Bet Nightmare

[Iron]

Hi Tony

I bet most successful traders went through a period of losing money hand over fist before they worked out what they needed to do - both technically and psychologically.

I think consistent failure in gambling or trading is a sign that you need to re-evaluate your approach, not give up. Over the years, I've lost thousands of pounds through indiscipline and using poor methods. But in the last month, I've made about 3K from gambling. So I can attest from personal experience that it is possible to turn things around.

The reason I advocate spread betting rather than trading on Betfair is simply that it's an easier beast to trade. For a start, you don't need to make split-second decisions. And there are tried and tested trading methodologies where little subjective judgment is required.

Jeff

jeff,

Instead, I keep making a fool out of myself, I losing every day which stirs up painful negative emotions like anger, hatred, envy, jealousy. I seem to be destroying any positive self image that I have of myself as I am constantly reminded everyday that I'm a loser.

sounds like someone who is suffering from the psychological bad side effects of trading bad, not struggling with technical understanding to me.

the geezer is slowly spiralling out of control,

must have spent the best part of £2K so far on this so called opportunity. Can anyone relate to what I'm going through? Am I just throwing away good money after bad? Do I cut my losses and run? If I can just persevere a while longer, riches may be just around the corner.

he needs to stop.

advising him to spread bet is just plain irresponsable.

i realise this forum is about helping/aiding/advising/encouring each other, nothing wrong with that, but if you offer advice think about what your saying and who you are offering it to. understand the context of what the fella is saying.

regards tony.

[Iron]

Hi Martin

So is your assumption that, in such races, the price of horses ridden by the top jockeys will generally fall?

Assuming the price goes against you, how do you determine when to close your trade?

Cheers

Jeff

hi jeff
the sport you enjoy,horse racing is ideal trading for me. read the racing post looking for smale races with 5-8 runners.and follow quality jockeys, example today hayley turner,ascot 220 barshiba,backing her in the morning.and trading inplay this was my first and last trading today,made 3%.

trade the sport you love,make some profit,call it a day.

need some sleep,

martin

[Online Trader]

I

I've made about 3K from gambling. So I can attest from personal experience that it is possible to turn things around.

But that is not trading is it, there is a huge difference between gambling and trading

[hgodden]

Most people don't make money from trading any more than from any other gold rush, be it spread betting, backing / laying, internet marketing, ebay etc etc.

There's no shame in realising you can't do this, the vast majority simply can't, that's an undeniable fact. Maybe just maybe if you carry on then you might make it, but the odds on that would likely be quite high.

Personally I think that no one can afford to approach learning to trade as something that will save their situation if they are unemployed, you just can't bank on making it work, no one can. There may be a virtue in not giving up (an you certainly need to be resolute to do this and take a lot of disappointment on the chin and yet still come back for more if you're going to make it) but there's also stuboness here and in the same way that chasing your losses is only likely to end in trouble in betting, so most likely would continuing to invest your time and money in something that isn't working.

IMO the only way people can responsibly learn trading properly is if they can do it part time while they are working and, while putting everything into it, are not investing their whole future in the project. That or if you are in a position where you have a huge amount of funds and are prepared to take a year or so out to learn, but still accept the fact that most likely you will not succeed.

[Iron]

That's debatable. Essentially with both you placing a series of bets that something will happen, using a pre-defined risk. So whilst they are technically very different, they are very similar in terms of the psychological traits required to succeed (being focused and disciplined, not getting disheartened after a losing streak, etc).

Jeff

I

I've made about 3K from gambling. So I can attest from personal experience that it is possible to turn things around.

But that is not trading is it, there is a huge difference between gambling and trading

[hgodden]

I think also in fairness no one really need lose money trading. I went months only using £2 stakes and once I had found an edge I moved them up. The other advantage is that you don't worry about the money (which is natural enough when you're risking some and you're unsure of your strategies), you keep focusing on the markets as you should

[Iron]

I think that, with the right teaching and the proper approach, everyone can make money from trading.

The cliche 'where there's a will, there's a way' is very true.

However, I agree that you should only trade with money that you can afford to lose. Even if you do know what you're doing, trading with the rent money probably isn't a good idea!

