What is Bitcoin ‘Pairs Trading’? (Example: ETH/BTC)This is for anybody who wants to sell some Bitcoin but is still bullish crypto. 🚀
It’s also if you’re neutral on crypto but think Bitcoin is overvalued vs other tokens.
It’s also just if you’re just interested to see a way to apply a pairs trading strategy .
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, Bitcoin just broke over $100k - No more waiting for the HODLRS!!
Naturally after hitting this massive milestone, some traders are going to be thinking about taking profits. And if they’re thinking it, some of them are going to be doing it.
But let’s forget about selling for a moment, are you really buying more BTC when it just hit $100k and it's up ~150% this year?
So even if there is not more active selling interest, there’s probably less buying interest.
I think you’d be mad (or very brave) to bet against Bitcoin. BUT
Are these scenarios possible?
Bitcoin trades sideways for a while after hitting $100k
Alt season kicks in and other cryptos play catchup
If you think yes to at least one of these, my team and me have been looking at a pairs trade
What is pairs trading?
Pairs trading in crypto is a market-neutral trading strategy that involves taking a long position in one cryptocurrency and a short position in another, based on the assumption that their historical price relationship will revert to the mean.
The point is to profit from the relative price movement between the two assets, i.e. not the absolute ups or downs of one asset like Bitcoin.
ETH/BTC
I put this crypto pair this way around - I’m not sure if you’re meant to - it just kind of reminds me of EUR/USD in forex trading.
So as a reminder, ETH/BTC is Ethereum’s token Ether priced in Bitcoin. When Ether outperforms Bitcoin it goes up and when Ether underperforms Bitcoin, it goes down.
So it doesn’t actually matter if Bitcoin goes up, down or sideways, if you’re trading ETH/BTC - what matters is what one does relative to the other.
Well this thing has been going down a lot! Until recently.
Going back to the idea of pairs trading - the thesis here is that the Ethererum/Bitcoin price ratio has dropped to bargain levels and could be about to recover.
I’m not going to lie to you - there are a lot of sore hands out there from trying to catch this falling knife!
But this rebound off the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement of the 2020-21 rally has caught our attention.
Dropping to the daily chart, can you see how 0.4000 has acted like a magnet to the price both from above and below?
0.4 is our line in the sand for long positions.
Equally, our risk is well defined in this setup. A drop back under the 61.8% Fib level around 0.32 means the idea isn’t working and it's time to get out and let Bitcoin do its thing!
How to trade it
Specific entries and exits depend on your personal risk tolerance, but broadly there are THREE methods here:
1. Crypto-to-Crypto Spot Trading
Trade ETH directly for BTC (or vice versa) on a cryptocurrency exchange. This is straightforward and involves holding the actual assets.
2. CFD Trading (Contracts for Difference)
Speculate on ETH/BTC price movements using CFDs without owning the underlying cryptocurrencies. This allows for leverage and the ability to short-sell.
3. Spread Trading
Buy ETH and simultaneously short BTC (or vice versa) with equal dollar value to profit from their relative price movement while minimizing exposure to overall market trends.
But that’s just how we are seeing things?
Do you think this is bananas, or could we be onto something?
Please let us know in the comments
Cheers!
Jasper. Chief Market Analyst, Trading Writers
Btceth
You don't know how to manage your portfolioI had a talk with my mentor earlier today, and we talked about how we each calculate the signal for our allocation towards ETH compared to BTC.
It got me thinking that a lot of people actually aren't aware of why they allocate capital to different assets in the same class!
Case in an upwards trend
When the trend is up and you want to maximize your returns in crypto, with the least amount of risk... What do you do?
Well, you know that alts are higher beta (they move more than BTC), but you don't know when BTC will alts...
In the case for my conservative portfolio I only hold ETH and BTC, but how do I allocate between them?
What I first and foremost do is look at the dominance chart for BTC:
Here we see the dominance of BTC going down a lot, this is while the market is up (between 18th of jan 2021 and 19th of may 2021)
The TPI informed us about the entire trend for the dominance chart. What you do in this scenario is now determine how much ETH you hold relative to BTC in this period (in your conservative portfolio)
Open the ETH/BTC chart (I use binance personally)
In this period we see ETH outperforming BTC a lot!
When the TPI is bullish for the ETH/BTC pair, it means that ETH is likely to outperform BTC, how did that prediction go?
As BTC dominance falls, and we see strength in ETH compared to BTC, we have a higher allocation towards ETH.
But Omar, how do I quantize the amount of ETH compared to BTC?
No one asked, but I will answer still:
The TPI gives values between -1 and 1, I normalize these values between 0-1 for the ETH/BTC pair, where 0 is 0% allocation and 1 is 100% allocation towards ETH:
Equation for normalization:
minValue = 0
maxValue = 1
(TPI - minValue) / (maxValue - minValue) => (TPI - 0) / (1- 0)
Since the TPI had been bearish with a TPI value at -1 for ETH/BTC since the 13th of march, 100% of my conservative portfolio is in BTC!
Case in a downwards trend
The method is the same, but reversed!
When we look to maximize our returns on a short we want to short the asset that is underperforming!
ETH was underperforming BTC by a large portion during the LUNA drama:
This means most of the conservative portfolio was short ETH, rather than BTC
Quite simple, but very effective!
In conclusion
I want you to ask your self, why am I allocating x% of my capital towards this asset (long or short), and is my allocation optimal?
If you can't answer these two questions, then you probably need to look at your system
Numbers don't lie, this method works!
The TPI is truly the holy grail for a swing trader who wants to use statistics and data to maximize their returns and minimize their risk!
Kind regards
Omar
I've linked an idea below from a dear friend of mine (much bigger than on this platform) who has marked out crutial levels for the altcoin market based on what the FED will do, give it a watch!
Don't Let Hope Get the Best of YouAbove I have listed the multiple stages of a trade.
A lot of the time it starts with a great buy, which leads to a logical selling point.
Rarely do people go through with this.
Why? because humans are full of emotion, which a lot of the time will get the best of us.
Even though that sell order should be placed, GREED takes over. We hold on just a while longer wanting to make that extra buck.
Then the worst happens, the chart reverses. We then hit the DENIAL stage, where we refuse to believe this is happening, we think that Technical Analysis has failed us and the price will somehow come back.
Eventually we hit a bit of support! This is the HOPE stage, where we hope that somehow the price will rise high enough just for us to break even.
This all eventually leads to the final stage of REGRET. Also known of the land of no recovery.
Do not let emotions get the best of you. Emotions are never a reliable way to predict price movements.
Emotion is something that we all must overcome, if we wish to succeed in the trading industry.
Above, REGRET sets at $4150.
This could be an excellent short opportunity for BTC.
After just about hitting a triple-top, the BTC rise was rejected, which was immediately followed by a break in the most recent trendline.
IF hope prevails we will likely retest the previous high.
IF hope fails we will likely hit our REGRET target of $4150 which rests on a previous trendline.
Always know that shorting in a BULL market is risky. I advise using caution.
If you are not a margin trader, $4100-$200 could be an excellent buy for you.
Wish you all luck!