Blew over half my bank last weekend - need advice!

[ShaunWhite]

Yeah, what I've been doing is continuing with 2-3% liability stakes of my initial starting bank even when I was significantly down. So say I've started with £500 and my liability was £10 per trade. When my bank was down to £300 I'd still continue with £10 liability per trade.

I was thinking, that if I continuously adjust my liability to be proportional to my available bank at the time, it will not be clear if my strategy is working long term, since the returns on each trade I win would vary too much.

That's why your bank got such a big hit. It doesn't really matter what your initial bank was a week or a month ago what's important is how big it is now. And if your bank had grown to 2 grand would you still be using tenners?

[jimibt]

Yeah, what I've been doing is continuing with 2-3% liability stakes of my initial starting bank even when I was significantly down. So say I've started with £500 and my liability was £10 per trade. When my bank was down to £300 I'd still continue with £10 liability per trade.

I was thinking, that if I continuously adjust my liability to be proportional to my available bank at the time, it will not be clear if my strategy is working long term, since the returns on each trade I win would vary too much.

That's why your bank got such a big hit. It doesn't really matter what your initial bank was a week or a month ago what's important is how big it is now. And if your bank had grown to 2 grand would you still be using tenners?

shaun, i agree with the point here. bank management is ALL about protecting and conversely utilising the available funds. Thus, a £300 bank should be staking far less than a £3k bank. at the same time, I *get* the objective (up to a point) in trying to measure success by using the same staking, however, there are better ways to measure this success by taking into account current bankroll.

if anything, £200 is a very cheap lesson, given all the advice and points mentioned thus far.

[Alexander_99]

Yeah, what I've been doing is continuing with 2-3% liability stakes of my initial starting bank even when I was significantly down. So say I've started with £500 and my liability was £10 per trade. When my bank was down to £300 I'd still continue with £10 liability per trade.

I was thinking, that if I continuously adjust my liability to be proportional to my available bank at the time, it will not be clear if my strategy is working long term, since the returns on each trade I win would vary too much.

That's why your bank got such a big hit. It doesn't really matter what your initial bank was a week or a month ago what's important is how big it is now. And if your bank had grown to 2 grand would you still be using tenners?

Ok, at what point should I have reduced my liability? When I was down by a £100? Or more?

In general, suppose I start with X money. Buy what percentage of my bank should I be down by, before I start readjusting my liability size?

[ShaunWhite]

As to your question about monthly return on investment - I don't know. I guess since there is so much variance in football, it could vary a lot from months to month depending on the amount of trades... I guess maybe around 15-20% return over a 1000 trades?

Psychoff when he opened his blog a decade ago went from 5000 (or less) to 100,000 in 6 months - are such returns even possible nowdays? Was it significantly easier to profit from football in that era?

I'm no football specialist but if it's fairly typical then returns would be low single figures (<5%) rather than 15 or 20%.That might give you a better idea of what are sensible profits to take.

I'd suggest you stop using Psychoff as a benchmark, that's like a new artist expecting to be a DaVinci or a kid kicking a ball thinking they're Pele. (topical references ). For the next 6 months at least your target is simply breaking even.

I'd say returns like that are possible still, but as I alluded to above, when there's X00, 000 Betfair users and you know the big players by name, that tells you they're as rare as rocking horse shit. It also tells you he aggressively scaled his stakes rather than using a percentage of his initial bank

[trader44]

Alexander i Couldnt agree more with derek on this point " Money management is one of the most important, yet overlooked skills amongst new traders." it took me way to long to really see the importance of this and remember physcoff blew his bank when he first started and walked away from trading and was done with it for quite a long time..it really drives home to me the fact why so few are successful long term at this..i count myself among the few who are managing to make it pay but fook me i have been in the trenches so many times with trading
( mainly the mental side of it ie discipline greed etc ) and had to take a real honest look at myself before to enable myself to change..listen to the people on here and take on board what they are saying and learn from it because they have been there and got the t shirt .i found this video on money management helpful maybe you might .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es07T6Ft7aA

[ShaunWhite]

Ok, at what point should I have reduced my liability? When I was down by a £100? Or more?

