_{Image from Google Play store, press kit for Cindicator.}

Well... April was a bit of a nightmare rollercoaster for analysts on Cindicator... good for the crypto ecosystem in general as there was a continuation of the steady rise since the start of the year.... but with some really really unexpected spikes and falls which meant that predictions were going to be hideously inaccurate!

Short Timeframe Challenge (Invite only)

This was an single week interesting challenge which was an invite only challenge for the top 150 or so analysts with Cindicator. So, I was pretty chuffed to be invited! Anyway, it was a 4 daily rounds of 8 questions about the pairings: USD pairs with BTC, ETH, USD and XRP along with pairings with BTC and BCH(ABC), ETC, OMG and LTC.

Each question was only open for a single hour and were +/- 2% upside or downside questions. It makes for some pretty snap judgement forecasting, as we all know that crypto can swing pretty wildly from hour to hour. Luckily, I had built up a buffer in the first couple of days, as the crypto markets started to have a sudden unexpected drop, which triggered many of the fail thresholds for my predictions, which meant that I started bleeding points profusely! In fact I was very much in the red points wise... but I did predict that there would be a turn around, and so I finished the week just under 0 in points, my worst ever results for any challenge!

Hopefully, I will still get a payout, as I might still rank in the top 50 analysts who answered enough questions to qualify for a payout... however, I'm not holding my breath...

Crypto Markets

Again, being hammered by the sudden Bitcoin spike at the start of April and then the flash crash to 400 USD meant that I was hemorrhaging points after having started so nicely... so most of my month was struggling to stay afloat for the payout rather than gunning for a top spot!

The spike in Bitcoin meant that most of the alt coin price and threshold predictions were completely thrown out (as they were denominated in BTC trading pairs), and so I was seeing a lot of red contributions to my points total... seriously, there is nothing more demoralising than seeing endless red predictions coming in at the start of the month... it almost makes you want to just give up for the month!

Luckily, I kept plugging along and was able to salvage a positive score... nothing to write home about, but at least I get a payout!

Traditional Markets

I'm starting to see more and more questions appearing in the Traditional market space... which means I need to start readjusting my time expectations for how fast assets change in value (traditional markets are turtles!)... plus, getting acquainted with lots of companies and what they do... it really is a completely different space, as most of the assets have real life fundamentals attached to them.. instead of speculative crypto assets.

That said, I'm getting better at these markets... managing to finish within the top 200 analysts. Not bad for something I know little about... but my performance in this market is getting more reliable.

Going Forward

Well, in the crypto space, I'm hoping to redeem myself and recover my prediction average after a terrible last mont... I'm still staying clear of 7 way rankings as it is just too difficult to predict the rankings of crypto asset growth one month out (even a day out is pretty tricky!). I do hope that there is a continuation of a slow upwards trend, but I'm a bit wary that there are some hints and talk of another large drop looming.

In the traditional markets, I'm just trying to slowly improve and tighten my predictions. It's a completely different world to the crypto one, and so it does take a bit of time to build up experience and gut feeling!

Hopefully, with my pretty dismal performance in the Short Timeframe Challenge I've not disqualified myself from other invite only challenges... my general performance remains high (barring that last crypto month...), so I'm hopeful that I can still stand as a decent performer in the eyes of Cindicator!

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