00:02 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Welcome to Circles Off, episode number 41. I am Rob Pizzola, joined by Johnny from BetStamp. 

00:09 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
How's it going? Excited for this one, rob. For sure. We have a little bit of a crossover episode coming for you guys right now. 

00:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We do. We're going to switch things up a little bit. This week. One of our most listened to episodes of all time was actually episode number three, which was when we first discussed the NFT space. Me and Johnny at that time were collecting NBA top shots. Once every couple months. 

00:29
We also run a listener Q&A where we get a lot of crypto related questions, but we mostly avoid them ourselves because neither myself or Johnny is an expert in the crypto space. 

00:38
We own some crypto, but neither of us considers ourselves to be experts. But we are well aware that there is a large overlap between sports bettors and those that are interested in the cryptocurrency space and, in light of the current landscape in crypto, with some crazy price action over the course of the last couple of weeks, we figured this would be a great time to bring in a seasoned crypto expert to the show. So his name is Cheds. You can follow him on twitter at big cheds. You can subscribe to his youtube channel, cheds, as well. He's the best-selling author of trading wisdom 50 lessons every trader should know, which is available on amazon. And I still have a ton to learn in the crypto space. I can credit most of my limited knowledge to following cheds and checking out his educational material on his youtube channel and on his twitter account, and we now welcome in him on Circles Off Cheds. How's it going? 

01:31 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Hello everybody. That was just a really kind introduction, so I want to thank you for those kind words. You know it's great to meet new people and reach new audiences. You know, before we started recording, we talked a little bit about how different hobbies or different things can cross over. So there's a lot of crossovers between crypto and sports betting. We talked about poker. So I think this will be a really fun conversation and I'm excited to be here, gentlemen. 

01:56 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
All right, cheds. We like to start with every guest by getting a bit of background on them. Now, obviously you value your anonymity. I can see that with the sunglasses, the mask, the jacket and everything like that. So feel free to avoid going into too much detail here, but let the listeners and the viewers know a bit about yourself and how you ended up being heavily involved in the crypto space. 

02:19 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Yeah, I appreciate that opportunity. I started trading about 10 or 15 years ago and that was a legacy market and it was on things I didn't really understand about buying it and then just holding and not understanding why I was losing money. Right, and I found out later I was kind of buying that sell the news phase. You know. Years later actually, I got involved in penny stocks on the OTC marketplace and that's a. Marijuana started to become legalized and we saw a lot of volatility and a lot of interest in the over-the-counter, the pink sheet stocks. And for someone like me who was still really an undisciplined trader at that point and I've never really thought of myself as an investor because I don't understand the news too much, I just focus on the price but back then as a trader, there was a lot of volatility and a lot of liquidity and interest in the penny stock market and I started trading there heavily. You know, I found Japanese candlesticks and Japanese candlesticks are interesting, they go back to the 18th century and, like feudal Japan, you know, you read the stories about how it starts out. Really it's just the representation of the psychology of the market, the candlesticks it shows buying pressure. Selling pressure, you know, shows where battles have been fought right on the chart, and you kind of give you that little bit of a history. I got into that. 

03:28
Years later I was diagnosed with cancer. This is 2017. Right, and just before that, a good friend of mine I was hanging out with him, his name is Big Jonas, he's on Twitter too. He showed me his phone and had the Coinbase app and I saw like Ethereum, litecoin, and my first thought was what's this dude doing with, like minerals? Why is he? You know, why is he accumulating precious minerals? And it just didn't make any sense to me. But you know, at that point I already had a Twitter account and you know I made so many mistakes early on and like part of my learning process was teaching others. So I started a blog. I started to like make note of certain things. You know, very slowly and organically built an audience over time. You know, from 2014 on, so by 17, I've got a little bit of a community and I'm just kind of a no nonsense chart guy. Right, I started posting Bitcoin charts and Litecoin charts. All of a sudden retweet, like you know, I'm like whoa dopamine rush People. You know people are interested in what I'm putting out there, right. So that's 17. I get the cancer diagnosis and then Bitcoin goes to 20K. 

04:32
So I went through a really tough period in my life and luckily, bitcoin was crazy at that time so I could focus on it. I focused on crypto. I focused on Bitcoin. I focused on being something to other people, to a guy who could maybe help them out, and we fed off each other. There was a synergy, you know, and then I kind of got really lucky. 

04:50
There's a guy named Crypto man Ran and he was had a program called on CNBC Africa. Right, this was on like a weird time of night. He had a big audience and he was looking for chartists you know, technical analysts and like one of his guests had canceled. So I just happened to have like a good chart ready. You know that I just had marked up and I was trying to get clout on a good tweet. You know I had it ready where I was trying to say, hey, look at this great call, look what I've learned, look what we've learned. And I replied to him, thinking there's no way he's going to respond, ended up getting on his program and kind of introducing me to like a bigger audience than Bitcoin Live. I joined Bitcoin Live with, you know, bob Lucas, peter Brandt, dean you know, see the lightning and a bunch of great contributors like Axel and Mark. We have a great team. And so from there it's like, hey, this is serious, kept building, kept building through a bear market, you know, beat the cancer, by the way, and thanks to everyone for that support. What a way to really make you realize every day is a gift and have just grown Right. 

05:52
And then I did CMT charter market technician level one and it just kind of blew my mind and for the longest time, you know, I want to know like who was right, because everyone had like a rule of thumb or like a way, way they approach things, and it just was annoying annoying to me that there was like no clear answer. You know, like in sports, my friend, my good buddy, and I talk about like politics versus sports, like somebody wins the game unless it's like that dumb, you know tie in football, but pretty much somebody wins the game right and in politics usually nobody wins, they just spin the loss with trading. I wanted to know what the rule was. So I did cmt, I did the charter market technician level one, I learned Eastern TA, western TA, and then I wrote the book Trading Wisdom and it was just I had collections of things I'd been working on for years. 

