Bitshares Trading Diary, Day 12: A Pump Group?

Rather than run through the usual charts of the day, I'll stick to the two-day chart as of 6 PM Eastern time for two reasons. First of all, the bulk of the day was dull: since 11 AM, Bitshares has been drifting along listlessly on low volume. Dull enough to make a very noticeable pattern stick out: a furious burst of high-volume buying between 5:00 and 5:30 followed by a burst of apparently disgusted selling overnight. I've seen this kind of activity at least three times since I started this diary, and I think it's either a huge pumper or a (perhaps informal) pump group that's playing the upcoming Peerplays sharedrop.

Have a look at the chart for yourself:

See the burst of high-volume buying in the leftish middle? That burst is what I naively gushed over in yesterday's installment. As you can see from the red candlestick with the highest volume in the rightish side of the chart, there was lots of selling overnight after the rally sputtered. The pattern is clear enough: when the less-clear manifestations are added, it does look like there's deliberate pumping at work. Someone or some group, expecting the same upwards geyser that Nxt enjoyed just before its Ardor snapshotting began, is hoping to prime the pump with a burst of at-ask buying. So far, they've been failing.

"You Lead And I'll Watch You Walk Away"

Market manipulation is legendary in the altcoin space, but the sober truth is that manipulation attempts usually don't work. The hope of any pumper is to be the leader of a trend. This occasionally works - giving rise to the wild legends - but it usually doesn't. It's normal for Mr. Market to act in keeping with the wry saying: "You lead and I'll watch you walk away."

Why? Because folks don't trust charts as often as chartists like to believe they do. They may like what they see, as I did yesterday, but they don't like it enough to put their money down. As a result, the pumper(s) got their fingers singed last night - and not for the first time.

Better To Buy Slowly And Quietly

I didn't do any trading today; instead, I'm sitting and waiting after buying up my Bitshares in stages. My long-term holding, I sent to my Open-Ledger wallet two days ago. My coins are sitting there, waiting for the sharedrop, and they'll be sitting there for a long time.

If you plan to buy (more) Bitshares for the same reason, a time like now is the right time. When the market sputters, it's giving you a chance to buy in slowly and quietly: the same way that the pros do. The only pumps I've ever seen work were orchestrated by masters of that sleazy art - and their operations always, always included a lot of excited "Buy NOW!!"-type of exhorting to an already-established large group of punters. The pumpers themselves bought in prior to their publicity bursts - and they always bought their own holdings slowly and stealthily.

The only reason their pumps worked is because they already had access to large "sucker list". Without that dissemination channel, a pump doesn't work. Even if the fundamentals are aligned, it won't work.

Lesson Of The Day

Never count on any pumper or pump group to get the price of an asset to burst upwards. Most attempts to get the geyser going, even with an exciting rush of big-volume buys, sputter and piddle out.

Thanks (again) for reading, upvoting and commenting! See you tomorrow for Day 13!