DigitalCurrencyTraders.com
This is a chronological journal of the the trading experience that led up to the website you are reading. My mission is to share my journey and the lessons I’ve learned so that it may help shorten your journey to success.
I want to pay forward as my thank you for all the help I’ve received along the way from so many amazing and giving people.
My Short Story (it started out short)
March 3 1995
I started to study commodities and trading futures contracts with an introductory course called The World’s Most Powerful Money Manual & Course (The Seminar) by the Ken Roberts Company.
I made a deal with my neighbor, Dave, where I paid part of his subscription to the Toronto Globe and Mail and he saved the commodities quotes page for me each day.
I photocopied blank chart grids and set pencil to paper. For six months I called dozens of brokers for information while charting by hand before I opened an account with real money. Each and every trade was a loser and soon I was ‘taking a break’ from trading…
While I saved up funds for my next failing plunge, I phoned several exchanges and systematically requested every free brochure and flier they offered. It was amazing! They sent boxes of information and much of it was great to read. I received far more information from the each of the exchanges than was included in my first commodities course. But, the Ken Roberts’ teaching remains the core of my own approach… decades later… hummm.
Winter of 95,
My Folks brought me their old IMB XT computer with Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.0!
I was able to do ten-fold the analysis, and much faster than charting by hand! I entered daily data from the newspaper and it plotted moving averages, and even had an Accumulation/Distribution formula from an issue of Stocks and Commodities magazine!
I put more money in my account in the spring of 96 and lost it just as quickly. My interest faded. I felt that I couldn’t trade until I had the information that my Broker had… I needed a Pentium computer system.
By the fall of 96,
I finally could buy my computer and charting software – Metastock. I started paper-trading two accounts; one with $2000 and one with $100000. I made a small profit in both accounts, but focused little on the smaller paper-account.
Spring of 1997
found me with $1400 CDN real money to invest. I lost it with breath-taking swiftness.
I thought the Gods were against me! Three times in three years, I started trading and lost my entire account. – – But, I have since learned about risk control…
Throughout the winter of 96/97,
I sought out people who were also learning about trading; some long-time traders already. I stumbled upon a Commodity Talk Traders Forum while tentatively searching the Internet for any Ken Roberts references. From there I have been pointed to a universe of information on trading futures, including; The Money Tree by Larry Williams.
I moved from being afraid of The Net, to becoming dependent on it for the information I need to successfully paper-trade commodities.
JULY 97
Inspired by the advice from online friends at Commodity Talk, I opened a Website on the Internet. The purpose of this page is to provide myself with a forum to set up a trading system that meets all the requirements of success. Building the complete system, I imagine, will help build my confidence in the system and develop the discipline needed to follow it.
August 23/97
My Website has grown and changed – and has a number of improvements still in the workings… (For several months, I dedicated hours each day to updating several pages of current and historical trade-data. I found it a great forum to test my honesty, and I still benefit from studying the data I collected)
Once the complete trading system is written, with the mechanical and discretionary components identified, I will be paper-trading for real with Simulated Brokerage Service. One step at a time, this time!
October 4/97
Unacceptable draw-down in my paper-trading account has guided me into spending more time researching and back-testing. Teach, a helpful trader from Commodity Talk, sent me mikeysmethods and, Bill the Cycle Trader, pointed me to the forum at Futures Magazine Online.
Another avalanche of information to absorb! Another advance in my research was to print the last three months of price data for a dozen markets. I then spent the time doing back-testing. I uncovered one day at a time and marked profits and losses as I applied these trading methods. Risk control, or when to get out of a trade, remains my weakness.
To that end, I am studying the teachings of The Phantom Of The Pits (POP) and his assistant Art Simpson (ALS) on Futures Magazine Traders Forum.
November
I’ve had success programing MetaStock with alerts, experimented with attaching Expert Analysis to securities and I’ve played a little with the System Tester. Its a powerful program but has a learning curve for computer newbies.
December 97
My Christmas gift to me was a copy of the Bible of Technical Analysis – Technical Analysis of Stock Trends by Edwards and MaGee. The first edition was printed in 1948 – and its information applies to any current chart! The Seventh Edition includes fifty years of experience – free!
