Trading What I see !?

[alexmr2]

A question on profitable a/c.

How much down in £ over how long did some keep going until they started to make money steadily, still at the stage where I have days where all goes ok, but then on 1 day a large move up or down against me wipes out the pluses or overall puts me in the red. Feel like I am on an escalator ... its all up then when I turn round back down again .. then up ... then down again.... which is ok in a way as long as you keep a slight bit in front, but to be honest its starting to feel a bit futile.

I'm slightly profitable over the last 60 days. I lost around £10k in the first 26 months of trading mainly using £100 banks. I know a couple of people that said it took them around 3 years and someone who lost around the same as me before turning it around. I've heard of a couple of people losing more than this then giving up which is why it's always a good idea to stick to small banks until you are consistent enough to be green at the end of the month.

Would be interested to know other people's experience as it's not often discussed. I don't like how a 6 months to profitability/making a living estimation is thrown around by some course sellers because it's extremely misleading. I feel like those that started earlier or that trade other sports probably lost less and done it quicker but now pre-off is one of the most competitive markets

[jamesg46]

A question on profitable a/c.

How much down in £ over how long did some keep going until they started to make money steadily, still at the stage where I have days where all goes ok, but then on 1 day a large move up or down against me wipes out the pluses or overall puts me in the red. Feel like I am on an escalator ... its all up then when I turn round back down again .. then up ... then down again.... which is ok in a way as long as you keep a slight bit in front, but to be honest its starting to feel a bit futile.

I'm slightly profitable over the last 60 days. I lost around £10k in the first 26 months of trading mainly using £100 banks. I know a couple of people that said it took them around 3 years and someone who lost around the same as me before turning it around. I've heard of a couple of people losing more than this then giving up which is why it's always a good idea to stick to small banks until you are consistent enough to be green at the end of the month.

Would be interested to know other people's experience as it's not often discussed. I don't like how a 6 months to profitability/making a living estimation is thrown around by some course sellers because it's extremely misleading. I feel like those that started earlier or that trade other sports probably lost less and done it quicker but now pre-off is one of the most competitive markets

You lost £10,000 using £100 banks? My advice (and I like you alot) give up!

[alexmr2]

A question on profitable a/c.

How much down in £ over how long did some keep going until they started to make money steadily, still at the stage where I have days where all goes ok, but then on 1 day a large move up or down against me wipes out the pluses or overall puts me in the red. Feel like I am on an escalator ... its all up then when I turn round back down again .. then up ... then down again.... which is ok in a way as long as you keep a slight bit in front, but to be honest its starting to feel a bit futile.

I'm slightly profitable over the last 60 days. I lost around £10k in the first 26 months of trading mainly using £100 banks. I know a couple of people that said it took them around 3 years and someone who lost around the same as me before turning it around. I've heard of a couple of people losing more than this then giving up which is why it's always a good idea to stick to small banks until you are consistent enough to be green at the end of the month.

Would be interested to know other people's experience as it's not often discussed. I don't like how a 6 months to profitability/making a living estimation is thrown around by some course sellers because it's extremely misleading. I feel like those that started earlier or that trade other sports probably lost less and done it quicker but now pre-off is one of the most competitive markets

You lost £10,000 using £100 banks? My advice (and I like you alot) give up!

And some bigger banks. I wouldn't say it's that bad of a tuition fee and would be surprised if people mastered pre off much quicker or by losing less

I don't give up plus it puts PC further away my trading has really started to change the last couple of months

[ShaunWhite]

Nice to see you back in the forum Shaun, it's a much better place when people like yourself are here engaging!

That's kind James thx.

I've been keen to get into automation for a long time now and have looked at Udemy but wouldn't know where to begin.
What type of course would you suggest Shaun? VBA or something else?

VBA would definatly be a great place to start. One of the coolest things about BA imo is the way they've made it so open, you can send lots of info to Excel and Excel can send info to BA. When I first got BA it was with the intention of just letting it deal with the tricky interfacing to Betfair, and I'd handle the data collection, analysis, live stats, transaction creation & results reporting etc etc in VBA. It didn't quite work out that way but it wasn't because it couldn't be done. Basically the plan was to sit BA at the centre of a bigger system, using BA as sort of a front office product and I'd bolt on all the back office stuff.

