Month: January 2020

Quantitative Update: Bitcoin vs. The Rest of the World

On By CryptoAdvisorIn Other

This post is meant to be an addition to what I said earlier this year. Here we compare, in the same historical period of existence of bitcoin, Bitcoin vs other assets: us stock market indexes, US stocks of different sectors and Gold.

Let’s start with this summary table, who follow me regularly should already know the meaning of Shannon’s probability, RMS, G yield and compounded annual G yield; for all the others I refer you to the end of the article.
The data have been sorted in descending order according to Compounded Yearly Gain  G.

Comparison Bitcoin vs. The rest of the world
July 17, 2010 – Dec 31, 2019

Asset RMS or Volatility Shannon Probability P Daily Gain G Compounded Yearly Gain  G Optimal Fraction of your capital to wage
Bitcoin               0.0567                       0.5219        1.00087 38% 4.4%
MasterCard               0.0155                       0.5265          1.0007 19% 5.3%
Visa               0.0144                       0.5241          1.0006 16% 4.8%
Amazon               0.0193                       0.5196        1.00057 15% 3.9%
Apple               0.0161                       0.5172        1.00042 11% 3.4%
Google               0.0148                       0.5167        1.00038 10% 3.3%
Microsoft               0.0143                       0.5169        1.00038 10% 3.4%
Nasdaq Composite Index               0.0106                       0.5179        1.00032 8% 3.6%
Standard & Poor’s 500 Index               0.0091                       0.5160        1.00025 6% 3.2%
McDonald               0.0098                       0.5119        1.00019 5% 2.4%
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (W.Buffett)               0.0105                       0.5112        1.00018 5% 2.2%
Pfizer               0.0115                       0.5078        1.00011 3% 1.6%
Facebook               0.0226                       0.5080        1.00010 3% 1.6%
Tesla               0.0318                       0.5096        1.00010 3% 1.9%
JPMorgan               0.0155                       0.5070        1.00010 2% 1.4%
Intel               0.0153                       0.5040        1.00001 0% 0.8%
**Gold (XAUUSD)               0.0094                       0.4951        0.99986 -3% 0%
*Ethereum               0.0634                       0.5138        0.99974 -6% 0%
General Motors               0.0178                       0.4903        0.99950 -12% 0%
General Electric               0.0164                       0.4868        0.99943 -13% 0%

*Ethereum Data since Aug 7, 2015, source coinmarketcap.
**Gold since 1970 has been a bit better with +3% yearly compounded gain.

The first comparison to make is with the main competitors of bitcoin, credit cards. I’m surprised to see how good are quantitative parameters of Mastercard and Visa, on the other hand they are monopolies, perhaps that’s why the CEO of mastercard hates so much Bitcoin, he sees it as a strong threat. Even Amazon has worse parameters compared to Visa and MC.

I included only Ethereum  in the comparison because in terms of market cap is second to Bitcoin, its yearly yield G is negative and i’m not surprised because I remind you that volatility reduces by far the yield G and in the case of all altcoins, not only Ethereum, the volatility reaches very high levels and therefore as an investment vehicle altcoins in general are absolutely not recommended, can eventually be considered as purely speculative assets for short-term trading.

Unfortunately for Mr.P.Schiff, in the last ten years Gold performed badly, for your curiosity i computed Gold parameters using available daily data since January 1970 and its yearly gain G or yield has been +3%, nothing exceptional, basically Gold protected you against inflation in the last fifty years but nothing more then this.

As i said 20 days ago Bitcoin volatility is dropping but it remains very high compared to other assets, despite this Bitcoin yearly compounded gain G is an astonishing +38% and it’s the best investment vehicle of the world.
Compared to other bitcoin price models this value is not much, ten years from now compounding 38% yearly bitcoin should be at around 200k usd while, for example, the stock to flow model has a forecast of 10 millions usd after 2028 halving, this is the equivalent of 144% yearly compounded gain instead of 38%.
Let me know what you think, does the stock to flow model price return appear realistic to you or not? Personally i prefer to rely on numbers and they say a clear “no” to me. This is why i’m a bit skeptic about also the bitcoin price model i developed on tradingview but i’m curious to see how it’ll end in a couple of years.

Tech Addendum

The concept of entropic analysis of equity prices is old and it was first proposed by Louis Bachelier in his “theory of speculation”, this thesis anticipated many of the mathematical discoveries made later by Wiener and Markov underlying the importance of these ideas in today’s financial markets. Then in the mid 1940’s we have had the information theory developed by Claude Shannon , theory that is applicable to the analysis and optimization of speculative endeavors and it is exactly what i’ve done just applied to bitcoin and the other assets considered in the above table, especially using the Shannon Probability or entropy that in terms of information theory, entropy is considered to be a measure of the uncertainty in a message.
To put it intuitively, suppose p=0, at this probability, the event is certain never to occur, and so there is no uncertainty at all, leading to an entropy of 0; at the same time if p=1 the result is again certain, so the entropy is 0 here as well. When p=1/2 or 0.50 the uncertainty is at a maximum or basically there is no information and only noise.

