Before you put on your first trade or buy any asset, there's one question every investor needs to ask themselves:

What's my objective?

For most investors, the answer is pretty simple. It comes down to maximizing returns and minimizing losses in a way that fits within each individual's unique preferences.

Despite this, you'd be surprised with the number of people who use the market as an outlet to express their political views rather than as a way to make money.

We're raising this today as a reminder to stay objective and always follow the money flow, rather than the opinion of journalists or analysts.

One field that crypto investors are particularly susceptible to these biases is within the decentralized finance sector.

DeFi is the darling of the crypto world.

Axie Infinity is the talk of the crypto town today, and for good reason.

This thing has gone in a straight line higher and doubled from our entry when we were buying it last week.

Now, AXS is trading at a market cap of $9B putting it among one of the most valuable video game entities in the world.

For today's post, we wanted to step back and revisit why we've been so obnoxiously bullish over the last few months, and take you behind our thinking of why we've put it on the buy list six separate times in the last few months...

Here's a snippet of our first post covering Axie when we were buying it in July:

There aren’t many coins breaking out to all-time highs right now, but AXS is one of them.

We just had to break the rules with this one – it’s currently trading at a tiny market cap of $750M, so it’s $250M shy of joining our Crypto universe. So keep in mind that this one is much smaller than what we typically deal with.

This is the video recording of our October 1, 2021, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

We've talked at length about the accumulation taking place on the part of larger trader cohorts.

To visualize these developments, we've primarily used all the on-chain metrics at our disposal. Another way to go about doing this is by going directly to the order book.

Using heatmaps of all the limit orders on crypto exchanges, we can get an idea of where traders are accumulating and where they're selling into strength. The more yellow the heatmap, the bigger the size of the orders.

This could be the single most important chart in the world right now.

We cannot overstate this development.

We finally got a major resolution in the US 10-year yield, which has reclaimed that critical 1.40% level this week. This begs the question as to what a rising rate environment might mean for investor portfolios. The important implication for stock investors is the renewed tailwind for cyclicals. When rates are rising, sectors like financials, industrials, materials, and energy are all typically outperforming, which is exactly what we’ve started to see in the last week.

And of all these groups, the most direct beneficiary is the regional banks, which are back above their 2018 highs. An overwhelming proportion of their bottom line is tied to lending, so higher yields and widening spreads are a significant tailwind.

This is the video recording of our September 24, 2021, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

Have you ever held a beach ball underwater and pressed down?

You can feel the pressure on your arms - the beachball is trying everything to float back up.

So what happens when you let go? It jumps into the air!

Once that pressure holding it down eases, it has nowhere to go but up.

The market is the exact same.

When everything's selling indiscriminately, we want to look for the sectors, stocks, or in this case, cryptocurrencies that are bucking the trend and pushing up against your arms.

So what's going to happen when that selling, that force holding the beach ball gives up?

It's gonna shoot higher!

That stock or cryptocurrency closing the day higher in the face of broad distribution is likely to be the next leader when that force holding everything down subsides.

We saw this take place with Solana in August, and we know how that turned out...

Now that the market finds itself beaten and bruised over the last few weeks, we need to ask the same question - where's the relative strength?

There are no called strikes on Wall Street.

In other words, we’re not penalized for not swinging, like you are in baseball. We have the ability to be patient, to a certain extent at least, depending on your mandate. But most of us don’t have mandates! Even one of the best hitters of all time struggled when he swung at bad pitches.

This is my favorite reminder that in trading & investing, we want to wait for OUR perfect pitch, and then swing, vs just swinging at anything.

Here's a clip from our Charting School, walking through this exact idea.

https://youtu.be/10CARG4h7n4

We've brought this up today as a good reminder in the face of all this volatile action taking place in the crypto complex over the last few days.

Here's what we outlined in yesterday's crypto note:

The bottom line is that if Bitcoin’s below 46,000-47,000, things are likely to remain messy over more meaningful timeframes.

That's the smell of risk-off...

47,000 was the level, and Bitcoin did not hold it.

Here's what we laid out last week:

For those with a shorter timeframe, the bias is higher above 47,500 toward the former crash highs of 53,000:

Otherwise, if this breakout fails to hold, expect more messy action in the coming days.

And fail it did...

As the old saying suggests, from failed moves come fast moves in the opposite direction:

This 46,000-47,000 level wasn't just an important inflection point in the near-term, but it also coincided with Bitcoin's last level of defense before crashing in May.

If we're below this zone of overhead supply, the bias is sideways to lower.

This is the video recording of our September 17, 2021, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

In Monday's post, we mentioned that this would be very much a "wait and see" week as we watched Bitcoin's near-term consolidation play out.

And here's what we outlined in yesterday's note:

We’re not really expecting much more than tumbleweeds and a few winners here and there while Bitcoin’s stuck below the upper-end of this range near 47,500.

But if we see a breakout above that level, we’ll be deploying some more cash into new long positions.

It looks like we could be getting a resolution this morning, with Bitcoin trading back into the 47,000's.

For those with a shorter timeframe, the bias is higher above 47,500 toward the former crash highs of 53,000:

In yesterday's note, we outlined that this looks very much like a "wait and see" week, with Bitcoin still in this messy sideways range.

44,000 is a big level of interest that the market respected, with prices trading back above our long-term macro risk level of 46,000 this morning.

But we're not really expecting much more than tumbleweeds and a few winners here and there while Bitcoin's stuck below the upper-end of this range near 47,500.

But if we see a breakout above that level, we'll be deploying some more cash into new long positions.

We're seeing this play out with the number of new monthly highs dwindling recently: