Horse Racing. Going in-play. Good or bad idea?

[to75ne]

you dont need balls to follow through a martingale staking plan, just plain old stupidity, if you ever did the best thing you could have done would have been abandoning the plan, the worse thing would have been increasing stakes.

your thinking is arse about face.

heh, yes you do...i'm not arguing martingaling is a good idea....you only abandon the plan once you wake up to the stupid, but you should always follow your original plan to its conclusion....

Even if there is no house edge...presume you are the house with the edge.....it takes psychological fortitude to continue doubling your stakes when bad runs come...

That's all...

if you believe it takes balls to not understand that a plan is stupid (in fact really stupid), and only realise its stupid when you have executed it to the point where you have repeatedly doubled your stakes to where it clearly is stupid, perhaps you should consider giving up trading.

is not in my opinion a definition/demonstration of having "balls", its a demonstrtion of stupidity and not of having "balls".

[spreadbetting]

Takes balls to take those regular small red screens, the big ones are easy.

At the end of the day if you don't adopt a consistent approach you never really know what parts are working. The problem for a lot of people going in play is they take the first green going when the markets in play and pat themselves on the back whilst letting the trade run all the way to a big red if they couldn't get out.

[Big Bad Barney]

if you believe it takes balls to not understand that a plan is stupid (in fact really stupid), and only realise its stupid when you have executed it to the point where you have repeatedly doubled your stakes to where it clearly is stupid, perhaps you should consider giving up trading.

is not in my opinion a definition/demonstration of having "balls", its a demonstrtion of stupidity and not of having "balls".

I suspect you miss the point. Sorry, perhaps I didnt explain it well or it was a poor example., I shall try harder next time...In either case...ignore that I said anything about martingales (im pretty sure we both know where thats headed)...The point I was trying to make was that the mind tends to change along with stake sizes. At least mine does. I cannot speak for others although I think I am not unique. It's a different problem to this particular thread.

[Archangel]

Once a race goes in play its a completely different market. Unless you plan for that prior to making the trade you could, and probably will, end up with massive losses.

Having said that, there are many opportunities in play. Theres value there that you would never find pre-race. But you need specific strategies for that..

[Kai]

heh, yes you do...i'm not arguing martingaling is a good idea....you only abandon the plan once you wake up to the stupid, but you should always follow your original plan to its conclusion....

Even if there is no house edge...presume you are the house with the edge.....it takes psychological fortitude to continue doubling your stakes when bad runs come...

Not sure I agree with that one, it's extremely important to stay as flexible as possible in your decision-making. The circumstances around a trade can change in an instant and a rigid approach will get you nowhere, maybe that's why you don't cut your losses when you should. You need to be ready to change your mind instantly or dump a position in a heartbeat when you get it wrong, a typical newbie will only be focused on the upside and won't be ready to manage the downside, by the time he even starts thinking about exiting it's probably already too late, while an experienced trader will even hover his mouse over a price in case he needs to quickly close and that alone tells you that he is ready to change his mind if need be. But you also can't allow yourself to be spooked by a little bit of market noise, neither extreme is good in the market and you eventually need to find a good balance between the two approaches.

Nobody expects you to find perfect setups or to have amazing execution at such an early stage, but if your whole approach is wrong from the off then you stand no chance in the markets, the least you can do is avoid the most obvious mistakes and the biggest pitfalls. You opened this thread and asked others for advice so make sure you actually take some on board.

[Krystian]

Definitely a very bad idea

[to75ne]

why do i get a annoying fecking advert when i click your p and l image?

[Derek27]

why do i get a annoying fecking advert when i click your p and l image?

The image is uploaded and hosted by a website.

[Kai]

Definitely a very bad idea

That's a brilliant reply. Since the image is from 2017 I assume you stopped going inplay? If so then I'm sure the OP would like to know how you managed to do it

I was fortunate enough not to have experienced these inplay issues, maybe because I don't come from a gambling background. I only ever had 1 proper loss-chasing tilt on the football but after taking a step back I've learned my lesson right then and there.

[TipTopTrader]

You make a good point Kai. I watched a video about trading pyschology. He said the worst thing you can do at the start of your trading career is create a bad habit involving chasing, recouping loses, unplanned of any kind.

The words that ring in my head are if you get away with it a few times at the start. It makes it so hard to stop, because it worked before.

Lets say you just made one bad trade, and should have closed it earlier for a smaller loss, wiping out all the days profits.The person with the bad habit will have such a bad time trying to stop themselves from going in play, or start straight betting.

I am not talking about accidental mistakes, having delayed video etc. I think traders do it because they mentally give up, or want a so called easier way to get the money back. It can be more than the fact that you can't take a loss.It can be they feel that they can't make the money back without turning their trading into gambling, feeling like if they trade out and took the loss they will still end up losing long term.

I know all the top traders, the ones posting regularly on the forums had to go thru the same thing, and had to play thru the pain so to speak. But they now have the confidence that they can profit long term without the monkey business.

[Big Bad Barney]

Not sure I agree with that one, it's extremely important to stay as flexible as possible in your decision-making. The circumstances around a trade can change in an instant and a rigid approach will get you nowhere, maybe that's why you don't cut your losses when you should. You need to be ready to change your mind instantly or dump a position in a heartbeat when you get it wrong, a typical newbie will only be focused on the upside and won't be ready to manage the downside, by the time he even starts thinking about exiting it's probably already too late, while an experienced trader will even hover his mouse over a price in case he needs to quickly close and that alone tells you that he is ready to change his mind if need be. But you also can't allow yourself to be spooked by a little bit of market noise, neither extreme is good in the market and you eventually need to find a good balance between the two approaches.

