Taking profits. I realise the camps are split between HODL and take profits. I’m in the latter camp and have spent a bit of time thinking about profit taking strategies which work for me (they may not for you)

1) I allocate 50% of my portfolio to taking profits. My thinking on this is if I mess up the profit taking and cash out too low, I have 50% still remaining.

2) My aim is to, as a minimum, get my initial investment back for the cycle, so i’m essentially “risk free” again. Which makes holding 50% easier

3) l look at what (in my head) is a realistic price target (i realise this is nothing but a guess).

So for example, $100k bitcoin doesn’t seem like an unreasonable aspirational price. Not super high but not guaranteed either. Pick your own value based on your views

4) i look at what i could make if I was correct and it goes to $100k and i sell 100% then. So, if we imagine I own 2 btc in total, i’m selling 1, and if I sold it at $100k i’d have $100k.

5) there are 2 risks. The first is it doesn’t get to this price and i’m holding for an event that never happens. The second is it overshoots and never goes back down below $100k (less likely in my opinion as I don’t think $100k will be the new floor this cycle) but I have my 1 btc left, so not the end of the world, so really just the first risk to deal with

6) to mitigate the risk of it never hitting $100k, I set a bunch of limit sell orders. I have a spreadsheet that allows me to play around with profit levels under different scenarios and essentially i just agree on a level that gives me what I feel is a nice profit, that gives me a good chance of getting initial investment back without selling huge % too low and that isn’t too far away from $100k total

7) in practice it looks like this 0.2 @ $60k = $12k 0.2 @ $70k = $14k 0.2 @ $80k = $16k 0.2 @ $90k = -$18k 0.2 @ $99k = $19800 Total = $79,800

Obviously this is a lot less than $100k but $80k feels like a reasonable return given that everything (roughly) after $70k sale is pure profit and i still have 50% if it massively overshoots (i’d play selling my ear at that point.

A few caveats. This is based on me believing taking profits each cycle and hoping to buy in cheaper is best approach. If you don’t think it is, cool.

It also relies on your belief of when cycle will end. If it ended in April, my position would be different. But hodling isn’t the worst thing if it doesn’t play out. I believe in the notion of at least trying to increase my position each cycle without just DCAing in (i do that earlier in cycle) .