Event-driven trading capitalises on price dislocations caused by scheduled and unscheduled catalysts — earnings announcements, FOMC meetings, governance votes, protocol upgrades, token unlocks, mergers, and geopolitical shocks. The edge comes from correctly anticipating the event's impact or exploiting the volatility expansion around it.
Implied vs realised volatility around events. Earnings surprises and guidance revisions. Token unlock schedules and supply shocks. Protocol upgrades and hard forks. Mergers, acquisitions, and spin-offs. Regulatory announcements and legal rulings.
Pre-event: straddle/strangle if volatility is cheap relative to history. Directional: position before event if strong thesis. Post-event: trade the fade or continuation after initial reaction settles into clear structure.
Volatility crush after event (close straddles). Initial reaction reversed significantly. Target hit or thesis invalidated by the actual event outcome.
15-minute to 4H for intraday events (FOMC, earnings). Daily for multi-day events (token unlocks). Weekly for structural events (hard forks, regulatory).
Never risk your entire account on a single event. Use options or small position sizes to limit binary risk. The second move after an event (the 're-think') often provides better setups than the initial spike.
Intermarket analysis studies the correlations and divergences between asset classes — equities, bonds, commodities, currencies, and crypto — to gain a macro edge. When relationships that normally hold start breaking down, it often foreshadows major market regime shifts. Traders use these cross-market signals to confirm or contradict setups in their primary market.
Value investing identifies assets trading below their intrinsic or fundamental value and holds until the market recognises the discount. In traditional markets this means studying P/E ratios, discounted cash flows, and book value; in crypto it extends to token economics, revenue-generating protocols, and fully diluted valuation analysis.
On-chain fundamental analysis examines blockchain data to assess the health, adoption, and valuation of crypto assets. Unlike traditional fundamental analysis that uses corporate financial statements, on-chain analysis leverages transparent blockchain data — active addresses, transaction volumes, exchange flows, holder distribution, and network fees — to evaluate whether a crypto asset is accumulating value or showing signs of weakness.
Earnings and valuation analysis evaluates a company's financial performance and market pricing to determine whether its stock is undervalued, fairly valued, or overvalued. By examining revenue growth, profit margins, earnings per share, and valuation multiples such as price-to-earnings and price-to-sales ratios, traders and investors can assess whether the current market price is justified by fundamentals.