Sharing profitable strategy?

Let’s say you have this super profitable strategy that works on every markets. You won’t want to share it to the world (either free or paid). Why? Because if everyone know your profitable logics, there will only be 2 outcomes

Everyone follow your strategy

When a lot of people use your strategy, slippage will play a big part. Let’s say previously you have no issue exiting a trade at the specified profit level with very little slippage. Now when a lot of people are using the same strategy (let’s say 1 million users are using your strategy), when an exit signal triggered, that means you have 1 million users trying to exit same trade at almost the same time. It would become the game of who can put their order to the exchange faster. Those being at the end of the queue most likely will experience big slippage, especially if some of those in front of the queue are playing with big money.

Other whales will try to destroy your strategy

When there are 1 million users (using same example above) using one same strategy, that means there is a very big liquidity pool available to be played by the whales. Since your strategy is available to the whales as well, that means they will know how to set effective traps that your strategy can’t avoid. Your logics that once were profitable are now turned into poisonous logics.

For example, in the past when a pair’s RSI is below 10 for 15 consecutive candles, it will go up and fly high. Your logic are designed then to buy when such condition happened. Now that whales know your logic, it will set the traps, and after you and the 1 million other users buy the pair, it will dump the pair even more to trigger your stoploss (if any) or get you to be liquidated.

There is no win-win in trading

Although some people want to believe that everyone can win in trading world, in reality, trading is zero-sum game. For someone to win (profit), someone else will need to lose. When your strategy used to be winning all the time, there were plenty of losing traders out there. Now that they know your secret, they know how to counter your strategy. They will turn the table and make you the loser instead.

For example, when a certain condition happen in the market, there used to be a lot of people selling, which means you had the opportunity to buy the pair. Now, since those people know that the price will rebound anyway, they won’t sell their pair. When no one is selling, you can’t enter the trade like you used to be able to. You are missing out on potential profit.

Or let’s take the opposite side. When a certain condition happen in the market, it used to be the perfect time to sell the pair. But in order to sell, you need other people willing to buy it. When people are now unwilling to buy, you can’t exit the trade. If they start selling it instead (shorting it), you might ends up taking loss later on instead.

Of course for any above example to happen, your strategy has to be really that good that you and others are putting big amount of money on it and attract the attention of whales. If you keep the strategy private, whales would have to guess your logics. By sharing the strategy to public, you are making their jobs so much easier.