I haven't been writing down your preds or anything, but I just remember you were long on wheat short term or were looking for a short-term bounce and it's just been perma-plummeting.
Wheat was tough sledding for a while, but I traded it well, no losses -- it went up before it went down, which is all the slack I needed to avoid a loss -- and it has done quite well for me today. Fact is, my monkey is very, very smart, in the domains of FX,FI,Equities and Futures (not so much in crypto). But that's just an edge, not a guarantee, and requires interpretation, which is all on me, and my wee, delusional brain. It required years of losses to learn to interpret the monkey well, but at this point, I (when monkey-reinforced) am without a doubt the best market timer of whom I am aware, and pretty consistently profitable - not one down week this year, although many down days - yet still I have more than enough false starts, whipsaws, stop-losses, etc. to keep me humble and wary (relative to my naturally overweening arrogant baseline, of course). SPX has been most lucrative for me, followed by XAUXAG, which I traded very badly, and should have been much more profitable than it was, given the relative accuracy of my advance predictors. Oh, yeah, and GBPJPY was velly, velly good to me as well. Treasuries did fairly well too. I may short them again in a week or so. If I didn't have a day job, I'd probably be quite wealthy at this point. But I love my day job, so I just can't quit. I must restrict myself to a few swing trades, as a result.
So to keep it ontopic, what do you think about the halving? Will it have a significant effect on XTC:USD and XBT:XMR?
I have little clue, but it sure isn't going to hurt XBTUSD. Breaking 270 will be a crucial test. Last halving was a rocket-sled to bubble-land. I enjoyed it enough to become really annoying to civilians in the neighborhood. Last bubble LTC lagged BTC, then was flung past it when the bubble popped. Do I think XMR will behave like LTC did then? No strong predictors here, I think. I consider financial repression to be a better omen for XMR than a BTC bubble, and consider the likelihood of a BTC bubble to be much lower than it was in 2013, when all the stars were aligned, what with Silk Road, the Willy Bot, Cyprus, the halving, and a mining gold-rush all going on at once. Could happen again, but not likely. Moreover the structural factors defining the role of LTC relative to BTC in 2013 and those defining the role of XMR relative to BTC in 2015 are very, very different. I am hopeful, but disinclined to draw a strong analogy.
A bubble run is likely, yes. I suspect it will be faded pretty heavily, and peter out quickly, due to professionals in the game now. If so, then it might become a long, slow, sustainable ramp before it blows off a top, if it ever does. The channel by which that is most likely to aid XMR, in my opinion, is by drawing increased attention to crypto, such that when the failings of BTC become painful, many more users will find XMR to be the most fit alternative for their purposes. The time required for that machinery to grind to completion is likely to frustrate most XMR speculators, but please most long holders at some almost unknowable point in the future. It's still the best digital cash technology, and I see no reason for that to change. To the contrary, as slow as progress has been, still the technology seems to be improving fitness for purpose faster than competitive innovators can catch up. I guess they each have their own obstacles to progress. XMR basically only has one: Funding.