In general, suppose I start with X money. Buy what percentage of my bank should I be down by, before I start readjusting my liability size?

Like all trading, what happened 5 mins ago is aincient history, you need to consider your bank at the start of each trade. So if your bank is down to 495 or up to 505 then your liability should be adjusted.

That said...... Fiddling about with pennies is pretty pointless so levels (maybe £50 bank steps? ) rather than strict balances would be sensible. Also..... Not all trades should have the same level of investment. Staking should correlate with confidence. You can have £5 suck it and see trades, and £50 "certainties'.

At the end of the day sports trading is just buying and selling stuff, if you see an absolute bargain then pile in, if you just want a bit of interest then just buy or sell a few quids worth. The problem for newer people is differentiating between the good and not so good deals.

[Kai]

Hit the nail on the head there regarding bank preservation, you can see why newer traders ignore proper money management, the topic is just too damn boring compared to the excitement of chasing jackpots

But everyone has to learn the boring stuff too unfortunately, in order to get to the exciting stuff in the first place.

[ShaunWhite]

Yep, money management is key. Both for preserving your working capital and for scaling up when you've cracked it.

To be fair to newer traders, unless you understand likely returns then its importance is hard to appreciate. Ex-gamblers might not worry about being 50% down because they think a big one is round the corner. Once they realise trading is about making £1.20 60% of the time and losing £1.00 40% of the time then it puts a whole new perspective on it.

I've trotted out this saying ad nausium, "don't run out of money before you run out of lessons to learn". If you want an anecdote to support that, I first started trading in 2005. I was &%^*ing useless and blew 5 figures before I'd really got going. I didn't even log into Betfair for almost 10yrs disillusioned and broke. In early 2016 I came back to it older and wiser, this time it's been a very different story. I actually still lost for longer than I latest the first time, well over a year, but I kept my discipline and slowly turned the corner and (touch wood) I'm doing OK.

Biggest change for me was realising that if Tiger Woods wins the Masters, it's not the 20ft putt on the 18th that does it, it's the 10,000 hrs of practice. Same with trading, clicking the mouse and placing the trade is the 20ft putt but it's the long tough hours and time/money investment that determines whether it goes in the hole.

[ShaunWhite]

Lol this tread is showing why we're all working on our own. Give us a chance to stand around the water cooler chatting and f-all gets done

[Derek27]

I was thinking, that if I continuously adjust my liability to be proportional to my available bank at the time, it will not be clear if my strategy is working long term, since the returns on each trade I win would vary too much.

This thread's moved on somewhat so I'm not sure if this has been covered, but if you bet proportionally to your bank, either your losses will be smaller or your profits will be bigger.

[Kai]

Lol this tread is showing why we're all working on our own. Give us a chance to stand around the water cooler chatting and f-all gets done

Truer words were never spoken Shaun, spot on yet again I too think that threads like these are exactly the water cooler chat equivalent for traders, you can almost sense that some of us are close to desperate for a bit of social interaction after so much lonesome grinding on the never-ending markets

It's funny, I actually got permabanned from Reddit a few days ago for trolling too much, no idea how it's even possible to get banned from a place where trolling is allowed and welcome lol, but luckily they unbanned me on the following day after a successful "appeal"

[Alexander_99]

Ok, at what point should I have reduced my liability? When I was down by a £100? Or more?

In general, suppose I start with X money. Buy what percentage of my bank should I be down by, before I start readjusting my liability size?

Like all trading, what happened 5 mins ago is aincient history, you need to consider your bank at the start of each trade. So if your bank is down to 495 or up to 505 then your liability should be adjusted.

Oh wow - do people really do that? Reconsider their bank at every single trade and adjust their liability accordingly? Isn't that a bit of an overkill?

