Wednesday 13 May 2009

Just Over 2 Weeks In - Emergency Stop Button Hit!!

Well, a disaster! A nightmare piece of bad luck which I didn’t even see coming, didn’t even know it had happened until 10 minutes after the event, and the result spelt disaster for the rest of day, with Caine going AWOL, increased staking and losses in total freefall as I tried to recover through a mist of anger and frustration.

Emergency stop button hit – All trading now stopped whilst the regrouping of the grey matter between my ears takes place.

To say I’m gutted is a bit of an understatement, but it’s happened as lady luck decided to punish a innocuous bad trade with a really serious smack in the mouth.

For the experienced out there who are now managing a wry smile and saying 'yeah, there's no such thing as bad luck, just bad trading', well, maybe so, but it's the first time I have ever done this type of trade, and so to get caught with such a large loss first time, was, in my opinion, just bad luck.

8 comments:

  1. Very bad luck mate, and I know its hard because I have been there so many times but hopefully you can get some positive from it eventually

    Tiger

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  2. DOn't take it too hard, dude. We've all been there and sometimes it is just down to bad luck. Luck evens out over time but when it bites you on the arse first time out, it's just plain bad. Keep the chin up!

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  3. Hello I have been reading your blog as I have just discovered this trading thing and I am looking around for inspiration. I empathise with your previous posts about things not going your way (I had to laugh because I could have posted identical comments!)
    From what I can see here, you haven't cracked it yet, so you have done exactly the right thing by stopping now. Don't put yourself under any more pressure by incurring losses that naturally you want to get back. To spend all week trading to end up with a loss must be so frustrating. I suggest going back to school and wath & re-watch and take notes on the videos on racingtraders.com for example. If you are going to trade with real money look to make pennies rather than pounds, then your loss won't be as hard to take (yes it will I know!) Only when you are constantly ending the day "green" should you raise your stakes, because then my friend you will be on your way up...

    Cheers.

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  4. That's twice you've blown your bank now in short periods of trying to trade. Sometimes you need to take a long hard look at yourself and decide if you really have the mentality for trading, seems to me you don't. That doesn't mean you can't train yourself to trade but it makes it a lot harder to stick to.

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  5. Tiger and Paul, thanks for the 'chin up' comments which is what we have to do when something has gone bad or tripped us up.

    Annonymous, thanks for taking the time to post. I must admit that stopping was the only alternative, as regrouping was the order of the day. One thing I can't do though is trade for pennies, as there are no real penalties if you call it wrong. I agree that it could be good practice, and it will give you good screen time for spotting trends etc, but I just sort of believe that you need to trade for real to see if you are cut out for this.

    Dave, I didn't blow the bank this time, just took what I consider to be a large hit, but you are right about taking a good hard look at myself. Thanks for your post. If there is one thing you cannot do in this type of job is ignore well meant advice.

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  6. Hi just stubbled across your blog and thought I'd stick in my two penneth whilst your starting up. Unless you've an endless pot of cash you really need to get the basics sorted out now before you learn bad habits that'll stick with you. I've been trading quite a few years now and still chase/throw away money on ill thought out bets. I'd imagine you're much the same as me and come from a gambling mentality into trading, I always think it's a lot easier for the younger traders as they don't have that mentality to assume they can fall back on.

    I think you're making a large mistake by believing you need to go in all guns blazing from the start and should use this time as serving your apprentiship to get the basics in place. I used to laugh at the blogs with amater traders posting up their 20p wins and losses but now realise they'll become the long term players whereas the up and down traders always disappear after a month or so. Have a look thru Leons blog as he's now cracked it after getting the basics right from the start.

    Trading isn't too hard but unless you can manage the losses you'll never be in profit by taking tick profits on the winning trades but large losses on the losing trades because you'd either gambled and let it run or just not redded out across the field.

    Assuming your recent loss is down to bad luck is just hiding the fact you hadn't managed the market properly just cos the horse was hidden from view is an excuse as you should always know the state of your markets and outstanding trades etc. If you get into the habit of thinking of things being good/bad luck you'll rely on those as excuses for any duff trade and lax management. Print out that trade and look at it every day before trading, beat yourself up about the following bad trades/bets you did but don't ever assume it was bad luck because it wasn't.

    OK lecture over :) On the plus side I believe you've over a £500 as a bank which is all I ever trade with and happily make £100-200 a day. With 40 odd races a day at the momemnt we're only looking at £3 a race so no need to take risky trades onboard.

    I'll try and make my next post a bit more positive etc but now's the time you ned to focus as to whether you'll last long term as it isn't hard if you're mindset is in a traders mode.

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  7. Excellent post Steve, I appreciate it. I only wish I had read it before I completely blew my topped up bank on an in play trade around 2 hours after you had sent this.
    One day, I will / may write about it, as right now it hurts like hell, but until then, I will take your post and my powerpoint print out of yesterday and put them both on my wall as a reminder of exactly what I should be doing, and what I am doing.

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  8. Don't get too downheartened about the duff trades/stupid bets as they'd come sooner or later and you'll do them again. Eventually you'll learn not to do them as they'll never pay off in the long run (overstaking,bad judgement etc). It's better they come early on and go against you rather than you getting away with it and you using those strategies as some sort of fallback when things go wrong later on.

    I've lost count of the times I've been £200 up then blown it and more by lazy bets like laying 20/1 shots for a £10 only to see it wipe out my profit, then go on the tilt and lose even more. I doubt there are many one horse layers out there who haven't been dismayed at their bad luck in laying 3 winners on the trot whereas they'd never ever be able to back three at those prices to win. Lots of reasons why this occurs and generally down to betfair odds being a pretty accurate reflection of the odds and just inevitable people will lay a winner now and then if they'd stuck to the same stake over time they'd break even (less commission) but the chase makes people overstake so when some winners come along they're with a higher stake than the majority of the winning bets.

    As for in-running trading/betting stear clear it's not a level playing field. I've done a bit of analysis of in-running using betfairs data and you won't win unless you're first in the queue with the fastest feeds.

    Spend a couple of days trading only, with reduced stakes, to see if your trading is actually profitable. I recently went through my 3 months history data thinking one of my bots was making cash only to see another bot was actually making more than I thought and carrying it. Wasn't making large losses but the point I'm making is it's easy to think all strategies are making money if you're up on the week. You need to make sure you can actually win at trading without any profits being swelled by some odd £5 lays here and there.

    Being an ex gambler turned trader is a bit like being an alcoholic you know you want that bet and it's fun but long term it's really not wise to mix and match unless you've put the effort into those bets and know long term they'll also win.

    You should also consider posting on Leons blog as there's a lot of helpful people on there.

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