Here are my personal thoughts on range trading. A friend of mine recently hit a bunch of stop-losses. I think one downside of long-term range trading is that your sensitivity to real trends gets dulled. Since the range is usually just a few thousand bucks, even if you make a mistake, you can often just wait it out and recover, sometimes even make a profit. Don’t always assume you’ve got god-tier market sense and that you’ll nail the stop-loss and flip the moment a real trend shows up. That’s honestly against human nature. Luck is a hell of a drug.
Personally, I find the best time to trade is right after the first major dump or pump—once the range is clear, you can play the lows and short the highs for some quick gains. But as the chop drags on, I’ll only pick one direction. If it breaks up or down, just cut it and move on. The longer the chop, the bigger the positions and volume get.
For this BTC drop, I only traded contracts three times. The first two closed around 72k, stacking some BTC. The third time was this round—I went spot, just buying a bit more every dip. From a bigger risk/reward perspective, you make way more if it’s a real breakout, and your losses are limited if it’s a fakeout.
