LeTiss 4pm wrote:
I absolutely love all the psychological aspects of trading, I find it fascinating - it's the hurdle which trips so many people
I think you've hit the nail on the head there (and Jolly has just explained that on another post).
In the Blog world, you see so many new blogs with people show their P&L where they have used £2 stakes and produced a profit at the end of the day of £2.17, maybe trading 24 out of 26 races successfully..
The problem arises when you start using £200 stakes. the mechanics are just the same (ok it takes slightly longer to get filled etc)
It takes a great leap of faith in yourself to do that.
I remember the first time I started using £50 stakes, it was so nerve racking! Now I tend not to use less than £100 pre race (I know I can get in and out for a scratch if need be), unless its one of the All Weather courses on a Monday night! That comes with experience
I dont know if it helps, but the way I convinced myself as to the potential risks was to setup some auto trades and just let them go for the full day. I posted on here somewhere that even trading at random you will lose very little, so if you can just apply a little logic you can move into profitability. Once you have that knowledge that youre not going to lose much, its a big weight off your shoulders
There is a blog post by Peter somewhere where he entered the market at midday and traded out just before the off. Again, it broke even or thereabouts. That same system with some logic applied returned around 600 I recall.
It is a psychological thing, its easier said that done, but you have to acquire it somehow
regards
Peter
PS Jeff; I just started to reread that book, but I stopped after the second chapter. Why? Well it was starting to raise new questions in my head and I decided to stop before it altered something in my mind! Sometimes you can over complicate things.
A favorite quote of mine is "Good enough is good enough!"