The article will be full of reflections and thoughts about how the crowd the market maker is going against is us—each of us individually and all of us together.
So, let me give you my own example of the “crowd” with $AGT
I bought on Alpha to avoid paying funding and practice patience. Did I make a good buy? Of course—I had no doubt the coin would go even higher. I bought a tiny amount, more to practice patience than to make money.
Yeah, it went higher. I was asleep and woke up when it was around 0.08. At first, I thought: of course, we need a red daily candle, preferably two, for the rally to continue.
I was prepared for the price to come back to my entry, but you won’t believe it—the stop-loss didn’t even get triggered. I hadn’t set one; I closed the coin myself at +5%. I’d had enough. I could see the market was choppy, Bitcoin was jumping around, and tomorrow was Monday—who knew what would happen? I’d close now and get back in lower. I got distracted, did some chores, and forgot about it. Today, it’s already continuing to rise again, and it’s formed something like a double bottom. The absurd thing is that the price fell no more than 10% below my entry.
In both cases, it was basically greed that got the better of me. I had my take profit set at 0.13, but the price never reached it. The coin simply liquidated the shorts who had entered at the previous high with 10x leverage and, out of greed, hadn’t closed their positions either. I woke up after the pullback, and didn’t want to close at +25%, because at one point I was probably up +60%. I closed out of greed too, hoping to get back in lower without losing my two cents.
Basically, I wanted to have my cake and eat it too—and not get a stomachache 😂
Okay, a different situation with $AKE
I’m glad I bought it, knowing how much tension there was around the coin and that an unlock was coming. I wasn’t expecting it to shoot straight up, though 0.04–0.08 still seems like a logical end to the story.
Look at the last trade: I still had a few pennies’ worth left in case it rocketed 😂 A stop-loss I’d set was triggered after the coin touched the sloping line twice. About 5–7% below my entry.
And looking at this, don’t you think even my grandma could see where I’d put my stop-loss? Of course the market maker will go after it—what else can I do? I don’t want to set it 15–20% away. Although there was a shakeout, and it was a great opportunity to buy and close the last trade in profit, right when the coin moved below the trendline for the second time. In fact, taking all my trades on this coin into account, I’m neither down nor particularly up. But I focused especially on that last stop-loss, even though if the coin had plunged, I’d be saying how smart I was to have set it at all 😂
Actually, the sale of almost 300k worth of unlocked tokens played a big role here. I didn’t notice it in time, which is why things turned out this way.
A stop-loss set within 10% of the levels where shorts or longs piled in is a tasty target for a market maker. If the imbalance is toward longs, as it was with both these coins, the market maker will try to shake you out. We set our stops at these levels out of greed: losing 10% seems perfectly acceptable to us, while 15–20% seems like too much.
We’ve once again reached the end of our discussion about this coin with “greed” as our shared conclusion 😂
We need to mix things up.
$Q Here’s an example of fear. It’s been showing it since the start of the rally: a -20% to +30% move in one shakeout is normal for it. When it got up to 0.12, I was also leaning toward it continuing its roller-coaster ride and going higher. That’s exactly why I decided to stay away from it altogether. I watched the candle marked with the arrow form in real time, but still didn’t buy because I was afraid. And I think the next red candle intensified the fear of those who were thinking, “Should I buy or not?”
Very few people bought, and only a handful managed not to sit on their profits for too long at that point.
And it’s been dragging shorts along since around 0.08—they’re especially unfortunate.
And now here I am, acting all smart and saying Q and AGT were 100% bound to rise, and of course it’s all obvious to everyone in hindsight 😂
Answer this for yourself for now: what’s the most important level for you to enter a short?
This one. As soon as the coin approaches its high, everyone piles into shorts on it, thinking it’s a bubble that’s about to burst, that a drop is coming, and so on. But if the coin has the resources to move up even 10%, that’s all it takes: it’ll fly on short liquidations, while those who might have wanted to buy are also sitting there afraid and waiting for a drop. We liquidate the shorts, and there aren’t that many longs to pay out. Great setup.
“Well, it’s just one coin—she found one chart and is showing it to us 😂”
Here you go, a second moment that’s just as impressive.👆🏼
And a third one👇
And a fourth one 👇
And I can show you lots more like this if you want. You can open any similar coin yourself and draw your own conclusions.
But there are also coins that failed to break through their highs twice, then did it perfectly on the third try.
The takeaway from these charts is that those leaning more toward buying can’t bring themselves to buy because they’re afraid, while shorts see a new ATH and a bubble that might burst any moment after another 1,000% rise.
That’s why I was leaning toward Q and AGT continuing to rise: practically all the coins are in the same hands, a bunch of shorts are piling in, and longs are afraid—a perfect setup for the rally to continue. By the way, I only came to this conclusion recently.
As you can see, with AGT I overcame my fear of buying when lots of people piled into shorts, and the coin has already tripled since breaking out above its ATH. But I’m still afraid that after moving sideways, it’ll plummet, and that I need to put a stop at the most obvious level.
And on the weekly timeframe, there was a cup and handle—that’s the secret. Some people sell, others buy the dip, and if the buyers have more resources, expect another wave.
So there’s still a lot of work to do on ourselves to avoid being part of the “herd.” First and foremost, it means working on our emotions.
Secondly, we need to learn to understand what the majority is doing, because the coin will move against the crowd.
But for now, I’m mostly part of the “herd,” though I really want to get away from it and change course 😂
