If you’re a cryptocurrency enthusiast who has spent any time at all on YouTube, you’ve surely come across The Chart Guys. The Guys post daily market updates that have proved invaluable to novice traders like myself who until recently had no clue what we were doing. Their free videos introduce the basics of technical analysis – trends, support lines, and the like – and apply them to the crypto charts in order to make trading feel less like gambling and more like an educated science (or is it an art?) informed by past events and a knowledge of human psychology.
Those videos serve as a point of entry to ChartGuys.com which is a subscription service that features additional video lessons, a chatroom, and more. The site also offers a couple paid courses, the newest of which, Trading Cryptocurrency, is the subject of this review. (The older course, Entries & Exits, is also very good, though I don’t consider it to be a prerequisite.). This course was pretty much what I expected going in: an accessible, relatively straightforward introduction to the basics of technical analysis applied to trading cryptocurrencies.
The course is hosted on ChartGuys.com and presented by “Charting Man Dan”, an entrepreneur and longtime stocktrader who seems to know his stuff. Dan has a habit of talking a mile a minute on YouTube, so I was pleased that he slowed his delivery down considerably. The 6+ hours of course content is divided logically into 7 sections, each of which contains up to nine videos that vary wildly in length. The material was delivered clearly and concisely, and visual slides complemented the spoken content nicely.
Relatively high-level primers on the how-to’s of trading, patterns, common indicators, etc. were exactly what I needed to go from know-nothing to know-something. If you’re looking for a technical definition of RSI, or the difference between ascending and symmetrical triangles, look elsewhere. Some of the videos on the Chart Guys’ site are helpful in that regard, which can be accessed for free with a one-week trial membership.
The section of the course titled “Physical and Emotional Well Being” is a must-watch for those of us who spend more time slouched in a chair staring at a computer screen than tending to our health and wellness. To that end, I also appreciated that the course covered swing and long-term trading strategies rather than simply daytrading. Not everybody in this space has the time or interest in monitoring and trading the markets throughout the day, and the course details subtle differences between shorter and longer term trading methods.
The most thought-provoking section of the course relates to money and the individual trader’s psychological attachment to his or her money. The instructor purports to be one of those enlightened souls who is free of stress and perfectly OK with losing everything in the erratic and unpredictable markets. Though getting to that place mentally is easier said than done, I’m with him on this. Life’s too short to spend worshiping numbers in an account over the things that truly matter. Counterintuitively, such emotional detachment from money actually makes us better traders and saner individuals. How ironic to hear that in a course on generating financial profit.
Other memorable lessons included a description of bots and how we human traders can learn from them. There was also a stunning demonstration of how a fake buy order placed on the top bid served to “tilt the scales” (read: manipulate the market) by encouraging others to buy at the ask, resulting in an increase in the price of Ethereum on GDAX. Talk about active market participation! This perfectly legal tactic is assuredly utilized constantly by cryptocurrency traders, robotic and human alike.
Thanks to countless hours spent watching the Chart Guys’ free YouTube content, I already had a surface level understanding of technical analysis and crypto trading prior to starting this course. After completing the course, I have a good deal more insight on the logistics, patterns and planning associated with successful trading. In particular, I’m more comfortable and competent playing oversold bounces (also known as bottom-fishing). Though I can’t bring myself to take Dan’s advice of trading with fake money to start – too boring – I’ll keep my inevitable losses small by following another of his recommendations: always set a stop loss.
It should be reiterated that the Chart Guys’ daily market videos contain a wealth of conceptual knowledge that go well beyond the day’s charts. I suggest anybody brand new to this space first check out their YouTube channel to a) learn a ton for free, and b) find out if the Chart Guys’ presentation style agrees with them before investing in this course, currently priced more than fairly at $150. A sample module from the course can also be viewed for free on ChartGuys.com.
Nearly anyone can turn a profit trading a bull market. It’s when the bears come out and the market shifts – as appears to be happening now – that a solid foundation in technical analysis and industry fundamentals determines who wins and who loses. Reading crypto news publications like The Merkle is a great way to keep tabs on the burgeoning cryptocurrency scene. As for building an understanding of technical analysis, I highly recommend that new or beginner crypto traders give the Chart Guys and their new course a look.
Disclosures: The author was provided access to both Chart Guys courses for reviewing purposes. This is not investment advice.
Image(s): Shutterstock.com