Jeff

Most people don't make money from trading any more than from any other gold rush, be it spread betting, backing / laying, internet marketing, ebay etc etc.

There's no shame in realising you can't do this, the vast majority simply can't, that's an undeniable fact. Maybe just maybe if you carry on then you might make it, but the odds on that would likely be quite high.

Personally I think that no one can afford to approach learning to trade as something that will save their situation if they are unemployed, you just can't bank on making it work, no one can. There may be a virtue in not giving up (an you certainly need to be resolute to do this and take a lot of disappointment on the chin and yet still come back for more if you're going to make it) but there's also stuboness here and in the same way that chasing your losses is only likely to end in trouble in betting, so most likely would continuing to invest your time and money in something that isn't working.

IMO the only way people can responsibly learn trading properly is if they can do it part time while they are working and, while putting everything into it, are not investing their whole future in the project. That or if you are in a position where you have a huge amount of funds and are prepared to take a year or so out to learn, but still accept the fact that most likely you will not succeed.

[npatel999]

Hi,The first thing I would recommend is to get a job even a part-time one as there's nothing worse than not having a job and losing money on Betfair. The 2nd recommendation is stop thinking about getting rich through trading not because you can't be rich trading on exchanges but that seems to be a barrier for most.

I would recommend trading with a view to preserving the money you have left and learn by experience. In order to learn, I would recommend you write down what you tried to achieve, what went right what and went wrong on each of the market you trade. This will slow you down no doubt but it will be worth it as I'm sure you'll discover that there are certain wrong things that occur frequently that increase your losses and certain things that work in your favour more times than not.

There's no silver bullet when it comes to trading (as most things in life) but it's not rocket science either. By writing down things that work and things that dont't, you will increase your understanding of how different markets exhibit different characteristics and how you need to use different approach to deal in them. I've been culprit of making same mistakes over and over again (e.g. leaving open position in play, greening up in play, let losses mount in a hope of the movement coming back etc.) but only by writing down and keep reminding myself I'm beginning to a light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm not there yet so take it with a pinch of salt but try to build your knowledge base through writing down your experience and stop thinking about getting rich quick.

BTW please stay away from strategies, spread betting, and god know what else that gets peddled on internet to get people to be rich in an instant. Stick to trading before event for now and see how you go.

[mikesalter]

I am in the early stages of learning to trade, I started in Feb and have ramped up to 1 or 2 trading days a week, usually saturdays but sometimes sundays. I started to learn with my son, a mathematician, and sent him on the trading course where he came back with some advice. We put £60 in Betfair and trade at £2 only. We lost £30 at first due to stupidity, Laying twice by mistake cost me £6.50, my son put a bet on for his mate which cost me £7 (I closed him out after that) and he also lost another £12 because he started trying to trade with £10 (the impatience of youth). For the past month my account has stayed around £30 and on Saturday I made a profit on racing of 26p and also had a very good foray into T20 cricket with a profit of 52p on 3 £2 BTL trades.

I know nothing of horse racing but found my knowledge of Cricket helped. I also mad a profit yesterday on horses (4p one trade). My point is that patience is the key, I am learning to trade before I try to make money. I am finishing my job in 4 weeks taking voluntary redundancy and will have funds to last 20 months even if trading doesn't make a profit and until I am making a weekly profit at every stake level I will not increase my stakes. Likewise if loose at a stake level consistently I will go back a stake level. The target is £120 a day to recover my current net salary, anything else would be a bonus. I believe you could continue to trade just don't try to make any money out of it.

I am assuming that once I start to make a consisant profit I will be able to steadily ramp up to actually make a living out of it but I am going into it open minded and recognise its my decision. If I end up loosing my investment in Betangel and the course my impetuous son went on then it was my decision, I do not believe I have been miss sold anything. Its like any business, the failure rate is 10 - 1 and this is similar to any other business I have ever heard of. The two constants with all the successful business men and women I have ever met is hard work and not too greedy in the early stages.

[PeterLe]

Hi Mike,
I've been trying to be made redundant for the last two years!...This year with a bit of luck...

