Dennis Lewis 0:01
And Hello, everybody. Welcome. Hi, I’m Dennis Lewis, the publisher of crypto trader news. And today I’m really excited we’re going to have, first of all, what I hope is going to be a long series of regular broadcast with some really expert advice for you guys. I’m really happy to have Stuart Pritchard on with me. He is the CEO and one of the founders of Blockman Capital, one of the UK most prestigious managed crypto portfolio companies. So it’s really exciting for me to be able to bring on today with you some real I don’t know, Stuart must have 80 some odd years of experience in the trading markets.
Stuart Pritchard 0:46
I certainly look as though I have and today I feel as though I have no further. It’s been an interesting 24 hours. But yes, I’ve got a few years experience both in equity markets, FX markets and more recently over the last three years in the crypto space, so certainly I’ve got exaggerated a bit with the 80 years but yeah,
Dennis Lewis 1:11
you’ve got a lot of trades under your belt and yeah, downside better at this than I am so I am really happy.
Stuart Pritchard 1:19
Yeah, I’ve definitely got I’ve definitely got enough experience to make enough mistakes. Absolutely.
Dennis Lewis 1:25
So So Stuart, let’s just talk. Let’s just start off with kind of a general overview of where you know where the markets are right now. What you see are the trends. I mean, you know, we’ve had this whole COVID thing that is taken us for this wild ride. Looks to me like Bitcoin has kind of weathered the storm pretty well. But it’s not, it’s not doing anything really exciting is it? For sure. So so
Stuart Pritchard 1:51
what we saw in the middle of February, global markets caught a cold and that that also included credit So currencies which I think most people weren’t expecting. Certainly, when you look at global equity markets, the s&p 500 The footsie 100, European indices, you’d certainly be expecting a reaction because obviously they have exposure to the travel sector, airlines, the hospitality sector, as such, you name it, almost every sector
Dennis Lewis 2:22
and everything was closed down. I mean, pretty much,
Stuart Pritchard 2:25
you know, switch revenue off, you know, you don’t switch global economies off and expect the world to do well, you know, that that’s just never going to happen. However, Bitcoin historically, and cryptocurrencies, by and large, have seemed to be a counter trend, almost the inverse correlation to global equity markets didn’t really happen this time around. It looked as a lot of cash and we speak to a lot of clients on a daily basis. And the fear, stepped in very, very quickly this time around, probably quicker, I would say, than the credit crunch and everybody got back to cash really, really quick, which was unusual from equities, from commodities from indices from FX from cryptocurrency so so yeah, so there’s a correlation across the board started about mid February around about the sort of 13 1415 to February, from a Bitcoin perspective, and this is what we follow a great deal more here at blockchain capital. And it started then, but the big day was the 12th of March and Bitcoin gave up about 50% of its value dropping from 8000 bucks down to 4000 bucks. Whilst we were actually sat there as a team of traders watching it happen in front of us, he was quite quite something to see. We picked out and stop losses that made no difference to us, but it was an interesting time. It looked at the time and I don’t know, you know, if you if you sort of follow follow us here, sort of follow cryptocurrencies in a great deal, but A lot of the sort of leveraged positions and there’s a couple of sort of big exchanges, the biggest being bit Mex. They offer up to 100 to one leverage on Bitcoin. They liquidated all their positions. So essentially, a lot of people got caught out really, really quickly, which which is so awful. Then from that, and it was about the turning point in in equity markets as well around about the middle of March. Things are sort of pick back up, again, looking at the s&p 500 500 Top stocks in the US, the footsie 100 Top 100 in the things that sort of picked themselves back up but bitcoins really gotten a bit of a run. So from there, it’s actually up about 88%. From the drop so recovered back up to what it lost prior to the 12th of March. So
Stuart Pritchard 4:52
yeah, were you able to buy in at the four grand for your kindness in order tool pretending that we know something that everybody else doesn’t. And when it hit 4000, it was scary. We were sat there, and then it started picking back up. And we were like, should we buy into we buy in? Is this going to recover? Is it going to drop to three and a half? It was, it was frightening. We started about six. So that that was our level. I think anything four to six. You either had, you know, you were lucky, perhaps or you just had a little bit more courage than we did in all fairness. We were trying to apply a bit more of a disciplined approach, because we felt it was a little bit of a gambler’s market initially, and then since then, really the uptrend sort of pick back up. But but similar to global equity markets, you know, you only have to look at the footsie 100 and the SP, as I’ve mentioned, and there’s been some real recoveries there, you know, I don’t know if you if you sort of follow suit followers here, sort of know much about equity markets, but with a Barclays Bank. For example, here in the UK, bottomed out at about 85 P, all the way back up to one pound 35 a share now. So you know that they’ve gained considerably over 50% up from from the bottom. So I think it’s a gain of a number of halves. If you if you want to trade airline stocks or travel stocks, because you fancy a gamble, give it a go, I wouldn’t touch them personally with a 20 foot barge pole. And I think that the worst possibly hasn’t played out there. But other sectors like banks, and you know that they’re going to be affected because the economy has been switched off. But ultimately, we all need to bank you know that things haven’t changed globally to that to that level. So banks will recover back up back in March, even now, they still get great value as a as a midterm play. So yeah, it all depends on your time horizon on trade.
Dennis Lewis 6:56
So that makes me think about one thing you know, we we For years people have been saying Bitcoin is digital gold. And whenever the markets crash, people are gonna rush to Bitcoin because of this, you know, I mean, the printing the printing US dollars like they were candy bar wrappers, you know, everybody’s going to rush to Bitcoin because of the supply issue that you can’t create more Bitcoins. So, you know, logic would say that if they’re turning out dollars in pound sterling like mad, then the the currency that isn’t doing that should rise spectacularly. But I don’t think we saw that.
Stuart Pritchard 7:38
No, and you’re absolutely right. And I think there’s a there’s, you know, there’s not just one lever that governments can pull, if there’s an economic downturn and what I will say, to start before I before I go into the next bit, I don’t think this economic downturn is by has played out by any stretch at all. And what I mean by that is the quarter two figures for the UK, which is, you know what I follow more more closely, I guess, because I’m here in the UK, and don’t come out until early July. So we’ve switched the economy off for an entire quarter. And we haven’t shown the actual figures for that there’s estimations kicking around but but the real hard facts aren’t out there yet. So I think that it’s not as sort of, we’re gonna get through this as nicely as we think we’re going to. Importantly, governments immediately react to this time different to the credit crunch again, as you say, printing money the state’s $3 trillion were up to about 850 bill and Italy 750 billion euros etc, etc. Interest rates slash to zero almost instantly. There are a number of leavers printed money controversies in color we will though there is reducing interest rate, the issue this time around. When we were in the credit crunch, we were able to move interest rates down quite considerably. We already started on a pretty sticky wicket at half a percent, three quarters of a percent depending on which side of the pond you were. So a lot of leavers to be able to pull. So, to start off with I don’t think we’ve seen the true outfall economic outfall across Europe and across the states. Going back to your original point about Bitcoin. The reason why is that there has been a counter as I say, we it recovered 88% from from that low. So it is still up at around about the sort of 10,000 bucks mark as we speak. So it does look relatively healthy compared to other markets, but it’s just adoption. You know, there’s still such a small percentage of people that have had any exposure to cryptocurrencies, if they have it’s likely to be Bitcoin. Where do you start talking about just the next couple of runs down aetherium and ripple. And then you start going lower and lower. Most people kind of just shaking their heads and go, what the heck are you on about? You know, that just doesn’t mean anything. And Bitcoin is almost a bit. You know, it’s got as much of as a positive aspect as it as a perceived negative aspects. I don’t think everybody immediately embraces it. So, in answer to what you said, yet, there is a finite resource of Bitcoin by the laws of supply and demand, therefore, it should go up in value. But the reality is that until we get, you know, real mass adoption, like the dollar or Sterling euros, it’s simply not not going to be that way, if that makes sense.
Dennis Lewis 10:45
Mm hmm. So So I and you touched on this and I think that we’re both in agreement here. I I’m perplexed. I look at the stock markets. And I say, you know, massive unemployment. I see companies big blue chip. Companies literally closing down or going bankrupt or, you know, calling for chapter 11 or chapter 12 or chapter 37. Who the hell knows which one? Yeah, I see, you know, so much going on in mainstream, you know, economy that is bad. And yet we see the stock markets almost back to where it was not sure if we were, like out there second year. My apologies. I have this feeling. Yeah, I have the feeling that this this is kind of a bubble kind of recovery thing in the markets that with equities that doesn’t make sense. I mean, it, you know, swallow the frog yet.
