Why Stake at 2^x?

[Kai]

there are all kinds of amazing things that one can do by analyzing order flow and by playing around with reverse engineering in general, don't remember that being discussed anywhere and probably for good reason.

It is usually the stuff you don't read and see that is worth 'reading' and 'seeing' if you spend time thinking about things. There are often so many clues in Peter's videos, I suspect a lot of the time on purpose that require you to spend time thinking about what he has said but also often what he didn't say.

Absolutely, I've found that a lot of people drop all kinds of hints, some less subtle than others, so it's not a bad idea to have a quick look at what others have to say. I like to keep tabs on a number of good traders, Peter included, you never know what new ideas they may spark and some of the info/data they share can always be useful, they're literally doing some of the work for you so why not use it if they were kind enough to share it. Some hints are obviously purposely aimed at the right type of trader, because surely others won't be able to pick up on them due to inexperience etc. So I agree that it is important to read between the lines, in general as well, since a lot of people don't even realize just how much they actually reveal by posting a random screenshot etc.

Although I'm not a fan of people being unnecessarily cryptic with their messages just to tease others because they've found some edge (big deal), I don't really find that annoying like some people but I believe that knowledge should be shared as much as possible, even in trading which is difficult enough without people being dicks to each other. After all, you can't do too much wrong if you become a student of the market before you become a trader. I prefer to flat out say what I want to say, unfortunately sometimes you have to generalize a bit, but if I find something to be too valuable to be shared then I won't even mention it, no point in "risking" someone figuring it out and sending a couple of bots your way, or something along those lines.

[Derek27]

Depends what your lowest stake is. I go as low as £8 on low-liquid/higher price horses or I might open a £64 trade and close with 16-16-16-8-8.

But did you choose £8 because that was the stake you wanted, why not £10? Or did you choose it because it's a factor in the 2^x progression and £4 was lower than you wanted and £16 too high? Which came first the £8 chicken or the 2^3 egg?

I chose £8 because 8 and 128 are round (binary) numbers whereas 10 and 160 are not. Don't forget that you're never limited to your stake selection box and can always manually change them so it's just a question of what you use most.

[Euler]

Most of my videos have binary staking but not all, maybe it's a double bluff?

The best stake to use is a prime number if you want to remain hidden. But ultimately all stake is wasted if the strategy doesn't work. So it's a subset of a successful strategy.

[firlandsfarm]

I chose £8 because 8 and 128 are round (binary) numbers whereas 10 and 160 are not. Don't forget that you're never limited to your stake selection box and can always manually change them so it's just a question of what you use most.

But what is the relevance of round binary numbers ... you can't bet stakes of 1000 or 10000000. In the absence of any substantial explanation I'm thinking the reason is simply one of personal choice and not one adding any value. Maybe when staking at levels of £1000 (maybe that should be £1024 ) you can spot certain stakes but if the stake is around £100 it will just get lost in the trading wash of popular markets.

[firlandsfarm]

The best stake to use is a prime number if you want to remain hidden.

Why is that? I only studied Pure Maths to A level and have read Bill Gates's book The Road Ahead where he discusses the use of Prime Numbers in encryption but a prime number is an exclusive function of multiplication whereas the available money for an odd is a function of addition and subtraction.

[Euler]

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-o ... me-numbers

[Euler]

Ultimately, the most important thing with the stake is to have it at multiples. So you can scale your stake in and out of the market and control your exposure easily and quickly.

[Derek27]

I chose £8 because 8 and 128 are round (binary) numbers whereas 10 and 160 are not. Don't forget that you're never limited to your stake selection box and can always manually change them so it's just a question of what you use most.

But what is the relevance of round binary numbers ... you can't bet stakes of 1000 or 10000000. In the absence of any substantial explanation I'm thinking the reason is simply one of personal choice and not one adding any value. Maybe when staking at levels of £1000 (maybe that should be £1024 ) you can spot certain stakes but if the stake is around £100 it will just get lost in the trading wash of popular markets.

Powers of 2 appear round to me even in decimal. I know off the top of my head that 2^24=16,777,216 because that was the size of my Windows 98 swap file that I kept seeing in DOS directory listings. But I wasn't talking from the point of view of hiding your stakes, my orders aren't big enough to worry about.

[Derek27]

I only studied Pure Maths to A level...

That sounds far enough to me.

[firlandsfarm]

Powers of 2 appear round to me even in decimal. I know off the top of my head that 2^24=16,777,216

They just appear even to me and 2^64 is more grains of rice than the harvest of the kingdom (if you know that story )

[ShaunWhite]

I only studied Pure Maths to A level...

me too... I got an Ungraded And in Applied Maths I got an "O" - O-level equivalent.
I didn't even know they went that low!

Thankfully that horror show was 40yrs ago

[firlandsfarm]

I only studied Pure Maths to A level ...

Probability was limited to whether a question referred to mutually exclusive events or not (multiply their individual probabilities as in an accumulator or add them as in the runners in a race) and prime numbers was limited to their definition. I wasn't until I read Bill Gates's book The Road Ahead that I got my first inkling that there might be more to prime numbers than just a peculiarity!

[Derek27]

I only studied Pure Maths to A level...

me too... I got an Ungraded And in Applied Maths I got an "O" - O-level equivalent.
I didn't even know they went that low!

Thankfully that horror show was 40yrs ago

Maths can be immensely helpful to a trader. The problem is most people of our age will have forgotten most of it by now!

[Xeres]

As I child I was always fascinated by 2^x, even before I knew what a power was, I would just try and work out the largest one in my head so maybe thats why my stakes are set up that way.

I did have 5, 10, 20 but I wanted 50 and 100, problem then is but scaling your bets doesn't quite work.