Recently, I was chatting with a friend about trading experiences, mentioning that I used Wyckoff accumulation theory to bottom fish ETH around 1400. Now it has risen to over 2320, and the profit is pretty good. Many people asked me how I judged it, so today I’ll briefly talk about the Wyckoff accumulation theory, as a personal market observation.

Actually, the core logic of Wyckoff accumulation is very straightforward: big funds don’t want retail investors to realize they are building positions. Imagine you are a smart merchant, eyeing some apples in a small town, knowing they will eventually increase in price. But you can’t buy a large amount directly, or the price will shoot up immediately, raising your costs. So you have to play some tricks.

The routine of big players is like this: first create panic to push the price down, spreading negative sentiment so everyone wants to sell. Then they quietly accumulate at low levels, buying while pretending not to want to buy, occasionally smashing the price to scare retail investors further. Throughout this process, the coin price oscillates within a certain range, looking like nothing is happening. Once they’ve accumulated enough chips, the big players start pushing the price up. At this point, retail investors realize it’s about to rise, chase the high, and the big players profitably close their positions at the top.

The Wyckoff accumulation process usually takes a long time, from a few weeks to several months or even a year. When I saw ETH consolidating for so long, I thought it might be an opportunity. How do I judge it? The most important thing is to look at the trading volume. During the accumulation phase, volume shows specific patterns: decreasing volume during declines, indicating selling exhaustion; occasional spikes in volume during sideways movement, likely representing big funds quietly buying; false breakdowns to the downside with low volume, showing no real selling pressure.

Price patterns can also reveal clues. Support levels become more obvious, with buy orders holding the price each time it dips; resistance levels gradually move higher, with previous tops slowly being broken; the trading range narrows, with volatility decreasing from ±10% to ±5%; there’s also a “spring” effect, where the price quickly breaks below support and then rapidly recovers.

Additionally, supply and demand relationships matter. During declines, selling volume decreases; small upward moves can break previous highs; retracements become smaller, indicating chips are stabilizing. On candlestick charts, signals include long lower shadows showing strong support below; narrow-range doji indicating a potential trend reversal; quick recoveries after false breakouts are typical trap signals.

There’s a saying: “The longer the horizontal, the higher the vertical,” meaning the longer the accumulation phase, the greater the potential upside afterward. When I saw ETH consolidating for so long, combining volume, support levels, and supply-demand factors, I thought it might be a good entry point. Looking back, this method still has some usefulness. If you’re also paying attention to ETH or other coins, try analyzing from this perspective and see if you can spot signs of Wyckoff accumulation.