Bear markets are infamous for their counter-trend rallies.

Breakouts fail, and the charts are painted with false moves.

Throughout this bear market, traders have bought the breakouts to then dump the next day into an illiquid tape.

Given the gains we've seen over the last few days, I think it's important we step back.

I understand the theories about Crypto Currencies being a scam.

"The whole thing is about to fall apart", they tell me.

And yea maybe.

That's entirely possible.

I don't really care that much either way. If it goes up, I hope to profit from it. And if all the coins go to zero, I'll make sure I'm not in them.

Other people losing money long crypto in that scenario is not my problem. I don't have the slightest interest or the time to care about other people's portfolios.

And I say that only to reiterate that I'm approaching this conversation with a very open mind.

Because we all know that the Bitcoin maxis and Ethereum folks can rarely have a civilized conversation, particularly with those who might disagree.

So to be clear, I do not care at all.

I'm much more interested in what's for dinner tomorrow than I am worried about whether Bitcoin is going to a million or zero.

Now with all of that out of the way, I think you have to be out of your mind to be short BTC or ETH if they are above their prior cycle's peak.

Here's what that looks like:

We came into the week anticipating some volatility expansion out of this range, which could potentially be playing out given yesterday's action.

This was the largest daily price change for most coins over the last month. Ethereum's broken out of this short-term trading range, with Bitcoin following closely behind.

It's nearly that time when we get a fresh batch of monthly candlesticks.

We only perform this exercise once the candlesticks are completed. But, sometimes, you want to cheat and peep a few days early.

What's great about monthly candlesticks is that it takes us a mere half hour to get through them all, which is only six hours a year.

We can't emphasize enough the level of value-add for such a brief amount of time.

It forces us to take a step back, and it gives us no choice but to identify the direction of the primary trends. We use them to put shorter-term trends into context, which is especially important in this choppy price action.

So, no matter your time frame, identifying primary trends and then working from there is a huge advantage over a blind bottom-up approach.

In the current state of the crypto markets, the overwhelming majority of names are in greater than 80% drawdowns.

Solana is down 90%.

Cardano is down 90%.

Fantom is down 95%.

Harmony is down 96%.

Nothing's changed.

That's it -- that's the post. There's nothing to discuss.

Bitcoin and the rest of the asset class are still a choppy mess. There's no conviction in taking longs until price action can shape up in a more bullish manner.

Given the lackluster market conditions, this letter will act as yet another brief interim update.

This is the video recording of our October 21, 2022, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

There's only one thing you need to know about Bitcoin miners. That is, they're essentially long Bitcoin's price, short the hash rate, and short electricity prices.

Wonder why publicly traded Bitcoin miners have been laughable? It's because all these three are moving in the completely opposite direction.

It wasn't long ago that we said Bitcoin was at the edge of the abyss.

A month on, the same can still be said about most of the asset class. Just go chart by chart, and you'll see a ton of coins sitting at their lows.

This is such an illiquid tape, with only the heartiest of HODLers remaining, that it wouldn't take much selling to send these laggards on another leg lower.

Cardano, Decentraland, Gala, Kyber, Polkadot -- just a little push is all it'd take...

You hear it every day.

Are you bullish or bearish?

Like, what does that question even mean?

Which asset class are we talking about?

What time frame?

What sector?

It's a question that only journalists should ask. People with skin in the game understand that strong opinions will always be weakly held when money is on the line.

Our opinion never matters. What does matter is how we adapt our approach as new evidence comes in that either corroborates or contradicts our initial thesis.

There have been no developments since last Monday, so today's note will be a brief interim update.

This is the video recording of our October 14, 2022, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

Earlier this week, we noted that our breadth metrics pointed to a weakening within the alts.