Re: £120/Day (£3600/Month)...well there are approx 800 Races a month in the summer (from memory) so you would have to average around £4.50 race...so it's not too bad when you think of it like that...

Regards
Peter

[Iron]

Hi Peter

I was recently made redundant, and I honestly think it's the best thing that's happened to me in ages!

It's given me the opportunity to try to make a living from trading and gambling (and so far, I've made over twice what I would have earned had I not been made redundant!). And if it doesn't work out, then I've got enough money put aside to tide me over until I get back into work.

As for how you get made redundant, find out who the bosses will listen to when it comes to deciding who gets the chop, and make an enemy of them! I'm convinced that my redundancy had absolutely nothing to do with my ability or work ethic. It was due to the fact that one of the senior managers wanted me to get the chop rather than a good friend of hers! This company relies heavily on the public sector, and part of me really hopes that the impending cuts deliver the same fate to her as she delivered to me!

Jeff

Hi Mike,
I've been trying to be made redundant for the last two years!...This year with a bit of luck...

Regards
Peter

[mikesalter]

I work in a University and they are desperate for people to go because the funding model doesn't work for my discipline. As a result they were offering 18 months salary to anyone who would leave because they are terrified of the union reaction if they force people out. Worked well for me! I have some consultancy experience so will run that alongside the trading. I do enjoy the trading though and may just concentrate on that if things go well.

[LeTiss]

Good luck Mike

I used to trade part-time, but only took the bold move to go professional when I was made redundant in June 2008

2 years later I'm still going strong

[mikesalter]

Thanks for the goodwill, I think the trading suits me. I know people use weight of money as a key indicator but for me I am a scientist with 20 years experience looking at data in graph format. I find I can see trends in the graphs and am developing a style using that as my information source. Hopefully this will take me into profit, someone earlier said £3600 but I was thinking 5 day weeks and actually £1700 a month as a sustainable income level to cover the mortgage etc. working towards the £400 a day mark often mentioned on here.

[Zenyatta]

[quote="Ferru123"]Hi Zenyatta

I would say the most important thing is to find a simple technique that gives modest yet consistent profits. That's your bread and butter. If you want to then tweak your approach and experiment using very small stakes initially, then that can only help your trading. But, as I know to my cost, experimentation generally leads to losses.

As for traders being geniuses, I'm not sure many people here would recognise that description of themselves. Ironically, intelligence can work against you in trading, as it can cause you to over-complicate something that's very simple. I've read that traders are in the top 10% of the population intelligence-wise, yet something like 90% of them lose money!

Jeff

[quote]

There are some interesting comments in the archives of Adam Heathcote's blog about how easy/hard trading might be, and the extent to which it might be teachable.

http://adamheathcote.blogspot.com/2009/ ... hable.html

He thinks that 100-200 pounds/day is probably doable for someone with the right teaching who really applied themselves, but anything more than this just isn't realistic unless you have exceptional talents of some kind.

(So Mike, 400 pounds/day is not likely be realistic for you, but 200 pounds/day might be).

Jeff, its common for people who are reasonably smart to completely fail to understand how hard something is for those who are less smart. I'd be willing to wager that the intelligence of the successful traders is far above average. here are some telling comments from people on the blog;

"I have wasted SO much time and effort trying to learn trading thinking it was just a matter of working hard enough at it when it wasn't. The fact is that the markets are so competitive these days that only a few gifted (and hard working, yes) people can succeed. I'm sure if you asked Christiano Ronaldo he would say it was relatively simple hitting a free kick into the top corner and he could offer to show you his technique, but that doesn't everyone can just copy him and do it themselves!"

"Most people do not have this kind of background, and regardless of comparisons with the financial world, most people cannot make it as traders on betfair, that is a fact. Your argument is like a premiership striker coming to the the second division and rubbishing sunday league strikers for not being able to play in the 2nd division"

---

Also, it's hard to see how its possible for everyone to win, since trading is a zero-sum game. The only way everyone could win is if the market was constantly expanding rapidly and an endless stream of new people were coming in, but as I understand it, Betfair markets are stagnant at present.