Another thing. Shaun (and Kai) you suggested riding the trend and strategies like backing the current score in a game that is perceived to be "boring". Isn't that trading without any value, because then the odds you take are gonna be pretty low? Or do you not care about value with this strategy, like with scalping?

[Archery1969]

Ok, at what point should I have reduced my liability? When I was down by a £100? Or more?

In general, suppose I start with X money. Buy what percentage of my bank should I be down by, before I start readjusting my liability size?

Like all trading, what happened 5 mins ago is aincient history, you need to consider your bank at the start of each trade. So if your bank is down to 495 or up to 505 then your liability should be adjusted.

Oh wow - do people really do that? Reconsider their bank at every single trade and adjust their liability accordingly? Isn't that a bit of an overkill?

No it’s not over kill.

If your winning then your next stake will increase and if your losing then your next stake will decrease accordingly.

The aim of the game (forgive the pun) while your learning is to stay in the game for as long as possible. If you are losing consistently then adjusting your stakes down will at least allow you to lose allot slower. The reverse is true if you are consistently winning.

[Alexander_99]

Just finished watching and trading Reims vs Strasbourg and Zaragoza vs Gijon matches.

My prematch analysis made me pretty certain that Zaragoza were going to win their game, while Reims vs Strasbourg was going to be a tight, low scoring affair, with Reims probably emerging on top.

Zaragoza scored very early, their price dropped to 1.40. They were well on top of the match and I decided to follow the trend and back them at 1.40 with 2% liability. I kept my position till the end and they ended winning 2-0.

I watched the opening of Reims match and decided it''s worth backing a draw at 3.05 and also under 2.5 market at 1.50 with 2% liability (each trade) due to my prematch analysis and also the game intensity was on the low side, although definitely not as low as I would have liked. Therefore, I decided to trade out of my position about 20 mins later, with a tiny profit. Reims were dominating all of the first half. Then suddenly in 2nd half Reims got a red card and momentum swung in Strasbourg's favour, and they started attacking more and more. Watching the last 20 mins, the over 0.5 market in Reims game was as high as 2.7 on 73 min already, while in Zaragoza game it was around 2.1. In my opinion this pricing was not quite right - given that Strasbourg were attacking quite strongly, I would have priced overs market a bit less than 2.7.

Therefore, I decided to lay the draw in Reims game on around 81 min (on around 1.3) and back over 0.5 market (on around 3.9). I wasn't too sure about this one, so only used 1% liability on both trades. A few mins later Strasbourg hit the post. But the final result stayed 0-0.

Did nothing else in Zaragoza game.

[ShaunWhite]

Re Boring game 'value'. The value you're exploiting in that case is the likelihood of a goal vs the amount the odds will decay per min. If you think there's a 10% chance of there being a goal in the next 20mins and the risk/reward (ie cost/profit of being right or being wrong) is > 10% then it's a good trade. By understanding how odds decay and how they move after a goal (try looking at Soccer Mystic) you can pretty accurately determine what the price will be if there are no goals or a goal for either team at any time in the future.

Remember that unlike a bet you aren't playing to the whistle. You're looking at what profit or loss is available over the short term as well as the long term. If a player has a bad injury and is on the ground for 5 mins it's perfectly possible to steal a tick or two without the ball being kicked as the odds tick inexorably towards 1000 or 1.01.

You mention trading late to reduce the risk of something happening, well is the last 5mins any less action packed than the first 5 mins, or from 40-45? You're trading a 5 min decay, doesn't really matter when that 5 mins is. Or if you want you can trade 18 x 5minute trades in a game. When you read about guys doing 100s of football trades they might just be in 4 or 5 games. Many many trades per game not just one. In/out/in/out etc.

I also see you're backing/laying multiple markets rather than trading in and out of one. Doing that you're going to be hammered with commission. Make £10 on one market and you pay 20p. Make £110 on one market and lose £100 on another and you pay £2.20.