There might eventually be a time when you'd want to get a bit more hardcore and do the API stuff yourself rather than through BA, mainly to get some better data collection going such as 'recording' the whole data stream for later replay, and then you'd probably want to look at Python or C#. But going from VBA to one of those is easier than going straight to that imo, and VBA is way more useful in the short/med term. VBA is a fairly forgiving and 'readable' language and will definatly give you a general understanding of how you'd approach things in other languages. Programming languages aren't much different to regular languages, just a story (list of instructions) told with verbs (actions) and nouns (things) and adjectives (characteristics of the things). Moving from one language to another is 'just' a matter of learning different words and slightly different grammer (aka syntax).

Actually I think there's VBA example routines you can download that will handle the API too, so moving to Python or C# etc might not even be necessary. I had a slight change of approach with my trading, a bit of an epiphany, which meant my original plan changed and I was better off in the long run learning C#. BUT I'd had a career writing VB (like a grown up VBA) so moving to C# wasn't too much of a leap, and I became productive in it reasonably quicky (about 2 or 3 months). Starting from scratch I'd 100% recommend VBA because you can something going reasonably quickly (via BA) and get a confidence boost, doing it with another language that isn't quite so integrated with Excel (and therefore BA) leaves you with a hell of a lot of learning and work before you see anything vaguely useful.

I can't advocate programming enough, you go from "what can this software do" to "I can do anything I can ever imagine" and that's really liberating. Sort of fun too if you like making things (every man loves shed right?). You make a few useful parts and then stick them together in whatever ways you want to make different things. I've been coding on and off for 40yrs now and I still get a little buzz when you press a button and something actually happens.

[Derek27]

I'm slightly profitable over the last 60 days. I lost around £10k in the first 26 months of trading mainly using £100 banks. I know a couple of people that said it took them around 3 years and someone who lost around the same as me before turning it around. I've heard of a couple of people losing more than this then giving up which is why it's always a good idea to stick to small banks until you are consistent enough to be green at the end of the month.

Would be interested to know other people's experience as it's not often discussed. I don't like how a 6 months to profitability/making a living estimation is thrown around by some course sellers because it's extremely misleading. I feel like those that started earlier or that trade other sports probably lost less and done it quicker but now pre-off is one of the most competitive markets

You lost £10,000 using £100 banks? My advice (and I like you alot) give up!

And some bigger banks. I wouldn't say it's that bad of a tuition fee and would be surprised if people mastered pre off much quicker or by losing less

I don't give up plus it puts PC further away my trading has really started to change the last couple of months

My net deposits have never been greater than £100 in the lifetime of my account. But when I decided to focus on trading rather than betting I think I withdrew all my funds and left £50 or £100 in. It shouldn't cost much to learn to trade as long as you use small stakes until you're consistently profitable. There's nothing wrong with blowing a £100 bank and refunding a few times (I couldn't afford it at the time as I barely had any savings) but if you do it a hundred times your bank, which is effectively your entire trading capital, becomes meaningless. You must eventually feel when you're down to your last 20% it doesn't matter if you blow it as you can reload.

[alexmr2]

My net deposits have never been greater than £100 in the lifetime of my account. But when I decided to focus on trading rather than betting I think I withdrew all my funds and left £50 or £100 in. It shouldn't cost much to learn to trade as long as you use small stakes until you're consistently profitable. There's nothing wrong with blowing a £100 bank and refunding a few times (I couldn't afford it at the time as I barely had any savings) but if you do it a hundred times your bank, which is effectively your entire trading capital, becomes meaningless. You must eventually feel when you're down to your last 20% it doesn't matter if you blow it as you can reload.

I feel like it's taken me around 15k races of consistently losing to get a decent feel for how the market moves and make judgements how to enter and exit. In hindsight could I have sped it up and lost less by just watching the market and studying it for a pattern and using smaller stakes/practice mode more? Possibly, but there's a few reason I don't believe there's a shortcut;

There are so many different racing markets it's difficult to become familiar with the characteristics of each
You need to completely rewire yourself to think in probabilities and overcome your instincts of loss aversion and fear
To overcome greed you need to experience the pain of losing or you won't know the limits of what the market can give
The competition is so far ahead, you are competing with people who have been doing this 5, 10, 20 years so why would someone who has been doing it 1-2 years have a chance?

