Drawdown

[THENUTS]

As a successful sports trader , should you expect to see big swings in your bankroll ?

I'm trying to compare it to proffessional poker players that often experience big swings in their bankroll as they are still making the same correct decisions but it just does not always play out the way you expect it to. You are getting your money in correctly but it goes against you. Over time if you are always getting your money in as a 60% favourite the maths will always ensure your banroll is healthy but the 40% comes up a lot of the time as well and you just have to keep the faith.

Does the same principal apply to sports trading or should you just expect to see steady increases all the time.

Also , what time periods should you measure against. Can you have losing months or even losing quarters or should a one month period always be positive ?

I underatand there are many different strategies that could influence the above but to hear what kind of varience you pro's out there actually experience would be very interesting

[freddy]

As you said it really depends on what your methods are.
I don’t think that there would be many long term profitable pre race traders that would have many losing weeks.

But for people who are laying 1.01 in running then yes if would happen.

Bad weeks for me tend to be me making 100-00 quid rather than losing 5k.
And losing weeks generally only happen occasionally when the Betfair crashes
or other such tech fails.

[THENUTS]

Thanks Freddy - good to know. Don't know if its too cheeky to ask but i will anyway - Do you tend to swing trade and close quick if it goes wrong and let the winners run up or are you more of a scalper ?

[freddy]

I would say both, depending on the market.

[Alpha322]

As a successful sports trader , should you expect to see big swings in your bankroll ?

I'm trying to compare it to proffessional poker players that often experience big swings in their bankroll as they are still making the same correct decisions but it just does not always play out the way you expect it to. You are getting your money in correctly but it goes against you. Over time if you are always getting your money in as a 60% favourite the maths will always ensure your banroll is healthy but the 40% comes up a lot of the time as well and you just have to keep the faith.

Does the same principal apply to sports trading or should you just expect to see steady increases all the time.

Also , what time periods should you measure against. Can you have losing months or even losing quarters or should a one month period always be positive ?

I underatand there are many different strategies that could influence the above but to hear what kind of varience you pro's out there actually experience would be very interesting

If i lost 10 trades in a row thats it for the day for me however if i had that 6 days of the week i would lose 30% of my bankroll, i think anymore than 30% is to hard to bring back unless you take death diving risks

[THENUTS]

Thanks for the insight Guys - very interesting to me.
Without boring everyone to death i have gone through ( i think ) the part of the trading journey where i continually lose and have no idea whats going on ( unconcious incompetant ) to realising what i'm doing was madness but still doing it ( concious incompetant ).

I have got through that and started to work out what i need to do to become profitable ( conciously competant ) and was evens for a while and i have now started to move into small but consistent profit hence these questions to try and move myself to the next level.

Alpha - if my maths are right then you only risk 0.5% of your bankroll on a trade which is interesting. It seemed to me that 1-2% percent was the norm. Would you say you are conservative or is that pretty standard ?