Stuart Pritchard 11:40
You know, I couldn’t I couldn’t agree more. I mean, it goes back to exactly what I was saying that, you know, we haven’t even reported hard facts and figures yet. We haven’t seen if there’s a second wave coming along. There. You know, the number I heard for Spain was four and a half percent of the population about had exposure to Ovid, and initially, it’s 5% of the population, you know that the outbreak was in a very, very small, low locational locale in Italy. So I, you know, who knows, I mean, I haven’t got a crystal ball, maybe we’ve got on top of this, and maybe everybody’s done a really good job, but
Stuart Pritchard 12:20
short of, you know, a cure for COVID. At some point, we’re going to have to live with it at some point, we’re going to have to be exposed to it. We cannot continue as we are living in potential lockdown or regional lockdown or will will, you know, we’ll stop the economy and start the economy started. I don’t know, I just think it we aren’t over this by any stretch, even though we’re all kind of patting ourselves on the back and we’ve done a good job and you know, the the rate, the rate is coming down and the death rate, which is amazing, you know, it’s great that we seem to be getting on top of it. But we’re getting on top of it because we’re not exposing ourselves to we’re getting on top of it because we’re all staying inside, you know, the economy’s washed off, its life just can’t stay like that, you know, like life can’t continue like that. At some point, we’ve got to get on with it, you know, and we’ll see if it then returns or what the government’s do. I don’t think we’ve seen the bottom yet.
Dennis Lewis 13:16
Okay. So let’s talk about some of those other coins that are out there. I mean, you know, we all know bitcoins payments. We all know that but I mean, a theory M is kind of a, I’m not gonna say it’s coming back. It’s, it’s not anything near what it was when, you know, the Ico boom was going and, you know, I I remember, you know, seeing aetherium and $1,000 a, you know, an eighth it’s, it’s at least it’s not, you know, under 100, which was not that long ago, it was backed down to under a
Stuart Pritchard 13:46
couple of people. Yeah.
Dennis Lewis 13:46
Yeah, that was so so should we be looking at some of the other coins and seeing if there’s some some good opportunities there?
Stuart Pritchard 13:59
Yeah, for sure. So, so again, it’s time to get in See, question yes is the answer. But again, it depends on your appetite for risk. It depends on your time horizon. And it depends if you’re trading or investing, holding, you know, what, what’s your methodology so that that’s what we do here, when we try to guide people in the right direction, because everybody has different expectations. So if theorem has a true value, it’s normally seen as a true value within the IT sector, in particular with smart contracts. And certain YOU’LL SEE IT professionals IT companies exchanging a theorem for services, so it has got a general value, you know, that there is something associated with it. It has been as high as 1000 bucks, you know, it has been as low as 8586 bucks recently. And so there’s, there’s what you might call potential headroom there. And but going outside of maybe the top 10 certainly the top three maybe but certain top He kind of it depends on the utility of the underlying asset. I fear all cryptocurrencies may not be here forever. And I might be I might be controversial by saying that because I know there are a lot of people are absolutely diehard crypto people, but I just think from a real world perspective, you know, if you’ve got thousands upon thousands of cryptocurrencies, while some of them offer a certain utility, do all of them offer, you know, 100% long term longevity? I’m not so sure. I think there will be a handful of cryptocurrencies that have mainstream adoption and appeal. And that’s because of their very nature, Bitcoin, because it’s Bitcoin and we all know who it is and what it is, if they’re in because I’ve just mentioned there the IT sector of ripple because of their involvement with High Street banks, and certainly international payments through High Street banks. don’t line up So, but but I think when you start getting outside of that, and you start looking at the smaller cryptocurrencies, there’s a heck of a lot of scope to trade and make some good returns. But would I be, for example, buying? Let’s say, I don’t know, stellar and putting it in a kitchen drawer, or would I be buying, going back to Barkley shares and putting them in a kitchen drawer? I think two very different prospects. If I’m honest with you, and one in you know, you could become a millionaire with something like stellar, who knows, but you wouldn’t with with Barclays shares, but equally speaking, I think you could also come very unstuck with with some currencies.
Dennis Lewis 16:43
And it could be that, you know, three weeks from now, there’s some new one that actually leaves them all in the dust we don’t know yet so early, it’s so
Stuart Pritchard 16:56
so early on the path of with cryptocurrencies that kind of Who knows, though it goes back to my time horizon point in how nimble you are. And if you want to get in have a go and trade, absolutely, that there’s great returns to be made. And with certain exchanges, there’s plenty of liquidity as well. And certainly in the sort of top top sort of 50 finance, you can, you can have a good go. But outside of that, if you’re just buying them for the long term, just have a go, you know, if you’ve got money now that you that you, if you’re able to lose the money, or you’re able to double the money, then you know, just just give it a go is what I would say. And so for me, the top 10 offers the sort of most the, I guess, the stable way to invest in cryptocurrencies outside of the top 10. I think you’re trading rather than investing, if that makes sense.