06:37
It's trading psychology, it's risk management, a lot of bankroll management. You think about poker and think about it's about momentum a lot of like bankroll management. You think about poker and you know, think about it's about like momentum, and you know, technical analysis and trading is about identifying momentum and just riding that train right. That's really all it is. So, um, that's how I got into it. That's how it grew. I'm working on several more books right now. I'm having fun with it, you know, and hopefully do some fishing this summer, and that's kind of where I'm at. 

07:08 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Well, I'm glad you beat the cancer, first and foremost. So great thing that you're you're healthy there and I really liked your explanation there. Because if I if I liken this to the sports betting space, um, you would probably be ridiculed in the sports betting space, because there's this common assumption among sports bettors that anyone who's providing some sort of educational, educational, information, um, or charging for anything trying to monetize their following, they tend to be ridiculed in this space because of the fact that people think they've either lost their edge or that they're just trying to sell other people something. So I appreciate that background from you because it gives a little bit more context and the routes that you have taken in terms of getting to where you are. So for all the listeners out there who would accuse us of having like a tout or a shill on, I think just based off of Cheds' background here, you can see that he's obviously very informed and put a lot of time into learning the craft. 

07:59 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, I know you mentioned the poker space, so I guess you know sports very different than poker, but at the same time it's similar in a sense that like the bankroll management comes into play. And then other things you mentioned, like you know technical trading, maybe not so much, but when you're looking at, like you know managing bankroll, the emotional side of trading, the psychological side of things. Question I wanted to ask you was you know, like, where did you get that knowledge? You know what I mean, because that's that's some things that you know the emotional side, the psychological thing. I know people can read your book now, but where did you kind of come up with that stuff? How did you learn? 

08:35 - Big Cheds (Guest)
about that. A lot of it was like trial by fire and like every mistake I've made, like that I just yell at you not to make. I've made it, I keep making it, I've made it so many times. It's always easier to kind of tell your friend not to have that last beer and you've got, you're drinking your own. You know Time and experience, but also my background in psychology, so I've always kind of thought about the social dynamics of things. I always thought about the emotional, the mental experience of things. And you know, like I love poker and there's a lot of like. Poker is everything. It's like how you dress, how you stand, your body language, how you tap your fingers, like everything's interesting, um and uh, you know there's no shortcut, so it's really just the experience. 

09:14
For people who are new to this thing, you know really it's. It's really like like anything, like your sports better, and you're playing like whatever, whatever the weekly. Uh, you know you're playing the weekly, whatever the weekly. You know you're playing the weekly like you pick a team or whatever. I forget the phrase. I used to do a little bit, but you know, if it's like a one in 10 shot, you're not putting in half your bankroll and if you're brand new, you're, you know, trying to risk like 50 bucks, a hundred bucks, you've got to get a little skin in, like, you know, nobody starts out being profitable, you know, and if you're profitable it's a fluke. So you know, it's just a long road, you know. 

09:50 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I hear you. I think myself, me and Johnny have very different background stories in terms of how we became professional bettors. He was a little bit more seasoned because he took in a lot of information right out of the get-go and followed a lot of people in the space and tried to learn before getting involved, whereas I started betting when I was much younger, lost a lot of money in the process and learned through experience. I'm just curious if you think that one avenue, if someone was getting into the crypto space, if you think one avenue is better than another, whether it's, you know, depositing a very small amount of money in a crypto exchange and learning the ropes yourself, or whether, if you were to start all over again, you would just learn everything from the get out of the get go. 

10:28 - Big Cheds (Guest)
It has a lot to do with time management and you know that's one of those things when you, when you approach the concept of comparing yourself to someone else, like someone else has better results so they maybe can actually sit at a computer all day and before seven, but you like probably have to, you know, work a job. So with crypto, like, if you can't watch it all the time, that changes your confirmation level. Right, what that means is the confirmation of your trade idea. Right, it's very simple. Every time you're going to risk money, you need a trade thesis. That's basically the idea which is okay, it's an uptrend which is going to continue. Right, it's finished correcting and it's ready to continue. And I know that because it's bouncing off $100. And I'm saying that's the bottom. I think it's going to go up to $120. Now your stop loss is when that idea fails Below $100, I'm out. You've defined your risk. You're looking for what's called an asymmetric risk to reward. Say, you enter at $ $100 and you say below 100, I'm out, but once it's at 105, I've got a nice profit there. So you want to define your. Every idea needs to be defined For the first X number of years probably, like seven, eight years. 

11:36
For me, the biggest losses were just holding onto and adding losers. You never do that. You want to add to your winners. You have to know when the trade idea fails and get out. That's the most important point. So if you can't watch it all day, you know that changes, that it's not intraday, it's based on a candle closed. When you come home at night and you see, okay, it closed above or below the level, right. 

11:59
Some people are more swing traders. They may step out to a weekly chart versus a daily chart. If you think about something your viewers are probably familiar with the concept of leverage, right? So when you're trading off, like a 15-minute chart, that's high leverage. You step out to daily or weekly chart, it's lower leverage. Right, it's less whipsaw. So, wait, whether you need to approach the market based on how much time you can give to it, how much attention you can give to it. It's a fast car you give to it. It's a fast car, you have to watch it. If it's a slow car, you know what I mean. You don't have to watch it as much. So that's really for each user to define, based on how much time they have. 

12:31 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So, cheds, I had a question on the chart stuff here. So you know I've watched a bunchick things, um, and how you know the top, the pressure, the buy and sell pressure. I wanted to compare it to sports real quick for you. And then something that the listeners would be a bit more familiar with um, within the sports betting market. A lot of the times, and I'd say 99.9 of the time any charts trend charts are typically garbage and typically help nobody in terms of actually doing it. I'll explain why. 

