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Whats up everyone, its Austin over here at the crypto playhouse and today I'm going to
be talking to you about something I'm really passionate about. Today were going to be talking
about going short in crypto. Now if you've been in the space for a while, then obviously
you hear it all the time, HODL, HODL, HODL, HODL. Everyone seems to think this is an investment
strategy, in my opinion it's really not. If you just want to throw some money at crypto,
make some money down the line, then sure go for it. But if you want to be trading and
actually making money on crypto playing the market, you have to play both sides. You can't
just go long forever, so today we're going to dive in, we're going to talk about why
you should be going short, and were going to also look at the Kraken cryptocurrency
exchange, and were going to be showing you how to open up your first short position.
Okay, so I know I'm probably going to have some crypto purists that have their pitchforks
out chasing me after this one. I got into crypto because I really was into the technology,
I got in through mining, so it should be said that i didn't start out as a trader, but it
is part of what i do to sustain myself by working in crypto. And I see it so often nowadays,
everyone just says HODL, HODL, HODL. This really just...guys, this is not trading, this
is not an effective method to make money. I'm sure that there are people out there,
that you got in early enough that this might work for you but the reality is, if you're
sitting there and you're just "hodling" everything, you're essentially just opening a long position
forever, and that's not trading, it's really not. If you want to play this market...Say
Ethereum goes up by fifty dollars okay? And you're already holding Ethereum, great it
went up by fifty bucks! Now if it turns and it comes back down fifty dollars, I hear people
say all the time, you should've just held! Well, if you'd just gone short, you could've
just made fifty dollars and you could've reinvested it into Ethereum. And that's something that
i really think people don't understand. And it is a very important concept to get about
going short.
You can go short and still support that coin. I hold a bit of Ethereum on this account just
so that I can short it literally so I can build up that position. You know people seem
to have this idea that if you're going short it's against the coin. No! I literally go
short so I can make my main "long" position as you would say, my "HODL" much larger. And
I think that's a core thing you have to remember that might get you more motivated to go short.
Don't think of it as selling and getting rid of it, you can really bolster your own portfolio
and build it up with the profit you make from these shorty positions.
Okay so hopefully we've got you a little bit convinced that going short isn't completely
evil, seriously guys you can go short and still support the crypto that you're going
short on, it's not that big of a deal. But really, what is going short? So for starters,
going long is what everyone knows. When you buy or you "HODL", you're going long. You're
opening up a position and saying i believe that this coin is going to go up, so I'm going
to buy and when it goes up I'm going to sell that and realize my profits. All that going
short is, is basically you're taking the other side of that trade. So essentially this process
is, you're going to have a margin account, which is basically collateral. That's the
best way to think of it. And what you're doing is you're going and you're saying I believe
this coin is going to go down. So some exchanges provide a service that basically says, alright
if you want to go short, we have these people that hold their coins and it's going to be
in their portfolio, they're not going to be trading it and we have access to those. So
you pay a small rollover fee which I believe with Kraken is every four to six hours. The
fees are very minimal, you're talking about pennies. But essentially you're going to pay
a little bit to borrow shares from someone else and you're expecting those to go down.
So you're going to borrow those shares sand you're going to sell them. Okay, now you're
collateral is going to cover that, so if it goes against you it will eventually liquidate
that. Were not going to talk about margin calls and all of that today, there's much
more to it.
But the biggest thing to take away, is when those prices go down and you've already sold,
all you have to do is you go back in and basically you exit the position by buying back those
same shares that you sold at the top. And all that going short is, is you're taking
that difference from where it was to where it is now, and that is the profit that you
realize, and you return your shares. So yeah, going short is really just taking the other
side of a long trade.. There's nothing wrong with this, there's nothing evil about going
short. In all reality a market where you can short, actually improves accountability in
my mind. Because in a market where everything is long positions it's very hard to interpret
what the general consensus on the market is. You have to have two sides to a trade you
know. I know that a lot of people say, well you know you should just hold, its good for
the cryptos, its good for the community. I actually have to disagree. If a crypto is
not doing well, people should be selling it. Markets are supposed to be indicative of how
that project is doing. Going short is important. Go short guys!
Alright, so we've talked about what going short is, we've talked about why you should
do it, so now let's jump in, actually take a look and open up your first short position!
Now it should be mentioned that I'm using Kraken. You can do this on Bitfinex, Poloniex,
there's a number of platforms that do offer the ability to go short now. But the options
are more limited. Personally I'm just comfortable with Kraken. I have a little side account
here we'll show you how to do it from. Personally, you can put in all of your info into here
and do your order through this format. I much prefer the traditional kind of "trading" style
with your chart and everything here. So were going to come in and were looking
at Monero today. I'm actually just going to open the position up. As you guys can see
here we actually had a little recording going on before and had some technical issues. So,
be happy, I lost profits so that i could make this for you guys! Anywho, so it's very simple,
we're going to come over here, and we want to make a sell order. And let's see, we want
it to be a limit and the price is currently at $153.67, and I actually do want to open
this position so, lets say I'm going to go in for two times leverage with three Monero,
and lets say i want to sell at $153.65. So were just going to enter that in there. Good
until canceled, that's completely fine. And basically this little red dot right there
is showing where we're going to be opening it up. So it's a as simple as that, were just
going to go, sell. It's going to ask for our confirmation, i know everyone always just
hits confirm, but seriously guys review your orders. Especially when you start getting
into more advanced orders where say you're going short or if youre doing a rolling stop,
or something like that, you absolutely should check your order confirmations. It's very
important.
Alright, so were going to come in here, we've got it. Were going to confirm our sell, and
there you go! We have officially borrowed three shares of Monero, we've sold them on
the market and now we're waiting for the market to go back down so that we can buy those shares
back and realize our profit. Now, right now as i said it will open up this red dot, and
you'll see as the price comes down it will lower this way. And yeah, it's really as simple
as that guys! That is opening up a short position.
Now as I mentioned I am actually going to hold this position throughout the day. So,
I'll show you how to exit it, but I'm not actually going to initiate. It's basically
as i said, just the other end of the trade. So in this case we have three Monero thats
up and let's say that we want to exit around $145 USD. So that'll be realizing close to
nine dollars of profit per share, so all you do is say that we want to buy back at $145.
It's going to ask for confirmation, and essentially what this will do, is once that price gets
down to where our green point at $145 is, it will buy those shares back. You return
the shares to the person you borrowed them from and you realize your profit. It's really
not that scary, it's not that complicated, i think that a lot of new traders stay away
from it, there's something that even feels a little bit wrong about getting excited as
you watch the market plummet. But guys, going short is a n essential tool for any trader.
If you're avoiding this you're really just damaging yourself.
Alright i hope you guys found this video useful, ,maybe there's somebody out there that has
finally decided going short isn't evil and they're about to open up their first short
position! But anywho, we'd love to hear from you guys! You know, what would you like to
hear about going short? Is there something you don't quite get that we could help you
out with? Let us know in the comments, well get back to you! We want to know what our
followers are looking for with trading.
Along with that, you should check us out on Steemit, alot of our analyses are being posted
on Steemit and we give a breakdown of how were making our trades. So definitely head
over there and check us out. Were getting a lot of great content and it's really growing.
Stay decentralized people!