In 2017, analysts who tried to get lucky based on the 30 year anniversary of 1987 crash, 20 year anniversary of the 1997 crash and 10 year anniversary of 2007 crash had to eat the crow.
2017 was a no brainer to me. There was no change in market characteristic all the way. It was a low volatile trend and i played the long side all the way up. Not a single monthly candle low was violated. It was that persistent. No 5% declines. It's as good as it gets for the passive investors, but not so good for short term traders like me. I made decent returns nevertheless.
Now those who think the anniversaries are behind us and get complacent should watch these monthly candle lows. I make no predictions for 2018, but will watch the monthly candle lows and the change in volatility characteristic of the market. If the VIX explodes or we break this streak of higher lows on the monthly candle, then it will be an indication that we will see a two-way market, with big mean reversions (i am talking about 10-20% declines).
Bitcoin had it's largest fastest decline, which shaved off nearly 50%, which indicates that the mean reversion is underway. And those fools, who don't have a clue about market history and mean reversion who bought near 20k and are holding will get their first lesson in mean reversion. A medium term mean reversion should take bitcoin to about 7000 and then longer term probably should erase the entire gaussian curve, back down to 2000. Bitcoin is not a currency bet, but more of a technology bet. As for the technology, it's an unscalable and unsustainable one at this point. As for the economy of it goes, transaction charges makes it unusable. As for the liquidity, it sucks as a trading vehicle with huge spreads and large transaction confirmation time. We'll see if this evolves into something interesting over time or if it's just another fancy technology ponzi scheme that goes bust.
I still have long term holdings in Gold and Silver and i am betting on Gold/Silver rallying higher this year. I don't do short term trading in Gold. The quarterly charts on Gold is in a bullish configuration which bodes well for the long term. I have no doubts that this is the real money and not the crypto crap.
Edited by NAV, 02 January 2018 - 09:03 AM.
