I think I am wasting my time...
I've got to ask myself why am I doing this?
It seems impossible, and of course Peter says it isn't... you just need a few years of experience...
So do I want to spend a year at breakeven at best I ask myself.......?
Trading What I see !?
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ShaunWhite
- Posts: 10371
- Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am
I don't know why you're still so hung up on individual races.
A simplified example, let's say you're trading a 50% strike rate, wins are bigger than losses so you're in profit, all is good. You have losing trade, so the chance of another one is 50%, another after that 25%, then 12½%, 6¼% etc
The chances of 7 in a row (6 after a loser) is about 1½% . When you do 100 races a week or 100 races in 3 days, it's going to happen. 3 in a row, ie 2 losers after a loser is a 25% chance which isn't exactly going to be a rare thing. You really do need to stop looking at indiviual outcomes and just look at a something like rolling 7 day numbers and stick them on a chart so you can see the bigger picture.
If not you'll be posting that you've had 3 losers in a row about 3 or 4 times a day ! Get used to it.
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ShaunWhite
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- Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am
This is why you need to make it affordable and have a weekly budget, and when it's gone it's gone. It makes you careful and means that so long as it's just a hobby with a cost you can keep going as long as it takes. You'd pay god knows what for games and Netfix with no hope of a return so if you're entertained by trading, which might one day pay something back, then it's not money wasted or even missed.
Re the time it takes, as you might know we're heading to the cross over from flat to NH racing soon so there's going to be a degree of uncertainly in the air about horses' potential, that will be reflected in the markets and they'll probably be different to mid season, all part of why it takes at least an annual cycle to understand what's going on.
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ShaunWhite
- Posts: 10371
- Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am
Record keeping? Do your stats show progress? How does your PL in week 4 compare with week 8 or week 15 ?
Humans are crap at judging long term stats and you'll only do it with a decent record of what you've done.
So I've been playing with a £100 balance for the last few weeks, which is nothing. This is more of a hobby that I'd just like to make say £100 a week eventually.ShaunWhite wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:14 pmThis is why you need to make it affordable and have a weekly budget, and when it's gone it's gone. It makes you careful and means that so long as it's just a hobby with a cost you can keep going as long as it takes. You'd pay god knows what for games and Netfix with no hope of a return so if you're entertained by trading, which might one day pay something back, then it's not money wasted or even missed.
Re the time it takes, as you might know we're heading to the cross over from flat to NH racing soon so there's going to be a degree of uncertainly in the air about horses' potential, that will be reflected in the markets and they'll probably be different to mid season, all part of why it takes at least an annual cycle to understand what's going on.
You see your last paragraph confuses me, I no nothing about horses, but what's it matter what type of race? They are just a bunch of jockeys riding a horse...? With a load of punters, bookies, traders betting on them...? Also how is say Ascot going to trade different to say Haydock? It's still jockeys on horses? Are you saying if the same 10 jockeys race at Ascot it will trade differently to the same 10 at Haydock? What's different?
Is there a particular interest in the pre-off horse markets that you have? I ask this only because imo it's a tricky place to make money and there's far easier places in the exchange to splash about. I tend to think the more info in the public domain about a topic the less chance you have of making it in that arena - this is because players lose their edge and decide to make money through videos and training instead - you see it with poker, a while back the only material out there was in private groups, shared between friends and those who knew each other - now that info is absolutely everywhere, and that's because a lot of players lost their edge and there was more money to be made in training. Relating that to sports trading, the most info I see out on youtube or other places is pre-off horses, and maybe that's for a similar reason. Not to say at all that it's not possible to make money there, just likely that it's very hard to do so and you need a lot more than what you can find in videos to profit from it.
I'm in a similar place to you but I've been doing this for almost two years full-time. I practice almost every day and often watch back my trades, I've lost A LOT of money even just using £100 banks but I haven't gave up because I really want it. I'm very slowly getting better results but sometimes revert to the classic mistakes. When I was at your stage I would rarely ever make more than £10 in a day but would often lose more than this. Now I've had 3 weeks of profitable trading, I've had many days of £30-80 profits but I've also had the (thankfully getting rarer) bad days where I go on the tilt and blow £50-100 from overstaking and chasing losses
From the very little number of successful traders I know or have heard of it took them 2-3 years to become profitable, so you have to ask if yourself if you are prepared for that (and to inevitably lose more money before turning your trading around). I really hate when certain people say it can be done in a matter of months
Try being more selective on the markets you trade, e.g. I skip a lot of the Irish races or lower my stakes as this is where my bigger losses will come from. Get used to taking small losses (even some of the best traders spend half the day scratching trades). Try and fight the FOMO and enter at a good level so your stoplosss isn't a red bus away which only leads to getting thrown out or taking a big loss, have a realistic risk to reward ratio and get used to taking the risk half of the time, try and anticipate the market, try and make use of crossovers
From the very little number of successful traders I know or have heard of it took them 2-3 years to become profitable, so you have to ask if yourself if you are prepared for that (and to inevitably lose more money before turning your trading around). I really hate when certain people say it can be done in a matter of months
Try being more selective on the markets you trade, e.g. I skip a lot of the Irish races or lower my stakes as this is where my bigger losses will come from. Get used to taking small losses (even some of the best traders spend half the day scratching trades). Try and fight the FOMO and enter at a good level so your stoplosss isn't a red bus away which only leads to getting thrown out or taking a big loss, have a realistic risk to reward ratio and get used to taking the risk half of the time, try and anticipate the market, try and make use of crossovers
Last edited by alexmr2 on Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:09 pm, edited 4 times in total.