Dennis Lewis 17:53
Sure. And so with your services that you give your clients at Bachman you kind of take The you you make it easy for people because you do that, you know, you’re you’re you’re 24 seven, you’ve got a team 24 seven, watching the market go up and down. I don’t know exactly how often you’re trading each client’s accounts. But I mean, you’re you’re there you’re watching and you’re trying to make sure that you’re you’re selling at the at the tops and buying at the bottoms, right? I mean, kind of that’s,
Stuart Pritchard 18:26
that’s the utopian situation, Dennis isn’t always the case that we were getting at the bottom out of the top. So more often than not what we found out over a number of years of trading kryptos and we brought tried and tested techniques from the stocks and shares world in the FX world and just start applying them in it. It’s a bit easier in a way because these coins move a heck of a lot quicker. Generally speaking bitcoins been a bit quiet the last few days but generally speaking, crypto currencies move move a heck of a lot of intraday movement. So you can normally have a bit of a go. But the thing that we found over a number of years is, you know, get it on and the upside and make the most out of a run up and avoid the downside. Don’t try and be too clever. If the markets giving it up, don’t try and second guess the bottom don’t try and I it’s gonna turn here it’s going to do this. Just wait, wait, play it out Be patient. And as I say we’re back to March the 12th. We got kicked out at about 787 thousand 800 bucks on Bitcoin. And then we just sat there watching it. And I have a lot of pals, I have a lot of colleagues who are involved in the crypto market, and a lot of them had a really difficult day that day. And we didn’t have the best of days we took a bit of a loss when the market start giving it up. But we didn’t take anything like the pain that most most other people did. And as I said, and I’m not going to pretend that we got in at the bottom when it’s forward. I’m not gonna pretend we got in at five because we We were scared. But or cautious should I say rather than scared cautious by the way opponent. And but then when he got back up six start looking stable, like it was going to start recovering back up. We’re going into bitcoin having that happened on the 11th of May. And all the indications were good, and we were able to, you know, develop develop a pretty good end of March. Certainly April was a good month for us, and maybe was okay as well.
Dennis Lewis 20:25
Yeah. So and I mean, you know, hey, yeah, I as if I were a client of yours, that caution would be something I would be happy about. And, you know, from six to 10 is a nice run up so far, you know?
Stuart Pritchard 20:40
Absolutely.
Dennis Lewis 20:41
It’s a lot bigger than the four to six, you know, things. Yeah, for sure. Well,
Stuart Pritchard 20:46
yeah, I mean, it is it is from a sort of monetary perspective, but from a percentage perspective, it’s actually greater to go from four to six is obviously 50% up compared to Six to 10 which is, which is good. Yeah, that splitting has, it’s, it all depends. So So the key to trading kryptos is to trade with discipline, to trade with strategy and to stick to it and to have risk management in place. There are plenty of times and it happened just on the second of June, the price of bitcoin burst out and it looked like it was going to cut keep galloping on, gained about 10% in the space of maybe 1520 minutes. And, you know, again, my trading my traders, we sat there going, this is going to go you know, go go, go go now, just play with caution here. And lo and behold, in the afternoon of the second of June here in the UK, the price you know, dropped by 15%. So it’s it’s just about having discipline, it’s just about making sure that you protect your gains. And don’t try and second guess the market. Don’t Don’t you No think that you the markets bottomed out because more more often than not, it hasn’t wait for to play out, wait for a nice bit of a nice bit of a bit of upward movement. And some of the things we look for one of the strategies that we all show, say formations that we look for, is what’s called the flag formation, the pennant formation as it’s sometimes known. And what you’ll see with the price of bitcoin is it winds itself up to a point. So you’ll get a series of lowering highs and a series of raising lows as the sort of price action tightens up and tightens up and as you can often get, exactly right so so however, however it looks on here, they’ll try and get that yeah,
Dennis Lewis 22:43
I think.
Stuart Pritchard 22:47
So play the play in between him and maybe next week when we when we speak, and learn how to share a screen so I’ll put By the way, just touch upon that. I was explained to Dennis earlier to anybody’s watching this. I’m actually I’m not a marketer, soccer I’m not great at all the other bits and pieces, but I’ll learn by next week. And what we found is the pennant formation as it reaches the apex of the pennant, you’ll see a big breakout. The key to that is the strategy to trade that breakout. More often than not, you’ll be second guessed by which direction the breakout happens. Is it up is it down, you never know. The key to it is what’s called a stop buy order or a stop sell order. If you’re going short. That means that you’re not you’re not risking anything, you’re waiting for the market to move before your order activates. And you get involved in the market. So there are a number of ways to trade it. But you make sure that you trade that with with as little risk as possible. And you may miss the first part of the break. But then you’ll catch the rest of it.