13:07
In sports, you know everything changes up to the second, in the sense that you know if you go look at a football game, you might see Kansas City versus New England. There's no value in looking at the last 25 times these teams played, because there's different players, different conditions, different quarterbacks starting. So a lot of people who go and bet based on these trends end up obviously getting wrecked, as we would call it. In the crypto space, however, I know with things like stocks, markets that are a little bit more fluid, where you can trade a whole market or a whole coin, technical analysis does come into play. So what I wanted to actually ask you was just like do you think can you still make a lot of money trading. 

13:49 - Big Cheds (Guest)
I think it's really the only way to you have to understand. The price filters out everything else. First of all, in regards to sports, you know 20, the last 25 teams. It's more of like a media narrative. That's just like something to talk about, obviously like different players, different team, different coach, different weather, like different everything. You know the way I approach it in crypto. You can tell me this coin is going to do X, y and Z. I'll say that's cool, man, let's go, let's go for beer. But the price will tell me if it's true. Right, you know everybody has an opinion. I'm like I don't care. Show me the price, it's so. It's so simple. Does the price hold support or not? Everything boils down to that. 

14:24
You have a trend, it's so. You have a trend and you have an idea on that chart that will either show you increasing or decreasing momentum. Right, there's something called people use moving averages, for example, and let's just simplify it, you have a five period moving average, simple moving average. That means each of those five periods has the same weighting. The price is rising and it's above the moving average. Right, it's accelerating. At some point it may dip and touch that moving average. Let's say it does that a few times, but maybe the third time it dipped below it, you know, for two or three days. That's a sign of weakening momentum. So maybe it doesn't mean you sell. It means you start to watch for other signs of weakening momentum. That's what ta ta is, that's what trend analysis is, and you use the same techniques as anything else. It's about how you manage your risk, how you define your risk, how you define your trade idea. 

15:11
These, the majority of my trades, are buying dips in uptrends. I almost never play a reversal play. A reversal play it's a downtrend and trends tend to continue. Right, if you're familiar with something called the RSI, people love to buy things because the RSI is low. The RSI is below 30. The only way to get your RSI below 30 is to be bearish. I don't want to be in something that's bearish. I want to be in something that's bullish. So it's about how you orient yourself. You have to only play the best of the best, right. You have to only play the top five charts right, to only play the charts of relative strength and buy the dips in those charts, and that really gives you the best chance, especially as a new trader. I mean there's so many years of mistakes I've made, of just trying to play reversal plays or buying that green pump rather than the dip in the broader green pump. You know what I mean, so you got that. That's what I would say about that. 

16:03 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That makes a lot of sense. So, chaz, there's a lot of people in sports betting who make money and you know quite a lot of money playing, you know, basically with the market and picking off certain inefficiencies. Sorry, let me explain this a little better. People use the efficient market theory in saying that the price is the price at any given time. What they do is they shop around from essentially exchange to exchange in Sportsbook to Sportsbook and pick off any exchange that they can that might have an arbitrage opportunity and things like that. Obviously, in crypto, these opportunities exist. They get scooped up really quick as well. But what I was going to ask you is what are your thoughts on the efficient market theory within crypto, and by that I mean the fact that the price is the price at any given moment, and when something is dipping, you know that's just new information that's reflected and that then becomes a new price. 

16:52 - Big Cheds (Guest)
That's exactly right. I believe in what's called the semi-strong version of efficient market hypothesis, which believes that all public information is baked in. I don't believe that private information can be baked in. The strong version would believe that everything's baked in. Everything is noise If it's important. 

17:10
There's a phrase I'm much more interested in the market's reaction to news than whatever the news is, because that's what matters. It's the reaction to the news. I don't care what the news is. Look at the reaction. Secondly, almost every market reaction is an overreaction. So you've got to keep those things in mind. 

17:27
All right, let the dust settle and look to the broader trend. When in doubt, zoom out. Go to a daily chart. Go to a daily chart. Go to a weekly chart. Focus on the moving averages. Is the price holding those moving averages right? Is the price holding gains? 

17:40
What you wanna look at in terms of the health of a chart with technical analysis is when you have a resistance level. Let's say the price tries to break through 100, it gets rejected. It comes back to 50. Let's say it tries again, it breaks through 100,. Let's say it tries again, it breaks through 100. It gets rejected, it comes back to 75. Next time it breaks through. Now we're in the 100. We spend the next six months above 100. We come back. We need to hold 100 in that first test. We really want to hold it. You want to see that levels that have been recaptured become support. It's called the principle of polarity. When you flip resistance into support In a war, once you capture enemy's forward base, you don't want to lose it when they push back and they have their momentum wave and it's kind of that same concept. 

18:19 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Very interesting. We're talking to Cheds here. You can follow him on Twitter at Big Cheds. One thing I really wanted to ask you about was the information in the space, whether good or bad, and how to decipher between both, because I've personally been immersed in crypto Twitter for years, trying to gain knowledge, but I can say there are even more touts and shills on crypto Twitter than even sports betting Twitter, which we see a ton of who are patting themselves on the back during an uptrend for predicting the price is going to go up and really making money. From that point of view, what do you think are some good identifiers of, if somebody knows what they're talking about, or if they should be taken seriously in the space? 

18:59 - Big Cheds (Guest)
I don't, you know. That's a great question. I think it's what's more important, actually, is the idea that you need to be the originator of your own play, right? Your play needs to come from your watch list, not someone else's tweet, all right? So to directly answer your question, you look to see. Do they delete their tweets? How heavily do they celebrate their winners? Do they, you know? Do they promote their losers? 

19:19
But it's not really about that person. It's not about the personality. It needs to be about the individual, because you have to make it your market. It has to be about you. You only need to play the stuff that's on your watch list. You really need to just learn five, six, seven, eight, nine plays. You have to learn them. You need muscle memory, right. 