[Derek27]

My net deposits have never been greater than £100 in the lifetime of my account. But when I decided to focus on trading rather than betting I think I withdrew all my funds and left £50 or £100 in. It shouldn't cost much to learn to trade as long as you use small stakes until you're consistently profitable. There's nothing wrong with blowing a £100 bank and refunding a few times (I couldn't afford it at the time as I barely had any savings) but if you do it a hundred times your bank, which is effectively your entire trading capital, becomes meaningless. You must eventually feel when you're down to your last 20% it doesn't matter if you blow it as you can reload.

I feel like it's taken me around 15k races of consistently losing to get a decent feel for how the market moves and make judgements how to enter and exit. In hindsight could I have sped it up and lost less by just watching the market and studying it for a pattern and using smaller stakes/practice mode more? Possibly, but there's a few reason I don't believe there's a shortcut;

There are so many different racing markets it's difficult to become familiar with the characteristics of each
You need to completely rewire yourself to think in probabilities and overcome your instincts of loss aversion and fear
To overcome greed you need to experience the pain of losing or you won't know the limits of what the market can give
The competition is so far ahead, you are competing with people who have been doing this 5, 10, 20 years so why would someone who has been doing it 1-2 years have a chance?

Although I've been profitable near enough from the start I spent a couple of years not making much or making a good profit one month and losing 80% of it the next, made all the classic mistakes concerning greed, lose-aversion, letting a trade go in-play, etc. so I can see where you're coming from.

The reason it's possible for somebody who's just started trading to be profitable is that you're not really competing against the trader with 10 years experience but doing your own thing. For example, the experienced trader with a big balance puts his £1K's on the favourite causing a spike/drift on the third favourite that the newbie's watching. The newbie gets his £2 on the third favourite, the experienced trader closes his trade before the bounce back and the newbie does likewise - both winners.

[alexmr2]

My net deposits have never been greater than £100 in the lifetime of my account. But when I decided to focus on trading rather than betting I think I withdrew all my funds and left £50 or £100 in. It shouldn't cost much to learn to trade as long as you use small stakes until you're consistently profitable. There's nothing wrong with blowing a £100 bank and refunding a few times (I couldn't afford it at the time as I barely had any savings) but if you do it a hundred times your bank, which is effectively your entire trading capital, becomes meaningless. You must eventually feel when you're down to your last 20% it doesn't matter if you blow it as you can reload.

I feel like it's taken me around 15k races of consistently losing to get a decent feel for how the market moves and make judgements how to enter and exit. In hindsight could I have sped it up and lost less by just watching the market and studying it for a pattern and using smaller stakes/practice mode more? Possibly, but there's a few reason I don't believe there's a shortcut;

There are so many different racing markets it's difficult to become familiar with the characteristics of each
You need to completely rewire yourself to think in probabilities and overcome your instincts of loss aversion and fear
To overcome greed you need to experience the pain of losing or you won't know the limits of what the market can give
The competition is so far ahead, you are competing with people who have been doing this 5, 10, 20 years so why would someone who has been doing it 1-2 years have a chance?

Although I've been profitable near enough from the start I spent a couple of years not making much or making a good profit one month and losing 80% of it the next, made all the classic mistakes concerning greed, lose-aversion, letting a trade go in-play, etc. so I can see where you're coming from.

The reason it's possible for somebody who's just started trading to be profitable is that you're not really competing against the trader with 10 years experience but doing your own thing. For example, the experienced trader with a big balance puts his £1K's on the favourite causing a spike/drift on the third favourite that the newbie's watching. The newbie gets his £2 on the third favourite, the experienced trader closes his trade before the bounce back and the newbie does likewise - both winners.