January 1998
I had the good fortune of a local sponsor who provided me with FutureLink satellite data feed throughout the months of January and February. I paper-traded intensely and kept rigorous records of my activities. My results were to fantastic! Using the new methods for entry criteria, and my new risk control procedures, I was able to earn my whole years income in just two months — on paper.
Without real money to trade, I became enraged with frustration. The new methods lead me to Madness because I am stuck in a difficult job that I don’t like… and I won’t trade again with an under-funded account.
Spring of 98
Beginning in March, I have turned my time and attention away from paper-trading. I am occupied with a long, but necessary, financial preparation phase. Once I have enough capitol gathered (goal of $10K, in an estimated two years,) I will again tend to my trading career.
Till then, I’m a biker without a Harley!
For my birthday in June of 98, I purchased a several books on trading.
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre (first published in 1923),
Market Wizards by Jack Schwager,
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) and
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (first edition printed in 1841).
March 2000
My friend and commodities trading associate took his own life. I hesitate to include a memorial for him here, yet it was a deeply significant loss to me personally, and a profound lesson about the extreme dangers of trading. I miss him often.
September 2003.
I can now take the time to learn more about the psychology of trading by paper trading with a live online service, and by entering a trading competition. The live paper trading will help me establish a trading routine for the data management and risk control activities. The public contest – and my ego – should provide some of the emotions of real trading.
Phantom of the Pits states that the best time to learn about the market is when it is closed – much less costly!
And he stresses that you can learn from other peoples mistakes as well as from your own.
Fall of 2007
Never having lost interest in Trading, I reorganised some of my notes from ten year ago and posted a short website Stock Trading Notes that was soon neglected.
Summer 2009
I started to Trade items, or merchant, on the Runescape Grand Exchange. As I started reviewing the price charts for the items, I immediately recognized two opportunities. Excitement gripped me because I knew that all of my past experiences and education with commodities trading could be used to help me earn fantastic returns within the game of Runescape. And the more I traded items on the Grand Exchange, I realized more and more that I could use this arena as a stepping stone to trading again on the real life Commodities Exchanges.
Fall of 2009
My career experience with building websites, my former Runescape Blog that had been online since 2005 and the old Player Killing Guide I wrote in 2006, it was natural for me to create a new website about Merchanting On Runescape – LumbridgeCity.com is reborne.
Oct 21 09
LumbridgeCity.com Opens. First created with ButterflyMarketing Content Management System
Dec 3 09
LumbridgeCity.com Closes for a brief period while I migrate the website to a WordPress CMS, created with the Thesis Theme and powered by the Wishlist Membership Plugin.
Feb 09
Due to growing demand, LumbridgeCity.com Closes again for a brief period while I move the Membership Subscription Management over to ClickBank. On Feb 17, Runescape Bloggers, YouTube Video Makers and Runescape Fan Site Owners can become our affiliates and earn monthly income by sending us traffic!
March 09
Another re-organization of content and new expanded Merch Guides! New Lifetime Membership Option available, in addition to the monthly membership option. Affiliate Payment BOOSTED to 75%! Time for YOU to cash in on the lucrative online gaming industry!
November 2011
Upgraded Merchanters Mastermind course now expanded to nine module course with self-test exams! First offered in August of 2011, this limited size course is now being offered for the second time.
September 2012
New wordpress theme, new squeeze page and a several months of testing various social sharing strategies. Membership content was changed to permit access for the cost of a Like or a Tweet. This did boost the social signals for the content we targeted. While successful, the social actions did not build our email list.
Enter The Lumby Lotto
December 2012
New membership/affiliate/shopping cart plugins were added to the site, and the free Merchanting Lessons were placed within a Membership Area. New registrants for the free merchanting guides are automatically affiliates, and can opt into an email newsletter at the time of registration.
Lumby Lotto Starts and Ends. After a short run of Lumby Lotto, data shows it was not increasing the number of registrations – and seemed to sway away from the target audience of the people signing up, so, Lumby Lotto is retired as an interesting experiment.