19:37
It's not about which guy you can follow to get good plays. Yes, you want to find people who will teach you, who will be educational. You want to find people who, who do not, um, who are mean nice to their followers. Man, if you see people you know asking legitimate questions and the guy's like hey, douchebag, you know go, you know, go fly a kite, maybe that's not the right person. So there's stuff like that as well, but it's not about the person who's going to lead, you know, lead you to glory, that's you. Like you got to grab a textbook. You're going to watch tons of free stuff on on youtube, but, like I mean, get, get to me, I can point you and there's a lot of good stuff out there. There's a lot of great followers. I've done some, um, some recommendations. If you go on my, my Twitter channel, I did like a, uh, go to my type Twitter and go to from colon, big chads hashtag FF and that's like anybody I've ever like recommended. So that's a good, good list right there. 

20:27 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Just piggybacking off that a little bit. Sorry, Johnny, I'll let you cut it. 

20:29
I was just gonna say I'll check that out for sure yeah, I mean I was gonna do that right after the show as well, maybe mid-show, but just to piggyback off that cheds as well. Um, you mentioned, you know, emas, um, as something to look at. Um, if anyone was to ask myself or johnny about any major sport, I would point to some specific metrics that they should consume in some capacity. You know, if you're, if you're handicapping the nfl, you're going to want to familiarize yourself with EPA and success rates, yards per play, stuff like that. If you had to construct a basic, very simple list of concepts or metrics, that would be worthwhile for someone to dig into. If they're just getting into the space, want to start their own technical analysis, where does that start? Where does that start. 

21:11 - Big Cheds (Guest)
I would actually recommend you use almost no indicators. There's this interesting evolution of traders where they start out and they keep adding indicators. They're looking for that one indicator that worked that last time and they want to replicate it for the next trade. You know, in the guys who are, you know, decades beyond me, I look at them and it's just one, maybe one moving average and some candles. So what I would recommend is a simple approach. You want to use the Bollinger Bands developed by John Bollinger. He's on Twitter, the dude is a legend. 

21:39
The Bollinger Bands have a 20 period simple moving average and you can think about that as just an average. And you want, you know, in a bullish chart. You want to buy it when it dips below that because it's a temporary dip, right, it's a moving average. Then you have the Bollinger Bands above and below that, a certain standard deviation of volatility. Those are important because a movement outside of those bands is a movement outside of the standard deviation right. It's likely to revert to the mean. So I like to use the Bollinger Bands. 

22:10
If you're a fan of Japanese candlesticks, you want to use the Bollinger Bands because everyone knows what a hammer. Many people know what a hammer candle is in Japanese candlesticks. That's a bullish reversal candle. You want that at the lower Bollinger Band, not the middle right, because you want to be reversing the trend. You want to think about is there something to reverse here? So that's why the Bollinger Bands work well with candlesticks. 

22:34
Simpler than that is you just want to focus on horizontal levels. When the price is first rejected but then eventually you get back over that level, does it keep holding that level? That's really what's important. You want to look at candles, the upper and lower shadows. So if you see a grouping of candles with a lot of lower shadows, that means the price went down, but it kept getting scooped up, kept getting pushed up by the end of the day. End of the day, that shows bulls rejecting lower prices. That shows bullish momentum. So, generally speaking, the health of a chart, those lower shadows and holding levels that are recaptured that's what's important, not using different indicators, not a complicated method. I'm telling you that's what you got to focus on. 

23:18 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah. So for those of you who are, I guess, even listening on audio, who might might be like you know what's going on here. I don't understand any of this stuff. I think if you do want to familiarize yourself with it, best way is going to be go to Cheds' YouTube. I watched a couple of videos on this in over the past couple of weeks and there's one real good one which you know Zach will link in the show notes from December Cheds, where you went through you know kind of explain the whole candlestick, you know method of analyzing and technical trading. So I'd recommend that one just for anyone kind of starting out. Is there any other videos you'd want to recommend Cheds for someone who's just, you know, brand new, let's say, doesn't even know anything to do with technical, doesn't know what the you know anything. 

24:00 - Big Cheds (Guest)
So definitely go to my YouTube and I definitely appreciate the opportunity to say that and thank you for having me, Of course, YouTube at Cheds or Cheds Trading. Go to playlists. There's something called tutorials and they just mentioned it. I've done three of them. They're masterclass webinars, are about over an hour each and I go through everything, my complete setup. I talk about volume reversals, continuation plays, that is like that's. You'll just love it and they keep watching it until you get it right. Go watch those. Then I have my book. I have a free version of my book on my YouTube channel. I'm eventually doing all 50 lessons for free. I've done 11 so far. Um, some people can't buy the book and you know, and when I initially published it I didn't have audible yet, so some people wanted like the audio version, so I started doing the videos. So I'm check out that and that will hook you up. You'll. Really, if you're into that, if you get that far, you'll, you'll be doing fine, You'll be doing fine. 

24:49 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Cheds, how, how much are you trading right now? Like, how often are you kind of like behind a screen actually trading? 

24:57 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Yeah, I trade a lot. I trade pretty much all day, but I'm playing like video games too at the same time, like I'm playing New World right now, which is kind of like a WoW clone. I'm kind of both trading crypto and I'm doing legacy Like I've been long Apple. I'm shorting volatility in the market right now, so I'm watching all the time. It's like literally my job. But I could also just like leave for a few hours and go do something and if I see anything interesting I'll tweet it out, like I take that responsibility seriously. So I'm always pretty much always trading, but it doesn't mean I'm literally always trading, but I'm in, I'm in the zone. You know what I'm saying. 

25:31 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Got it. So one thing I wanted to ask was you know this one is really really big for sports right now and I know I keep drawing these conclusions as we are primarily a sports betting podcast, but news is huge. You mentioned at the beginning with your version that you believe in of the efficient market hypothesis. You know all public information is baked in and then there's some info that's not yet public. Right Within sports betting there's info that's not yet public. Then it becomes public and there's still, you know, a 30 second window in which you can trade, for example, a player being announced in or out of a specific game, or, you know, a key player within the crypto space. Two questions Number one, how quick is the market reacting to external news? I'd assume it's very fast. And number two, what types of external news actually impacts the crypto market? So, yeah, you know, covid, world War, stuff like that is obviously going to impact it, but what other things that people might not think are going to impact the price of crypto? 