The newbie lays at the top of the spike, it retraces 10 ticks and they hold on, the favourite reverses so the big trader exits for a loss with his £2k lay bet pushing the newbies position even further into the red I think the execution is so precise and requires so much judgement that can only be formed through screentime that a newbie just can't be consistent in the long term until they've had lots of practice

If two traders do the same thing (or opposite on opposing horses) then whichever one closes the trade first takes some of the profit away from the other one right? not exactly directly competing but still competing to take the most from a pool of money where for every winning £ there's a losing £

[Derek27]

The newbie lays at the top of the spike, it retraces 10 ticks and they hold on, the favourite reverses so the big trader exits for a loss with his £2k lay bet pushing the newbies position even further into the red I think the execution is so precise and requires so much judgement that can only be formed through screentime that a newbie just can't be consistent in the long term until they've had lots of practice

If two traders do the same thing (or opposite on opposing horses) then whichever one closes the trade first takes some of the profit away from the other one right? not exactly directly competing but still competing to take the most from a pool of money where for every winning £ there's a losing £

The scenario I gave was just an example of how they can both make a profit. Obviously, you can create your own account of how they lose but it doesn't change the situation that you don't need years of experience to become profitable. It's quite possible the newbie chooses to back the spike and catch a rebound while other traders are looking elsewhere and doing their own thing.

It might take years to become a big-time trader (which I'm not) but in any line, some people pick things up much quicker than others and some will find it's just not their cup of tea.

[rik]

The competition is so far ahead, you are competing with people who have been doing this 5, 10, 20 years so why would someone who has been doing it 1-2 years have a chance?

you cant say it like that
ive been profitable almost from the start and know several guys that have been, it might be a bit harder nowadays, the markets for sure getting a bit sharper over time but your not competing in a heads up battle on all sports against the best guys
you can pick your niche and play against everyone, done have to play if your not sure of your edge etc

skills are transferable if you have a degree in math or statistics or good programming skills, obviously that will give you an advantage regardless of betting experience

its not like sports, where you will have a hard time reaching a high level if youve not trained your coordination and engrained specific techniques from a young age

depending on who your counting you probably have to be in the top 0,1% to make a significant income, but then 90% of that is drunk sports fans and much of the rest might not be motivated enough to put a sustained effort or maybe lack the right mindset, just have to look at the betting forums its the same nonsense over and over definitely dont have to be a genius to be ahead there

in the end betting/trading is like playing sports, a competition so should not "trade what you see" but "what you see that others dont" or ask yourself "what can i do different/better to others" and make a list of that.
hopping on some long established trend thats obvious to anyone able to look at a graph wont be the right approach.

[goat68]

The competition is so far ahead, you are competing with people who have been doing this 5, 10, 20 years so why would someone who has been doing it 1-2 years have a chance?

you cant say it like that
ive been profitable almost from the start and know several guys that have been, it might be a bit harder nowadays, the markets for sure getting a bit sharper over time but your not competing in a heads up battle on all sports against the best guys
you can pick your niche and play against everyone, done have to play if your not sure of your edge etc

skills are transferable if you have a degree in math or statistics or good programming skills, obviously that will give you an advantage regardless of betting experience

its not like sports, where you will have a hard time reaching a high level if youve not trained your coordination and engrained specific techniques from a young age

depending on who your counting you probably have to be in the top 0,1% to make a significant income, but then 90% of that is drunk sports fans and much of the rest might not be motivated enough to put a sustained effort or maybe lack the right mindset, just have to look at the betting forums its the same nonsense over and over definitely dont have to be a genius to be ahead there

in the end betting/trading is like playing sports, a competition so should not "trade what you see" but "what you see that others dont" or ask yourself "what can i do different/better to others" and make a list of that.
hopping on some long established trend thats obvious to anyone able to look at a graph wont be the right approach.

Im sorry but a number of the posts above by people really annoy me.. they are not very empathic to what others are saying. Imagine how you would feel if you had lost 1000s over years, and then someone comes along and says oh i was profitable from the start...?
Do you not think those people have been trying just as hard or harder than you?
Rik, just look at a few words you just said, trade "what you see that others don't"?
So go on, what is it that those that are busting a gut and 1000s £ not seeing?

[beermonsterman]

Holy smokes
I've missed out again getting my 2 pence in here

[Anbell]

That's an odd post.

[beermonsterman]

That's an odd post.

cant be as odd as some of the stuff I've just read in here from yesterday very mixed bag of opinions

[Anbell]

That's an odd post.

cant be as odd as some of the stuff I've just read in here from yesterday very mixed bag of opinions

Sorry - I was referring to GOAT's post