January 2013
A few changes to the theme and layout to prepare for a series of New Short Merchanting Horoscopes! Upgrade to Premium Membership to get them all, or pick and choose to purchase just the Merchanting Horoscopes that you are interested in! Provided for entertainment only, these witty tidbits will lighten your day, provide wisdom and clues about the various items for merchanting on the Runescape Grand Exchange!
June, July and August of 2013
Created a daily video on the price changes of Rares – but it was the start of a down trend in a market where you cannot go short. There were no buy signals and no trades to make for a long time in this market… the project was great practice for the daily routine of trading and video making.
August 2013
Tried to start Futures Trading Primer video journal of technical analysis of Canola and other agricultural commodities is a personal journey to trading seasonal patterns successfully – starting with options, then with mini futures, and onwards… but more paper trading was too much of a time drain without real money to trade.
January 2014
Inspired by Brendon Buchard, I created some introductory scripts and shot some videos -This 45 minute webinar has great content by not professional enough production.
beginners-guide-to-flipping Released the Kindle book, the Beginners Guide To Flipping, and set up Linkbuilder’s Author profile.
My Start in Cryptocurrency
December 2014
Taking the next step in trading to build and grow real world wealth. While learning about Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, it was clear these offer an easy way to start using the same methods practiced in LumbridgeCity – in the real world. A new introduction to Exchange Traded Funds also opens doors for beginning traders get it the big game of trading commodities price changes even with very little investment.
January 2015
Getting started with Cryptocurrency trading. Setting up wallets and getting registered at a good trading exchange. This period is a time of great research and a good time to be creating content for the members area to help people save all this research and get directly to the best cryptos and directly to the best ways of making bitcoin quickly.
Getting prepared to move equity between real world currencies, cryptocurrencies and exchange traded funds will require several different accounts and the personal verification needed to enable the quick and easy online moving of the funds. ETF studies will focus on reviewing many sets of price charts and researching fundamentals of ETF certain markets and establish some best options while at the same time, putting real world funds into place for small ETF positions, Crypto preparation will focus on getting initial funding by selling real world services for payment in Bitcoin and some other coin currencies.
Created a new YouTube Channel:
Bitcoin Trading
ETF Price Review
And set about implementing a content development and social media strategy I’ve been developing for several years.
Restarted a campaign to build an audience by creating Blog Posts and YouTube videos about my trading journal and publishing across the range of best keyword phrases for the Bitcoin Trading topic. New content is cross-shared into social media sites like Google Plus – Twitter – Facebook – Pinterest – Reddit – Linkedin and others.
February 2015
Closed Lumbridgecity to new memberships until a new relaunch based around Bitcoin, Cryptos and ETF’s
Created a general ‘what to merch in 2015‘ video for Lumbridgecity on YouTube, and will leave it as a leader over to Bitcoin Trading Channel, shared on facebook and paid a few $ for facebook ads.
First introduction of the idea to create a NXT Asset investment fund to expand the project. Selling shares will provide investors with a stake in the success of the projects, which will create new partnerships and relationships that will enable a mass expansion of the project reach and help thousands of new people learn about trading bitcoin.
Regular updates to the Tipper’s Hall Of Fame encourages me to continue working on the crowd-funding idea.
March 2015
Had a small re-opening of the Academy, including a new section on Bitcoin, and a new forum. Introductory webinar was a success and a small group of subscribers joined at the 2011 membership rates! The regular membership rates were approved by Clickbank and updated on the home page.
This month we created a crowdsourced project to help increase the visibility of the youtube channel. The project did not generate donation in the first week, but I’m certain the announcements about it have served to build new connections and new channel subscribers.
April 2015
Trading, video log updates 2 or three times each week from April through the end of November, was not updating this history page… but will come back to it and flesh it out more.
September 2015
Started the dedicated account for bitcoin lending.
October 2015
Daily updates on bitcoin lending markets, started The FaucetGuy Altcoin Investing experiment. Installed a faucet and experimented with generating new registrations for the website.
November 2015
Learned how to draw Poloniex API into google docs. Started data collection on loan markets and expanded a dedicated section of the membership area to focus on bitcoin lending markets like Bitfinex and Poloniex.