Thanks Kai, thats very good advice. The market noise thing is hard to get a grip on.

Nobody expects you to find perfect setups or to have amazing execution at such an early stage, but if your whole approach is wrong from the off then you stand no chance in the markets, the least you can do is avoid the most obvious mistakes and the biggest pitfalls. You opened this thread and asked others for advice so make sure you actually take some on board.

There is a lot of good advice here. I am grateful for it. If I sound negative (not sure that I am, its hard to see from others perspectives), I don't mean to be. Initially I just posted the thread wondering if there were ways to take losses to green using in play. It's not really that I have issues stoping myself going in play. It was perhaps a not well thought out post. I understand they are seperate things with entirely different strategies that should be treated independently.

Unrelated to this threaed...My biggest problem at the moment is deciding when to take the loss, and that's a whole subject in itself. Basically because I am unsure, I tend to err on leaving it in hope. Which I am pretty sure is the opposite to what I should be doing ...and I think that stems from not following a concrete plan..its like...k im gonna try swing trading...oop no..I can scalp here...damn it went wrong..I'll swing trade now... I'm sure I'll get that sorted...just time...

[Kai]

Unrelated to this threaed...My biggest problem at the moment is deciding when to take the loss, and that's a whole subject in itself. Basically because I am unsure, I tend to err on leaving it in hope. Which I am pretty sure is the opposite to what I should be doing ...and I think that stems from not following a concrete plan..its like...k im gonna try swing trading...oop no..I can scalp here...damn it went wrong..I'll swing trade now... I'm sure I'll get that sorted...just time...

Don't worry about scalps, you'll get them anyway with failed swings I started from scalping in general but in the context of prerace I started swinging by getting a couple of scalps to buy some room and space on the ladder, it made life a bit easier to get used to all the market noise until I could stomach it better. But that was 5 years ago, I don't think anyone can honestly recommend too much scalping on today's markets, even the bigger meetings have been more volatile. The issue with scalping is the poor risk vs reward ratio, you're looking for 1-2-3 ticks but you can easily end up on the wrong side of momentum without doing much wrong, it can potentially create more tilting situation as well, compared to swinging where the risk vs reward ratio should be well in your favor so you don't need too high of a hitrate to make it work. It helps if you try and think like a mug punter when reading the market, where's the value for them, you can have a look at Bet Angel Twitter for daily clues on that.

[ShaunWhite]

My biggest problem at the moment is deciding when to take the loss, and that's a whole subject in itself. Basically because I am unsure, I tend to err on leaving it in hope.

Every click you do should be based on the market as you read it 'now' and what has happened or what you thought might have happpened is irrelevent. The one piece of information about 'now' that you should not take into consideration is your current unrealised PL, because the market doesn't give a damn that you're currently showing a £1 red or £100 red. It has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on where it's going to go next.

Try and really look at what 'leaving it in hope' actually means ....You've done 100s of hours of study and practice to inform your entry (great, tick vg), and then you're choosing to throw away all of that knowledge and base your exit on the single most useless piece of information there is, ie your current PL. It sounds like you aren't in the habit of chasing a loss in the next race, so the next step is to stop chasing your loses in the same race.

When the current price is showing red that money has already gone, wave goodbye to it and forget it.....The reality is that you made a loss, and you're now sat there with £x on one side or the other. So it's time to go back to your normal buy/hold/sell decision making loop based on the 100s of pieces of info which are relevent, rather than being influenced by the consequences of a decision you got wrong 2 minutes ago.

There's a book which some people swear by and others slightly deride called Trading in the Zone. It might be worth you reading it (or audiobooking it) to see what you think. The 'zone' it refers to isn't a state of consiousness, it's about recognising that you're operating in a narrow time zone where the past is largely irrelevant and your certainty about the future diminishes the further ahead you try and look.

[ShaunWhite]

John, try this as an exercise. Switch off the PL column for a few races.

The presence of the PL column and especially the psychological effect of the colours (ie red being natures danger colour) I think are the most detremental features a trading system can have. Current PL as I said is irrelevent, yet I suspect most people have it displayed front and centre as if it's the most important thing in the world to look at. It will certainly make you much more focussed on the wisdom of your current position instead of thinking about exits judged on arbitary PL amounts like I'll exit when I've lost/made a fiver. By all means set up a little compliance bot to warn you if your position or current PL is bigger than you're comfortable with, but use it as a safety net rather than a crutch.

I have to say that despite (maybe) sounding like I know what I'm talking about, I'm a pretty rotten manual trader due to being way too indisciplined, that's why I'm 99% automated, but none of my automation bases it's decision making on current PL so you can see how important it is. I've also heard some highly respected and profitable manual traders say similar things so I'm sure I'm not a million miles off. In fact it was Dallas who I first saw talking about hiding the PL column as a training exercise. Although as he's amost certainly broken that corrosive psychological link with it, I would think he has it displayed as a 'fun fact' rather than it being particularly useful to know.

Sorry these have been a bit long, i'm quite evangelical about the usefulness of unrealised PL as you can tell

[Derek27]

I'm a pretty rotten manual trader due to being way too indisciplined, that's why I'm 99% automated, but none of my automation bases it's decision making on current PL so you can see how important it is.

That probably explains why a number of people on here have failed at manual trading but found their edge in automation. It certainly would take out the emotion of trading, at least until the end of the day when you look at your P/L.