26:28 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Yeah, so I mean how quick, first of all, how quickly it affects it. I mean a lot of it's already happened. So by the time you see the news, you know a lot of it's already baked in. You've had. You know, like, for example, bitcoin had the futures ETF and there was a rise up in anticipation of that will sell their news. So that was a little bit predictive. Um, like, what news could happen you could have. I you know, like, if apple announced they were buying bitcoin, you know you know that would that would, it would triple in price. Or if they announced, like a spot etf, um, you know that would that would really help the price. Um, you know things that can damage it. You'd have to. I think, like you know, like a main, like a big exchange going down, um or something like that, fraud like that, but that's beneficial. 

27:17
You want to buy any dip on a headline. That's just a rule of thumb. Any market reaction is an overreaction, especially right away, the initial reaction and with bitcoins, a secular or long-term uptrend. So we're down 50 from all-time highs. We are below the weekly moving average, but we're above the 200 moving average. So, like, if it dropped here and you tag that weekly 200 moving average. I mean that's a very high confidence buy right. It's just, it's been for 10 years, right. And it's also classical charting where you're buying uptrend that's dipping to major moving average support. So it's it's kind of it's sound in my view in several reasons in in several ways. So, news I buy dips in news like the um I, you know, I tweet about this. It's my. For me, it's school of thought, free association thought this is what I believe it comes right out. And uh, like with China, it was like every time China bans Bitcoin, I was like I bought a little more. So I mean, that's kind of where I'm coming from. 

28:12 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I've been following you for a long time. I've picked up on a lot of that stuff as well, but every now and then, I see a tweet from you adding some BTC to my long term hold, adding some ETH to my long term hold. As far as I can remember, though, you've only really been accumulating Bitcoin and Ethereum. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but is there a particular reason for that? 

28:38 - Big Cheds (Guest)
So I sold all my Ethereum at $4,800 and I sold like half my Bitcoin around $64,000. And I started to buy back like high 40s and I started to buy a lot more back at the $40,000 level. I was actually anticipating the bounce. So, like, if people are like Chet, you never get it wrong. I'm, you know I got it wrong. I thought we would hold 40K so I bought there. I'll buy lower In terms of my you know there's so many other coins to play. 

29:05
I'm just risk averse. I really like to define my risk. I like to buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin because I think it makes a lot of sense. It's a hedge against other things. It's scarcity. There's only so much of it around. So understand supply and demand right, I understand at least that Ethereum. It's the second, in my view, second safest. It still has pretty solid upside. I trade everything else. I trade about 5% of my crypto portfolio. I trade and I trade it very aggressively. The other 95, I just add to it. But, as you can see, major market tops. I sold and I tweeted out as I sold. It wasn't like a shady thing. It's like I literally told people this is the top of the market. It's a tiny bit early, but I said my play. I like to kind of announce my plays because that's the best way Other people can hold you accountable. We're all learning together, but that's my approach. Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

29:57 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We often hear stuff like you need to check out this, this great new project, whether it's a great technology or a great team behind it. Whatever the case may be, for checking out something new, Do you think there's actually any value in like 90 percent of these other cryptocurrencies where people say that you know there's a great team behind a great technology, or do you think that's just a marketing ploy to drive prices up? 

30:21 - Big Cheds (Guest)
So that's. I mean you're asking a TA guy, an FA question, so you know there probably are some great teams, but I wouldn't know what they are. So my approach, which filters all that, is just, you know, if it's true I'll see it in the price, and if your project's great, I will notice when the downtrend is reversing. I will notice that all of a sudden that downtrend has a higher, low and now it's recapturing the level that it lost a few months before. I'll kind of observe that momentum, if it's true, in a chart that's already been bullish and you're telling me and I'm like man, where did you buy? And you bought way lower, I'll look at the next dip. I'll kind of observe, kind of the structure of that consolidation. 

31:02
When the price drops, it will consolidate. That means it pauses. You have a little bit of a tug while you kind of reset that equilibrium between the supply and the demand and based on that you can look for clues. Right, with trading, what I like to do is look for a really clearly defined level, right, I like to listen to the price and if the price keeps either rejecting or bouncing off a certain level, I watch that level and when that level flips, that might allow me to take a trade right. You're just trying to ride momentum. There's trains moving left and right and you want just trying to ride momentum. There's trains moving left and right and you want to try to jump on one, ride it for a little bit and then jump off and keep watching. 

31:39 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I had a question come in from one of my good buddies who is involved in the space as well. I told him you were coming on and he had one question for you involving staking in crypto. He wanted to know, a if you do any of that and, b if you think there's any specific tokens that might be coming out with good staking rewards in the next couple months. Where do you see that portion of the market coming into play? 

32:05 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Yeah, I'm definitely not. I have really no experience with staking. I really stay in my lane. I have really no experience with NFTs. I love the academic observations about price and I'm a degenerate trader, so I just like to kind of play that. That's my edge. I could probably look through my network and get you like a like a connection on that. Someone who's like a good into that space, like Benjamin Blunt, is at smart contractor, I believe, on Twitter. I just stopped off top of my head. I believe there's some really good people, but I'm not one of them kind of for that for that subject. 

32:40 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Oh, fair enough, I respect that. Actually, the one thing with you know a lot of people in the crypto space is people try to do everything. It's one thing I've just observed from a distance. 

32:50
Here is people really think that they can go and work a full-time job doing something or work a part-time job at, like a retail store and like, oh, I also trade crypto on the side. 

