I am in need of a little help...

I started using the Bot on the 24th Feb and struggled with working out what settings to use (not how they work - that's fairly clear thanks to this thread) and finally settled on 18/38 with thresholds set to 0/0.2 which back testing suggested profits would be positive (1.05% over a week, 20% over a month and 64% over 2 months - I don't see the point of anything longer given the basically "up" nature from before that).
Now I know that I need to wait and that the bot will loose 70% of the time but at the moment it is loosing 100% of the time and doesn't seem to capitalise even in large swing situations like last week. I started with $91 (it was originally $100 but moving it into BTC lost me money at the time) and now I have $80. BB buys/sells at the cross overs as designed but there is always a jump in the "wrong" direct at that time so it seems to buy at more than it then sells for

I assume others are actually making money (!) so what am I doing wrong? I have considered -50/0 so that it buys on the turn to minimise the impact of buying into a market which I guess is being moved by EMA trading but back testing always shows this to be a bad idea.
So as the sub title says - I need a little help because this isn't working at the moment (thank God I listened to the advice to put some "play" money in first!)
Thanks all
Milles
Milles,
This is a poor market for EMA trading at the moment. I've turned off my bot since mid-January because I felt a sustained period of
relatively stable price or slow decline coming for the next couple months. Stable price is bad for EMA crossover strategies or really any trading strategy.
Also, be aware that you may be losing 100% of your first trades right now, but you might win the next 3. You might lose the first 20 and win the next 6. Or you might just always lose (but this is about as unlikely as always winning). It's just unfortunate to experience the drawdown at the beginning, because you start to question the strategy and sometimes break from the plan and act on emotions. If you stick to the plan, you will likely enter the market on the next major swing and make up all of your drawdown. However, it can be advantageous to analyze the current market sentiment and adjust your plan accordingly. Just always have a plan, and
always honor your plan, or you will lose.
I've saved about 15% of my account balance by turning the bot off so far. I have set resistance points crossovers that when satisfied, I will re-enter the market and turn the bot back on. Butterbot is a great tool, and in some of these extreme BTC market conditions, you can even just set it and forget it and still see large gains. But if you want to maximize your gains, it takes a decent knowledge of trading, planning, strategy adjustment, and emotional disregard.