Dead Mans Switch..

[PeterLe]

Hi
I know that in the main we are all in competition with each other, so often we dont like to share too much information on here about our techniques/strategies..but sometimes you may come up with an idea that wont detriment you own P&L..and here is one that I thought of today that may be of some use to someone else...

Since the summer I have been doing more and more pre race and football trading, and the stakes have been increasing too.
One thing that worries me is losing connection and losing control of the situation. (TRy scalping the 0-0 laying first with a £1000 at 13's and you will realate to what I'm thinking! ).. I have plenty of back up (inc a laminated sheet, with TAN numbers, Telephone numbers pre programed in to my phone (Thanks Andy F!), and I also recognise that there will be some markets that will be suspended with open positions (rare I hope). The law of averages state that these should cancel each other out over time..
However, I do think that it does affect you mentally knowing that if you were to lose connection you be faced with a 4 or 5 fig red..
One of the things I was thinking about today was a methodology called the "Dead Mans Switch" and how I could utilise it in my trading, this was something they used on the railways many years ago (Maybe even nowadays too?), it involved the train driver to keep his hand on a switch during normal operation and if/when he ever lost consciousness and his hand fell off the switch, the brakes would be applied automatically.
What I'm going to do on the VPS (and it may help others) is to write a simple macro that involves a form button that when clicked will put a value (Say 30) in a cell (Say cell 1) and then it is decremented in one second values.
I will then put a simple green_all command into cell L6 stating that if Cell 1 is even less than 2 then issue the Green_all command. In other words, if I havent clicked the button in 30 seconds (lost connection), close my positions for the best outcome.

I think this may help me concentrate more on the trading than contemplating losing connection..

Anyway; just a thought and maybe some one else may be able to adopt it too..

regards
Peter

PS Here's a wiki explanation :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man's_switch

[Euler]

I tend to use SP to act as my dead mans switch. Not perfect but better than a complete disaster.

[jimrobo]

I have 2 main internets I can swap between instantly. Failing that I have a 3g wireless network that will work in a powercut from my pc/laptop/ipad/iphone. I also have a vps set up on my phone I can access independantly to all of the above.

I personally wouldn;t want to mess with having to remember to press something every 30 seconds it would distract me too much from my trading. One thing I will say though is have a plan of action for when it does go down. The amount of times I have had my internet go down and I had that many backups I could have gone for I completely froze because i didn't know what to do first!

[PeterLe]

The amount of times I have had my internet go down and I had that many backups I could have gone for I completely froze because i didn't know what to do first!

ha ha I know what you mean Jim! been there done that!

Peter - I dont think I would sleep well at night relying on SP?? I dont know what the variance is from the pre race odds, but I have read tales in here about SP going off at crazy low odds?? Ok if you have backed but what if you have layed, before the off??