£100 is the ideal bank to start with IMO but be prepared to blow many of them (even if not the whole bank at once). Remember that even 10% profit at the end of the day is good
The problem with saying you want to make £100 a week is that you'd have to be extremely discliplined to do that and only trade a setup you know well. I believe in trading there is a massive chasm between losing and making a small amount consistently, but the gap between making a small amount and decent living is much less because if you can do it you can do it, if you can't then you can't
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ShaunWhite
- Posts: 10371
- Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am
OK so let's imagine you're punter who likes horseracing for the horses and not just the betting. Are you more interested in top quality horses than a bunch of donkeys? And how would you feel having your £20 on a horse that had a mile of stats about how it performs, or a horse you'd never heard of being run for the first time. When the jumps come round some of them will be racing for the first time ever, how do you think the market will react to that.goat68 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:23 pmYou see your last paragraph confuses me, I no nothing about horses, but what's it matter what type of race? They are just a bunch of jockeys riding a horse...? With a load of punters, bookies, traders betting on them...? Also how is say Ascot going to trade different to say Haydock? It's still jockeys on horses? Are you saying if the same 10 jockeys race at Ascot it will trade differently to the same 10 at Haydock? What's different?
Remember that a horse at 4.0 is seen as a 25% chance and a 33% chance at 3.0.....how much gossip do you think it takes to change somebodies opinion of a new mystery horse by 8%....not a lot. But to change the chances of a top quility well exposed horse by 8% might take a huge leap of faith by people.
You say yourself you know nothing about racing, if you're serious about trading then you need to. Not in massive detail but have some idea at least if you're watching F1 or banger racing.
There's a lot of gold in what Shaun's been saying in his last few posts and I'm not sure you've fully grasped it yet. The aspect you seem to be missing is what's happening in real life - you have the market and how it responds to what's happening on the course, you've done lots of ladder work which will absolutely stand you in good stead, but imo there's a massive opportunity to start to undertand how the market reacts to all the myriad of scenarios that are happening out there in the real world. Here you might find an edge because I think if you're only reacting to what's happening on the ladder then you're chasing ghosts to an extent. A big caveat here though is I don't trade horses anymore, but what I do trade depends 100% on the knowledge I have of what's happening in the real world.goat68 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:23 pmSo I've been playing with a £100 balance for the last few weeks, which is nothing. This is more of a hobby that I'd just like to make say £100 a week eventually.ShaunWhite wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:14 pmThis is why you need to make it affordable and have a weekly budget, and when it's gone it's gone. It makes you careful and means that so long as it's just a hobby with a cost you can keep going as long as it takes. You'd pay god knows what for games and Netfix with no hope of a return so if you're entertained by trading, which might one day pay something back, then it's not money wasted or even missed.
Re the time it takes, as you might know we're heading to the cross over from flat to NH racing soon so there's going to be a degree of uncertainly in the air about horses' potential, that will be reflected in the markets and they'll probably be different to mid season, all part of why it takes at least an annual cycle to understand what's going on.
You see your last paragraph confuses me, I no nothing about horses, but what's it matter what type of race? They are just a bunch of jockeys riding a horse...? With a load of punters, bookies, traders betting on them...? Also how is say Ascot going to trade different to say Haydock? It's still jockeys on horses? Are you saying if the same 10 jockeys race at Ascot it will trade differently to the same 10 at Haydock? What's different?
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ShaunWhite
- Posts: 10371
- Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am
thx, just my take and I'm no great manual trader. It just frustrates me when people expect to trade horseracing and don't think they need to know the first thing about horseracing. They say an ex-gambler makes a bad trader but if you've never even seen the inside of a bookies it's even harder. And saying punters approach a major festive the same way as a midweek novice race, because it's just a race with some people sat on horses, is verging on silly.
Yes, however I'm sure in one of Peters videos he says not knowing about horses gives you an advantage as you are not emotionally attached...ShaunWhite wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:53 pmthx, just my take and I'm no great manual trader. It just frustrates me when people expect to trade horseracing and don't think they need to know the first thing about horseracing. They say an ex-gambler makes a bad trader but if you've never even seen the inside of a bookies it's even harder. And saying punters approach a major festive the same way as a midweek novice race, because it's just a race with some people sat on horses, is verging on silly.
Personally, the only sport I watch really is Cycling major tours, and a bit of athletics as I am a marathon runner.
But there's not much trading done on those!!
Football, although I don't play nor support any teams, I do find interesting, but as previous poster says there's loads of how to make money trading the UO2.5 goals, ..... So suspect that's equally hard to succeed at.