I agree that looking at others P&L isn't a good idea, especially when you don't know how it was done or what the motivation for it is.
Zenyatta wrote:I can understand why Peter is keen to rope people into this (he's running a business after all), but pre-race trading is not the place for the average Joe to be.
No offence intended as it's not aimed at you, but if there is one thing that annoys me it's when I see people saying that I post P&L's to boost business. I'm probably the only person in the business that has earned substantially more from doing it that flogging stuff to do with it. It's not uncommon for trading to gross more than the business. Trading only involves myself, of course, so it's a much easier thing to do and involves little cost.
The reason I post up is to inspire others and to show people I'm a man of my words. The markets is totally stuffed full of rip off merchants who sell you the dream but don't actually do it. Some of them, fairly obviously, have never traded seriously. So its important for me to show you that I go throught he same highs and lows as everybody and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is; in terms of using the product and being actively involved at large risk in the market. I conciously don't post my bigger totals, half my thought process is if people have difficulty believing what I do post, they wouldn't never believe some of the larger stuff. Also on things like football I tend to use very large stakes which are beyond the average joe. I've often wondered at times if things would be better if I wasn't involved with the software at all.
The reason inplay stuff 'feels' better than pre off is because the average range of volatility is much higher than pre off. So the chance of a pay off inplay occurs more frequently. The problem with inplay of course is that a lot of money gets swept off the table before you even know what has happened. As long as you are aware of that you can take account of it.
The reason I do racing so much is because there is so much of it. I can dip in and out of it when I wish and it's pretty much 365 days a year. It's my bread and butter. The low quality stuff can be horrible, but all markets present potential opporunties if you apply roughly the right trading strategy.
I tend to be a market watcher. I don't attempt to predict in advance what is happening, I just tend to read what I see if front of me and act on it. Simple, but very effective.