32:59
And, um, you know, whenever I hear things like that, first thing that comes to mind is like they don't really know the time it takes to actually master a craft of trading in any in any uh market. Right, because I know how long it takes, for I'm and by no means am I the best in the world or like a master at betting sports, but I know, even just to get to my level, how many hours I had to put in, how much time it takes and how much time it takes on a daily basis to continue to operate at that level. So for me, that's why I don't trade crypto, because I know what the edges in sports betting. I would get absolutely clobbered unless I had that time to commit to. So when you mentioned it's a long-term game and you have the time and you have to be there what's the advice for someone who might not have that time? Is it to not actively trade? Is it to buy and hold? What would you say would be some good advice there? 

33:49 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Well, if you're looking for exposure, you can definitely dollar cost average and you just buy a little bit every week, you know, and you really buy it with money. Ideally you can afford to lose, but it needs it. Can't be your rent money. Like, please don't use your rent money. And I tell people and I put out a tweet if you're trading with your rent money, pull it out and pay the bills, cause you know you need to. You need to remove the emotional attachment from it, like in poker. Like if you need to check, raise the guy, you need to do it. You don't need to think that it's a hundred bucks. You know you've got to make the play. I know exactly what you mean about not having the time. I tried to do like fantasy football and I think I put in like 40 hours and I made 80 bucks or a hundred bucks after a week. I'm like this is crazy. I am not like no, you know. So you know it's really hard if you don't have the time, and so I respect the edge and I respect the time you put into your craft. I want you to know that. 

34:39
What I would say is there's the concept of swing trading versus kind of scalping or flipping. You know flipping, you're watching it and you can really actively trade it. You can definitely trade, you can swing trade. Just use the weekly chart, you know chart. Or use a three-day chart and base your entries off of the candle, close, have a conservative filter, a conservative threshold. I talk about all this stuff on my YouTube channel, so it will sound very abstract if someone's just watching this for the first time, but it's really about the timeframe. You're going to have to play just the broader trend. If you don't have the time to watch it, you got to play just the broader trend. If you don't have the time to watch it, you got to play just the broader trend. 

35:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
All right, interesting. We're talking to cheds here. You can check out his youtube channel for some very good educational information. Cheds, I wanted to ask you a question that is more particular to sports betting and it's one that we always get when we do a q a, but we don't really answer it. I'm just interested if you have any thoughts on it. But a lot of sports bettors listening out there they're struggling with when to time their withdrawals from offshore sports books. So when you put, when you're depositing, into an offshore sports book, you're depositing with crypto. It's converted to US dollars at that time of the deposit and then when you're pulling it out via withdrawal, it's converting back from US dollars to whichever crypto you're deciding to. What would be a general suggestion for you in terms of withdrawing from a sports book where you're converting from US dollars back to crypto? 

36:21 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Man, it's hard enough. So first of all, you have to pull off a successful trade and then you have to actually pull off a successful crypto trade. I mean that's like, you know, adding some whole level of difficulty there. I mean I would just say there's nothing you can do. I mean that's like adding some whole level of difficulty there. I mean I would just say there's nothing you can do. I mean it's going to fluctuate. I think you have to make the best trade you can Sorry, you have to make the best bet you can on sports and really get that nice profit, lock it up and just whatever happens. You can only control what you can control. If you want to really time them, I mean going to put in some time, some work. You got to learn classical charting and sure watch my youtube channel, you'll learn a lot. So if you really want to do that, that's that's what you're going to have to do, but it's not going to be easy, okay it's not going to be easy. 

37:05 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
yeah, and the reality is, for everyone who did ask that question and we did bring it up because we've probably got that like at least 15 to 20 times is like a sports book withdraw. It's not instant, right? So when Cheds is trading like he's trading on it on, I mean, if it's not to the second, it's five seconds, 10 seconds, and then that trades processing right away. When you process a withdrawal, even if it's an hour later, you know some of the technical trading is not going to work. You might be an hour behind on price. And then there are some sports books that obviously you know guarantee a withdrawal within 24 hours and it's set whenever. So you don't really control that. 

37:37
The reality is, if you've got a lot of money in a sports book and you don't want to get affected by the volatility of crypto all in one shot, the dollar cost averaging, like Ched's mentioned, is good. That would obviously require you to withdraw instead of withdrawing a thousand up front. You know, maybe you withdraw 250, 250, 250, 250, one week apart on each and then at least there you're, you're protected by some sort of dollar cost averaging, but for the most part, um, I think it's, it's just best to to withdraw it. Let it ride. You're going to win some, you're going to lose some. Everyone remembers the losses and, uh, you know, not really the wins too much. 

38:13 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Yeah, I would say honestly, if it's a lot of money, it's actually worth you getting some basic trend analysis and you might have just a basic system where you may want to withdraw it more aggressively if it's obvious to you. The bears have momentum. That's one thing. Right, if you were asking me how to withdraw back in September, you know, like September, october it'd be different, you know, because you were rising. But now that we're kind of in a rougher environment, I think you have to be more aggressive. Right, bitcoin is under threat right now, so you know that's just the deal. So it may be worth it. If you really have a lot of money, you should learn some trend analysis just to get a sense of what Bitcoin is doing. 

38:57 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
But maybe you know, maybe that's too much to ask. What about a general concept of we obviously hear, we hear this in everything, and this includes in sports betting buy low, sell high type of thing. You hear it in traditional markets as well. What about the concept of if we do see, you know, a massive collapse in the market, like we've seen over the course of the last couple of weeks, taking a little bit out at that time, converting like the notion of basically buying crypto at a low point, or vice versa, when crypto is increasing, you might want to put more money into the sports book at that time. Am I kind of out to lunch there in just using that general strategy? 

39:28 - Big Cheds (Guest)
So, if I understand that, when Bitcoin's rising, you want to be more aggressive with the sports betting, or is it somewhat different? 

39:35 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Well, you're sort of locking in profit by converting it to USD, putting it into a sports book at that time, whereas I see, I see, yeah, oh, I think that's smart, yeah, I think there's some value to that. 