Got active on Zapchain again, started earning a few bits to collect up. More social media activity, experimenting with more Hootesuit tool options. Created more blog posts. Overhaul of membership area started.
December 2015
Closed the membership and created a waiting list page while upgrades are completed.
Updated the forum, personal profiles, reorganized the membership content. After almost a year of focused journalling of bitcoin and altcoin price changes, we are now creating a step-by-step lesson approach that is built from our experience. The new membership combines a video tutorial and self-test quiz to introduce important concepts. Once a student passes 80%, they are guided to create their own individual action plan based on the lesson they just completed. Finally, every student will be encouraged to immediately take action and carry out their action plan with micro-investment positions to begin with.
The entire step-by-step learning process from intro video, through the self-test, to creating the action plan, and carrying out the plan – is all supported by a private forum and live chat!
May of 2015
Started to focus on cryptos traded on Poloniex. Big focus on trading videos on Youtube to research and understand more about each coin.
September 2015
Started testing bitcoin lending on Poloniex while growing a following on youtube, email list, and paid members area.
January-May of 2016
CryptoCurrency Trading Course participation is growing. Created the private forums and started populating with course case studies and tutorials related to different sections of the course.
July 2016
Rebuilt the course website with new theme and plugins – added woocommerce and coinpayments to accept btc payments for registrations. The registration page and the course page were confusing and difficult to navigate.
January 2017
Rebuild the course website yet again, different theme, different course management plugins = weeks of work and – worse than the prior setup.
April and May 2017
Large influx of new members to the DigitalCurrencyTrading Community and Advanced Course on CryptoCurrency Trading. Upgrades to the course website have finally come together after several rebuilds in the past year. Course PDF is over 60 pages without screenshots and graphs. Happy with the course setup, now focused on improving the flow and coordination of course, forum, live chat and email list.
June 2017
Hit my highest trading account balance of over $100,000 Canadian
Relaunched the free training course as a series of three webinars. Added referral tracking system for affiliates. Published ‘Cryptocurrency Rags To Riches’ ebook.
August 2017
Attended the Fintech Canada Bitcoin and Ethereum Summit in Toronto.
Met the well-known Tone Vays
New launch of the trading course. This time the course material will be presented Four Live Webinars, one each day, rather than one each weekend – followed by ongoing market reviews and monitoring.
August 2017
Invited to speak at a Las Vegas conference dedicated to Bitcoin and CryptoCurrency Investing – tentative dates… are… still tentative
September-December 2017
Started a private Discord Chat for the members, continued weekly market analysis videos. Created a new Steemit Blog and created my first dtube video
Launched a small but successful run of the course presentation, now based on the Learn Dash course management plugin – several bugs held back the project.
January – April 2018
Hired, worked months with, and dismissed a web team that does great work, out of my price range. Completed an edit and rewrite of
May 2018
Started providing mini-webinars available on demand – using webinar jam to organize registration.
Rebuilt and launched an updated version of DigitalCurrencyTraders – now providing multiple instructor options, and better course flow! Created three free courses and completed initial layout for the membership content! Added incentives for free course members to gain access to the $79 book for free.
September 2018
Started spreadsheeting the cryptos while reviewing then on youtube livestream updates.
September 2019
Tried my hand at publishing a few short books on Amazon Kindle.
How to Overcome Fear & Greed was a ‘note to self’ I had written in a trading journal many years before. When I rediscovered the document, it was perfect timing for me to reflect on the need to be fearful.
Bull Market Watch 2019
July 2019
A new expanded crypto spreadsheet was created and named the Bull Market Watch, now know as the Crypto SmartWatch.
December 2019
Updated the Bull Market Watch Control Panel with the first pie charts showing the over all status of the entire group of coins.
AOLSandra starts updating the Binance Bull Market Watch Spreadsheet
December of 2019 I has more free time to start creating spreadsheet filters to bring important portfolio balancing data together.
Released the PRO ALERTS model portfolio with trade alerts and notifications.
imagine the ‘bitcoin dominance data’ is the white light the prism is the ‘bull market watch’ spreadsheet and the color spectrum is the breakdown of the best coins to invest in!
