A Little Upside, But Not So Fast

I have to admit it is fun watching the entire—or at least most of it—crypto market going up. It feels like it has been forever since the market has really done anything at all.

But like most things in any market, I try not to let it cloud my judgement or get overly excited about it. That's when you tend to make mistakes.

Of course, you will have a bunch of people coming out of the woodwork now who will predict the end of the bear market and start making bold predictions as they usually do.

It is just the nature of things. "To the moon and beyond," might be something you will hear a lot of in the coming days if you are not already hearing it now.

When it comes to investing in anything the one thing that has always worked best for me, beyond carefully researching an investment and making sure I fully understand how it creates or maintains value—or of course, grows in value—has been to abide by "slow and steady wins the race."

In other words, you don't change what you are doing because something is doing something today. You stay the course and keep doing the same thing regardless of what something is doing today.

That's whether the price of an investment is going up or down by the way.

I will freely admit that when it comes to the crypto markets, at least from my perspective, there is much less to know about it and therefore it is harder for me to determine the true future value of any cryptocurrency.

As I have said many times before when it comes to the stock market, I am not investing in stocks. I am investing in companies. And that mentality makes a difference.

Because stocks will do what stocks will do. But if a company is solid and good and doing good business, eventually the stock price is going to catch up with it. It has to.

One would assume that cryptocurrencies may work in a similar fashion. If a project is good any value it truly has should eventually catch up with it.

I no more necessarily double down in bad times as I halt increasing positions in good times. I stay the course and keep on doing what I do. Slow and steady.

Sure, sometimes this means I may miss an opportunity. But at the same time, it also means I may avoid a fall. During this "bear market," which I think is still a bear market right now, I really have not changed much of what I have been doing with crypto.

This rise in "value" recently may be a short-term blip. Or it may actually be the end of this bear market and the start of a new bull run.

I think the greatest thing to consider is that no one really knows. To me there remains to be a lot of mystery behind what makes any coin go. As I alluded to previously, when it comes to stocks it is different than in the crypto world. You have much more to understand and go on when you make a decision whether or not X company is better than Y company, and whether or not it is a good investment or a bad one.

Because I do have at least some skin in the game when it comes to crypto, it makes me happy to see the value of what I do have go up a little bit. Of course I want that to keep going.

Perhaps what I am alluding to here is that when it comes to making money, emotion can be a dangerous thing. It causes one to act in an irrational and misguided way a lot of the time.

Someone may look at their bitcoin, for example, and see that it has gone from $16k to over $20k as of this writing, and then become emotionally influenced. "Here we go. It's going to the moon."

They will suddenly fear missing out on something bigger and make a rash decision to pour more money into something that may not be the best decision—even if it does mean you will miss out on something.

Slow and steady wins the race.

And emotions can be further fueled as well by those people who will now be making some of those bold predictions, and if you don't have your britches firmly on, you may find them wrapped around your ankles.

Which, by the way, is uncomfortable and embarrassing.

I am having fun watching the numbers go up a bit here. There is no denying that. And it does give me some hope that maybe the next leg of this journey might be right around the corner. I don't deny that either.

At the same time, I am going to just stay the course and keep things as they were as to what I was doing. I see no reason to change that. Had I gone hog wild in the last bull market, think of where that would have gotten me. Greater losses with a lot longer path to getting back to break even point.

But staying the course up or down? Staying slow and steady? I really do come out much farther ahead doing it that way.

Because again, no one really knows much. And it is still a very young market with very little real historical data to go on. We don't even know how much this thing will catch on. Or if it ever will.

Being very careful and calculating is a good idea is what I am saying. Being optimistic, but cautious is what I am saying. Being vigilant and discarding emotion is what I am talking about.

Slow and steady folks. Be watchful, vigilant, careful and calculating. You can thank me later.

Image by Porwest. My ugly mug enjoying a cold beer in sunny Saint George Island in the Florida Panhandle at Paddy's.