIBUSDT tokens or a bunch of random wallets that they forgot how to log in to.
But it doesn’t just happen in crypto.
It’s tech stocks. it’s MEME stocks. It’s AirBNB’s. It’s Bonds for you more conservative folks.
The point is, this momentum thing isn’t only a crypto thing. It happens in all speculative markets.
It has happened for centuries.
This is an edge as old as time!
But works exceptionally well in high risk, highly speculative markets.
Like Crypto!
This is what creates those monster rallies…the whole reason we trade crypto.
And I’ve been working on a system just for crypto since the last bull market.
The last bull market in 2021, (unlike how it went for me in 2017) I stayed longer than I wanted to. We did great still but should have done a lot better.
This time I built my system to be in for the big main portion of the move and more importantly to know when things are done.
This system is what get me back in to crypto in October of 2023, right when crypto started it’s new bull market and Bitcoin was at 30k.
I’ve been live trading the new system for the past year, without leverage, on a basic Coinbase account and have already 17x’d the account.
I’ve caught moves in Bitcoin originally but then as that move quieted out, the system rotated into other assets, that’s what the system does.
It gets you in to what is moving, keeps you in, then rotates on to where the money is flowing.
After the Bitcoin ETF happened and the sell the news crowd had to buy back in, the Artificial Intelligence sector of crypto took off.
We absolutely smashed that, catching names like $AIOZ for $0.20 and riding it up over $1.00 in about a month.
Then the meme coins signal fired and we caught the last leg of the big move before the long consolidation.
It isn’t perfect, and doesn’t catch every major move, but when it does, it catches a good chunk of it.
I built this system to be able to trade in the United States, so it doesn’t require highly speculative foreign exchanges with 100x leverage in order to participate…But if you have access to leverage and know how to manage it, it’s powerful.
That also means, you regulated folks working on Wall Street can trade this without compliance issues.
The big question on everyone’s mind is, is it too late?
That’s what I love about this system, it gets you and gets you out of the really big moves.
When there’s nothing to do, it doesn’t do anything.
That whole period from March to October, we sat patiently waiting for our opportunity.
When Bitcoin dipped to 50k in August we bought some more knowing what was to come.
In October, before the elections we were already positioned.
Then Boom! We caught all of it.
What gives me the confidence that we have plenty left in crypto?
This is an analog chart of Bitcoin post halving, 2016-2018 (in yellow), 2020-2022 (in blue) and the current period (in white).
As goes Bitcoin, as goes the entire crypto market.
Bitcoin doesn’t have to go to $1,000,000 for a crazy bull market to continue.
The wealth effect is strong in crypto.
Whenever Bitcoin rallies, then takes a breather, that capital finds its way into other cryptos, and when those rally, it finds its way into other and on and on.
Eventually it gets too hot and we get a correction, a violent correction…30-50% corrections happen regularly.
Everything resets, and we proceed back to the party.
The past two weeks have been particularly interesting. After the Bitcoin mega rally to 100k (CME futures), we got some air drops (magic internet money) which always finds its way back into the system.
And has since kicked off a thorough altcoin rally…our specialty!
Despite what you may think, you don’t have to be a toothless degen, living in your parents basement to trade crypto.
No yachts and Lamborghini’s are required either.
We’re here to make money, not join a cult!
Here’s what it will include:
Let me leave you with one that just fired long yesterday and is already up (at this very second at least) 25% since entry, our old friend in the Artificial Intelligence sector $AIOZ
Don’t get caught up in the idea that you need to watch crypto 24/7/365 to trade it. There’s a better way, a consistent way that doesn’t require you to alienate your family.
Here’s what it will include:
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Brandon has been a professional investor focusing on value for over 13 years, spending his time in small to micro-cap companies, spin-offs, SPACs, and deep value liquidation situations. Over time, he’s developed a deeper understanding for what deep-value investing actually means, and refined his philosophy to include any business trading at a wild discount to what he thinks its worth in 3-5 years.
Brandon has a tenacious passion for investing, broad-based learning, and business. He previously worked for several leading investment firms before joining the team at Macro Ops. He lives by the famous Munger mantra of trying to get a little smarter each day.
AK is the founder of Macro Ops and the host of Fallible.
He started out in corporate economics for a Fortune 50 company before moving to a long/short equity investment firm.
With Macro Ops focused primarily on institutional clients, AK moved to servicing new investors just starting their journey. He takes the professional research and education produced at Macro Ops and breaks it down for beginners. The goal is to help clients find the best solution for their investing needs through effective education.
Former trade desk manager at $100+ million family office where he oversaw multiple traders and helped develop cutting edge quantitative strategies in the derivatives market.
He worked as a consultant to the family office’s in-house fund of funds in the areas of portfolio manager evaluation and capital allocation.
Certified in Quantitative Finance from the Fitch Learning Center in London, England where he studied under famous quants such as Paul Wilmott.
Founder and head macro trader at Macro Ops. Alex joined the US Marine Corps on his 18th birthday just one month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He subsequently spent a decade in the military. Serving in various capacities from scout sniper to interrogator and counterintelligence specialist. Following his military service, he worked as a contract intelligence professional for a number of US agencies (from the DIA to FBI) with a focus on counterintelligence and terrorist financing. He also spent time consulting for a tech company that specialized in building analytic software for finance and intelligence analysis.
After leaving the field of intelligence he went to work at a global macro hedge fund. He’s been professionally involved in markets since 2005, has consulted with a number of the leading names in the hedge fund space, and now manages his own family office while running Macro Ops. He’s published over 300 white papers on complex financial and macroeconomic topics, writes regularly about investment/market trends, and frequently speaks at conferences on trading and investing.
Macro Ops is a market research firm geared toward professional and experienced retail traders and investors. Macro Ops’ research has been featured in Forbes, Marketwatch, Business Insider, and Real Vision as well as a number of other leading publications.
You can find out more about Alex on his LinkedIn account here and also find him on Twitter where he frequently shares his market research.