January 2020
A bearish time in Altcoin history. Here are a few highlights of the sentiment from our Discord Community at the time:
February 2020
Created the first daily email notifications for the Spreadsheet subscribers
March of 2020
Started connecting zignally to fire our Bull Market Watch trade signals to your Binance trading account!
Improved the Bull Market Watch Control Panel to filter and display the trade status for any of the coins in our model portfolio. The NEW Alerts and the NEW Holds categories were created at the request of one of the Portfolio Managers who was using our data to help with their crypto allocations. The distinction of the 4hour EMA as a partial exit was also added after a user request!
May of 2020
The portfolio bots on Zignally have caught some nice moves and held top spot for most profitable bot.
June 2020
this is the same time dominance made a top formation and dropped lower.
July 2020
August of 2021
The progression of the Crypto Portfolio changes over time highlight the importance of the slow and steady approach to following the trends.
September of 2021
The visual benefit of seeing all of the altcoins passing the exit zones at the same time – provides a healthy gut feel and confidence as we were taking profits and closing weak trades.
October of 2021
the spreadsheet was clearly telling us to be out of all the altcoins.
November of 2021
This data is always important to study with hindsight to help us prepare for the next big altcoin season.
December of 2021
This was a big month in development! I hired a top Pinescript Programmer and created a tradingview indicator that would nearly mimic the color coding we had been using!
Created a custom Tradingview indicator to provide visual information about the EMA crossover that is one of the components of our trading signal.
January 2022
New Upgrades!
Introducing a brand new automated way to see the ebb and flow of altcoin seasons – the Crypto SmartWatch Auto is based on mathematical trading parameters and requires no human review.
Now we can get a more clear perspective on the transition of altcoin season as well as data on what could be a fakeout breakout and not a sustained altcoin rally.
Huge Advantage
Now we can see visually when the very first signs of altcoin season begin to sprout!
everything was pulled back and ready for our system to catch them again.
March of 2022
Started the Bitcoin Liquidation Watch livestream on Youtube and grew to over 23000 subscribers by June of 2022 when the original lumbridgecity channel from 2009 was terminated by youtube.
April of 2022
May 2022
Started pulling in live price data and created automated spreadsheets to monitor 300 ALT/BTC pairs
June 2022
Created a second live price spreadsheet to monitor 140 ALT/USDT price pairs for leveraged futures trading. Created a third spreadsheet to begin monitoring changes in the TOKEN/ETH pair spreads over time – and was delighted to find another way to sift through the trends and squeeze out profits!
ALT/BTC or ALT/USDT?
It matters!
July 2022
Started a new talking head style of tutorial videos on a new youtube channel. Invested enormous hours into the first set of videos, and may do another set of videos in the future.
Waves of Altcoin Seasons
September 2022
Started developing an automated spreadsheet for long and short entry and exit signals for trading cryptocurrency futures contracts on Binance or BitGet.
yellow transitioning to green at the end of the left chart shows the bullish moves incoming.
December 2022
ETH/TOKEN price smartwatch
Deeper studies into the potential for tokens to have a seasonal ebb and flow vs the price of Ethereum uncovered another way to play the spread in crypto price trends! Special Thanks to AOLSandra for the research!
January 2023
Started a complete transition from the great setup we had on Google Sheets, and moving all the data collection and crunching onto a website interface!
DigitalCurrencyTraders.com website was moved to a dedicated VPS server and work is now progressing. The first stage is to import all the historical daily data, then verify that the tradingview chart library fires up with all the goodies.
Next Step?
February 2023
The past six weeks have been dedicated to slowing down my trading and make my money work for me. As I take more time away from the charts and leave my money to do that dreary work on my behalf, I’ve been diving into researching the crypto projects that have provided the best profits recently.
I started posting on twitter, created a https://digitalcurrencytraders.substack.com/ and started an altcoin season dedicated group on linkedin. time to work some backlinking strategies and grow the SEO more seriously. Altcoin Opportunities website is filling out with some great content about crypto projects that have potential for amazing gains!