39:45 - Big Cheds (Guest)
I think you're kind of applying the concept of buying the blood and selling the greed, and I think that's a pretty good way generally for you to look at it. I definitely agree. 

39:56 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So this was Rob's question. I know I'm going to steal it from him right now, but we don't like it when people ask us for specific picks on a game, and the reason is, if somebody asked me who's going to win this weekend's football game, the reality is there's a probability that team A is going to win and a probability that team B is going to win, so I would technically bet on either side, based on what odds you're offering me. So we're going to ask a couple of questions. I guess we'll ask two each. We'll ask them in terms of probability, so you don't have to say will Bitcoin dip below 30K in the next 30 days? But the question is, what is the probability that Bitcoin dips below 30K in the next 30 days? What's the likelihood, you think, for you to sign a rough percentage? 

40:35 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Yeah, that's a great question. I think about it this way too, because of poker and I think about, like you know, ace-ace versus deuce-deuce and that whatever, like 84%. When we broke 40K, I thought it was about a 90% chance it would hit 30K. So what is the question? Are we going to be below 30K in the next 30 days? 

40:55 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So call it probability wise. Yeah, call it by March 1st. 

40:59 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Below 30K in the next 30 days. I would say it's less likely less than 50-50. I think we're due for a relief rally. You've got so much bearish momentum already. I talked about this. I did a video on what is it. I did Wednesday night Bitcoin live and I talked about, you know, the idea of like the bottom of the channel, the top of the channel, and you have these zones with Bitcoin 30k, 38, 40k and we kind of have tagged the bottom of the channel and we did it so fast that we have a little bit of a time for a counter trend or a mean reversion rally. That's we're doing right now. I think we're actually probably going to hit 40k and then kind of pause and maybe come back and then test support and start to look for a higher low. So what? What I mean to say is it's been incredibly bearish, but I think bulls are due to do a little damage and kind of bounce back a little bit. That will take some time I think long enough time that it will be hard to do that in March. If we were to dip below 30K, it probably wouldn't be until April, I would think. I think just bulls right now are mounting just enough of a defense based on what I'm seeing. 

42:11
You see volume there. You want to understand that. You see the most volume at the top and the bottom of a chart. That's in bulls and bears are doing battle, they're battling right. When you're moving in a trend, you're moving in a direction. Right, you've already got an imbalance in supply and demand, right, you don't have enough supply, so the demand keeps pushing the price higher. You can think about a trend in anything price of cars lately right, the price of anything. Right. I bought a Casper mattress. It's gone up 50% from the one I bought like two months ago. All, right, so there's an imbalance in supply and demand. You don't need a lot of volume to just move in a trend. Right, you're just moving in a trend. You can do that on light volume. So a lot of people, a lot of new traders, mistake the lack of volume. Oh, it's bearish, there's no volume. We don't need volume if you're trending. Okay. That's why you get the most volume at the bottom and the top of the chart. When you have the battle right and the other side tries to recapture momentum, look for volume. We've got some volume here. 

43:04
I think we're due for a relief rally. I could see it hitting 40 K and rejecting and then from there, there. Who knows my style. I don't really predict too much. I look at more probabilities, I try to be ready for them and I rarely look more than a week out, or even a few days, because you're just guessing and it works pretty well. Just wait, the price will tell you. Everybody talks. Just wait, let the price will tell you what are we doing. 

43:28 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Fair enough, okay. So the answer there was less than 50 chance, uh, that bitcoin is going to dip below 30k, you know, I guess from now until march 1st. So the next one and I I know you just mentioned you don't like looking too long term, um, but this is the one everyone wants to know. So if you don't want to answer it, you don't have to answer it but probability that bitcoin hits 100k.00 at any point in 2022. Give me a probability. 

43:57 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Uh, 2022,. I like one in three maybe one in three. 

44:02 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That's higher than I expected. 

44:04 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Oh, it's definitely in the mix, you've got. You've got the bull. You know I always say a true chart technician can articulate both the bullish and bearish thesis right. You're able to look and say here's the bull case, here's the bear case. Bulls can still say we have a badly wounded ascending triangle. We still have an ascending triangle, even though it's a little bit wounded here. Level clearly defined around 68 K. And then you have rising demand. 

44:31
So what that looks like, is it a right you know triangle with a rising slope and a flat top. That's an ascending triangle, a bullish continuation pattern. What that means is every time it tries to break through 68, it pauses, but each time it comes back it's a little bit higher and eventually gets to that top and it breaks out. That's still potentially in play. We flip 40 K into support. That one in three becomes kind of 40%, 45%. So there's levels that that can increase, but bear, I mean 100K. It's going to take, definitely take some time. The chart is very much. It's not completely broken, but it's a little bit broken here. 

45:09 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
What's the probability that you, in your lifetime, purchase any Dogecoin? 

45:16 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Any Dogecoin. I purchase it, I trade it, I trade it. I will never buy any. 

45:20 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It's never going to end up in the long-term hold. 

45:24 - Big Cheds (Guest)
No, what's the point of that? Because it's the anti-Bitcoin. Bitcoin has scarcity. There's only so much of it. Dogecoin has like 100, thousand times the amount of Bitcoin and there's no point. You know, it's just, it's just. There's no point. But like, if it, if it pumps really quickly on Elon Musk tweet, I might go look to short it Right, cause that's a, it's a bounce in a downtrend. You always want to. You always want to play against a move, against the broader trend. You know what I mean. So I'll trade it, I'll play it right. I might buy it on a quick, massive flash dip too, especially if it maybe revisits a key support level that it's kind of held in the past. So I'm open to that, I'm open minded to that, but I'm not going to buy it. I mean Bitcoin and Ethereum. The road from Ethereum to Dogecoin is pretty far, my friend. 

46:09 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
All right. So what you're saying is you know, at any given point you may hold it, at any given second, it may be in your portfolio, but it's not a long-term hold by any means that's fair. 