Dennis Lewis 23:53
Hmm, yeah, great advice for people listening then that’s the kind of stuff that I think is really cool. Okay, we’re gonna wind this down. Today, but I have to ask you, because everybody asked me and I don’t know what I always say, I have, don’t ask me I have no idea. But I mean, I hear people saying Bitcoin is going to get to 20 k by the end of the year, that there’s no way it’s not going to get to 20 k by the end of the year. Give us your your your take Stuart, and I think it’ll make it.
Stuart Pritchard 24:20
So so I might give it a bit of a long winded answer to this but but actually goes back to another one of the things that I was talking about which I alluded to the 11th of May, Bitcoin having Bitcoin having won the reward for solving the blockchain halves, and the number of bitcoins given out as a reward, Hobbs should mean that the supply slows down, and if demand remains the same price should go up. So in the run up to the 11th of May, the market really ran on you know, really gained and gained and gained, and then the 10th of may 24 hours before actually happened, the price collapse. So that that Kind of just explains what everybody’s real sort of thoughts are about Bitcoin. So here’s my take on it, if all things were equal, and we haven’t seen the bottom, in the global economic slowdown, and there is a second wave and blah, blah, blah, all the other bits and pieces, we’ve been talking about bitcoins, your break above the current 10,000 bucks, which is, which is the top end, we should then see a retest of the 13. For breaks up, we should see a retest all the way back up to the 19 20,000 bucks so that that should all things being equal happen if everything else holds true. What actually happens in the crypto market is almost always that the opposite of what you’re expecting. So I don’t want to be political and try and give two answers here. I think that there is every likelihood that By the back end of the year, we’ll have broken through the 10. And we will be retest 32. And if we retest that and break that we should go back up to 19 or 20. I don’t know if it’s definitely gonna happen, but I will probably be more inclined to think it’s going to happen than not. So I’d be hedging my bets on the upside rather than downside. But I think before that, that there’s plenty of opportunity for a bit of a correction back down.
Dennis Lewis 26:26
So those of us who just don’t trade and just happen to have some bitcoins stuck away in a in a, in a, you know, at our sock drawer, we should just hang on and see what happened.
Stuart Pritchard 26:39
it again, it goes back to if you trade or if you invest, Bitcoin is something you can in my opinion, invest in it is something for a kitchen drawer, as I say, and a time horizon thing you know, if your time horizon is the next six months, you might want to be a bit cautious if your time horizon doesn’t really matter in it, three, four or five years, just sit on it. You know that you I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that at some point in the future that Bitcoin is going to be worth a heck of a lot more than it is right now. Do I think that it’s going to be a clean, easy ride? Absolutely not at all. But you only have to look at you know, the the trend overall. And for anybody who’s interested, and again, hopefully by next week, I can start sharing some of this stuff. If you just look at price action after having, you’ll see some interesting charts that they’re easily Google, if that’s a word. And you know, you can see that that logarithmically speaking, the price of bitcoin just keeps improving as the reward half so I don’t really see why that should particularly change I don’t think anything’s anything fundamental has changed. If anything, things are better. adoption and awareness is better. the opinion of Bitcoin is better. I know from it from experience that more and more but I would call seasoned equity investors or effects investors, and I’ve got part of, you know, got kryptos as part of their portfolio, it’s becoming a lot more mainstream, and a lot more serialized as it were. So time horizon, three years plus put in the kitchen drawer, forget about it, and you’ll be very happy in a few years time.
Dennis Lewis 28:20
Yeah, great. Well, that sounds like a great place to end today’s livestream. Thank you very much too early. It was I enjoyed, I thought it was fun. Really good information. Really good information for everybody out there. We will also
Stuart Pritchard 28:31
be
Dennis Lewis 28:32
publishing the transcript on crypto trader news. So people get indexed it and people will find it that way as well. So thank you very much. And we’ll talk again next week.
Stuart Pritchard 28:41
No problem at all. Thank you very much for having me. And I look forward to it. by next week. I’ll be sharing my screen I’m sure. Awesome.
Dennis Lewis 28:48
Great. Thanks a lot crisper.
Stuart Pritchard 28:49
Thanks a lot.