Applying this entropy concept to an equity like a stock or a commodity or even bitcoin itself common values for P are 0.52 that can be interpreted as a slightly persistence or tendency to go up, this means that for example stock markets aren’t totally random and up to some extend they are exploitable, same for btc.
Knowing the entropy level of bitcoin/usd is crucial if we want to compute its main quantitative characteristics, as i explained in the technical background of my blog this process is quickly doable once you have all the formulas, the process is as follows:

To compute the Shannon Probability P you should follow these steps:

  1. compute natural logarithm of data increments (today price / yesterday price)
  2. compute the mean for all data increment computed in step 1
  3. compute RMS (root mean square) of all data increments, squaring each data increment and sum all togheter
  4. Compute price momentum probability with the formula P = (((avg / rms) – (1 / sqrt (n))) + 1) / 2
    where avg = data computed in step 2, rms = data computed in step 3, n = total samples of your dataset. If the resulting probability is above 0.5 then there is positive momentum, otherwise under 0.5 negative momentum

To compute the Gain Factor G use the following formula:

G = ((1+RMS)^P*((1-RMS)^(1-P))

To compute the yearly gain G or growth just raise daily gain G to the 365th power for Bitcon or 252 for stocks (252 trading days in a year).

Long Term Update: Volume Analisys at Kraken/Bitstamp Part II

On By CryptoAdvisorIn Long Term Trading

Old post is here

The trading platform used here is unchanged: Sierrachart 64 bit.
The big amount of tick data processed to compute this interesting volume oscillator wouldn’t be possible to do at TradingView or similar online platforms.
The “up/down Volume Ratio” oscillator is computed and smoothed using a 18 periods (18 months or 1 year and a half) linear regression moving average.
Volume made on an uptick is considered positive while if made on a downtick is negative, then the aforementioned oscillator is applied.
I added also in the chart the widely know ALMA moving average (9 periods, standard settings).

I added for comparison the same template applied to BTCUSD at Bitstamp exchange.

Volume Ratio Oscillator Kraken/Bitstamp Comparison (click to enlarge)

Very curious to see a perfectly balanced volume activity at Kraken exchange for 3 months in a row while at the Bitstamp the volume activity is unbalanced upwards.
As a positive note i can say that i don’t see any negative volume activity in either of the two exchanges considered. Said this my best guess is that the price retracement from about $13800 to $6400 was a normal correction of a bullish market and that the bear market ended on March ’19.

 

Long Term Update: 2020 Outlook with entropic methods

On By CryptoAdvisorIn Long Term Trading1 Comment

Every year i post an outlook using entropic methods explained in the technical section of this blog. Here you can find the 2015, 2016, 2017  2018 and 2019, forecast update, where you can find more information about this approach.

Updated values for bitcoin (in brackets values of last year) using daily data since August 2010 (average data of 4 important exchanges when possible).

 BTC/USD
Growth Factor G 1.00087 (1.00088)
Shannon Probability P 0.5219 (0.5222)
Root mean square RMS (see this as volatility) 0.056 (0.058 )

Bitcoin’s entropic values versus the Usd stayed stable during 2019 although volatility has fallen a bit like in 2018,  the Growth Factor (G) decreased a bit to 1.00087% compounded daily or 137.7% yearly, close to the value of 1y ago. The optimal fraction of your total wealth to invest in bitcoin is unchanged to 4.4%  (~0.522*2=1.044 – 1 = 0.044 or 4.4% roundable to 5%)
These values are still much better then conventional markets except the Shannon Probability that still match the US Stock Markets (around 0.522); it means that out of 100 days an asset goes up 52 days and down for 48 days, on average.

 2020 Price forecast  Full Historical Volatility  Half Historical Volatility
Forecast using only G* ~9951$ ~9951$
Upper bound adding volatility ~29380$ ~17097$
Lower bound subtracting volatility ~3370$ ~5790$

*9949 is obtained with 1st January as a starting price (around 7227$) times (1.00087^365)=~1.377   |   7227*1.377=~9951, just change 365 with the number of days you prefer for a different forecast.

What went wrong in 2019? Nothing:)

A year ago, I forecasted a maximum top of $16150 never reached during the year.
This market stayed above the 3000$ support forecasted 1 year ago but it didn’t go to the 1700$ support level using full historical volatility. On the other side it tried to reach the 16150$ resistance level with a top at 13880$ on June ’19.
During 2020 I recommend to buy inside the half volatility support area between 5790$ and 9950$ (target price using only the growth factor G) having already an open position from ~9000$ I will not buy more bitcoins during 2020.

Conclusions

For this year i think that there is a good probability to stay inside the 5790$-17100$ price zone with an equilibrium point at 9950$.
Like one year ago,  i think that at the end of a strong buying climax period, if any, it will be wise to reduce your bitcoin investment if the price goes above 50k USD (price calculated using the equivalent of 1.5 times the historical volatility of bitcoin while the other 17k usd target is calculated using 0.5 times historical volatility)

For all of you that are probably asking why i haven’t mentioned my fresh new bitcoin price model in this update i answer saying that i prefer to don’t mix different approaches. Aniway actual value of the Bitcoin FairPriceLine is roughly 5800$ and it’ll be at 10600$ at the end of 2020, same support price area of my quantitative approach (5790$-9950$)

I’m at your disposal for any questions; see you at the next update and Happy New Year!