46:20 - Big Cheds (Guest)
I will definitely risk funds with Doge at some point, but I would never hold onto it. Fair enough, okay. 

46:28 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
The probability that any cryptocurrency surpasses Bitcoin or Ethereum's market cap in your lifetime. 

46:36 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Oh, it's pretty good. That's a pretty good one. I mean Ethereum, you know, was heading in that direction. So I would think, you know, I think the market cap yeah, that's a pretty good. I think something will have a bigger market cap, especially because of because of how many there are. You look at SHIB, what was that? The Chinese Doge? Yeah, all of a sudden had like a I don't even know the market cap, but it was like bigger than like, fortune 500 companies, like where did that come from? So you can see market caps but saying, because Bitcoin, that's the thing, it's hard. Yeah, you can get bigger than Bitcoin, because there's only so much Bitcoin, there's a scarcity of it and people have thrown away Bitcoin. There's Bitcoin lost forever. I mean, it's going to be. That's what I like about it. So I would think it's very likely in my lifetime Although, as I said earlier, every day is a gift, so I can't guarantee anything, man. So I would say it's likely, though. 

47:27 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I'm going to add one more in here. That actually wasn't on my script, but I've been reading your tweets over the course of the last couple hours today. So the probability that Dave Portnoy sells his Bitcoin at a loss 80%. 

47:42 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So what happened with Dave Portnoy? He bought Bitcoin today, and then you've been tweeting back and forth. What's got you? 

47:51 - Big Cheds (Guest)
I did it a couple times and I deleted one of them. I need to be mindful. I there's no reason to summon animosity or negativity or, you know, go after someone. But it's funny to poke fun at him in a friendly way. I call him butter hands portnoy and like a year ago he tweeted out I will never buy bitcoin. I'm like all right, cool, because he bought like Link at $10 and then Rage sold at $8 and then it went to like $20 like the next day. Like he's known as having like butter hands. So he's entertaining. I like the guy. I'm just kind of, you know, thinking about the trading part of it, so I think he will. He's not good at timing the market. He's very emotional. He goes with his feeling. He's not like a disciplined guy. You wouldn't want him to, uh, you wouldn't want him to kind of execute like a precision plan for you. 

48:40 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You know that's my feeling about Dave Portnoy. So yeah, I hear you. I, uh, I've watched a lot of Davey day trader myself. I find it absolutely hysterical and entertaining, Um, but yes, I've also noticed the same trends in terms of his purchases over the years as well. We'll get you out on this, Cheds. It's a question that we ask to every single one of our guests on this podcast. So, general advice if you could go back five years and talk to a previous version of yourself, what piece of advice would you give to your old self? 

49:09 - Big Cheds (Guest)
I would say I would focus more on continuation versus reversal plays and I'm speaking to myself as my advice as a trader, because you know, nine out of ten of my losses in my career have been trying to guess when a chart is going to turn around. 

49:26
It's the single biggest mistake and it's the hardest one to stay away from, because you're like, well, if I, if this is, then I bought and I can ride it. No, because it's so hard to hold right, it's so hard to hold the trade. You know you're green and then it pulls back a little bit and you're freaking out. But you tell yourself, hey, if I buy the bottom, bottom, I'll hold comfortably. So you create this fallacy right where you're going to, magically, you know, buy a. So the advice I would like focus on continuation plays, only play what's called relative strength. Relative strength means the charts that have been the strongest relative to the rest of the market. Right, that's what you want to focus on, that's what I would tell myself and I'd say go find a dip in an uptrend and then sit back and enjoy it. 

50:07 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's good advice from Cheds, Cheds. I actually have to ask you it wasn't our last question, just because, on a personal level, where did the name, where did you come up with Cheds? How did that come to fruition? 

50:20 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Back in my 20s, I was the only one of my friends who had a job, and so I would basically pay for everything. I took us on trips, bought all the dinners, so it's like Cheds, you know cheddar, so, um, and it's just, it's. It's changed over the years. 

50:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We still, as my friends, we still use it, but that's where it originated from and what was the motivation for doing like the one minute dance with the music at the top of every one of your videos? 

50:48 - Big Cheds (Guest)
I love man, I love music. Music will move me, you know. So I kind of let that happen. It's also a way to be disarming. I think I want to be, I want people to, I want to be open to people and I want them to kind of enjoy it. It's a tough topic, it's a tough thing to learn, so it's really kind of my teaching style too as well. 

51:05 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You can follow him on Twitter at Big Cheds. Subscribe to his YouTube channel Again. Get his book. Bestselling Author Trading Wisdom 50 Lessons Every Trader Should Know, which is available on Amazon. Anything else. I'm missing there Cheds that you'd want people to check out. 

51:20 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Yeah, the book is free on YouTube. Go to Cheds Trading or Cheds on YouTube. I've got 20% of the book for free. Eventually, the whole thing, and really just an honor, a lot of fun. I think you have a great studio, a great format, a great presentation. I think you're creating a lot of value here for your listeners, so I would give you kudos for that. 

51:39 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Thank you, cheds, and thanks for coming on. I will say one last thing for anyone who was a little bit confused with you know, cheds, mentioning all these different trading things, these different shapes on the charts. You know it's obviously tough to understand when you don't have the charts up on the screen. But if you do go to Cheds' YouTube it's much more simple. He pulls everything up. You know you're going to see the chart drawing on the screen pointing to different things, a lot easier to understand. So that's the last thing I'll say. If anyone was a little confused during the podcast, head on over might find it a lot simpler. 

52:08 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Thanks for the time Cheds Much appreciated. 

52:11 - Big Cheds (Guest)
Yeah, I hope you all stay safe out there and I wish you all the best. 

52:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
This has been episode number 41 of Circles Off. Please rate and review five stars, if you can. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to us on the YouTube channel and anywhere where you download your podcasts. We'll be back next week.