Enough is enough - time to admit defeat.

[Korattt]

There was a horse who ran today named "Commit or Quit", thought it applies to the journey of trading quite well.

That applied to me

If one wants to make it to to the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak then they've got to keep going through the darkness.

That applied to me

The length of that tunnel is different for everyone and with a conscious & logical approach you can change the speed at which you're going but nobody starts on the right end.

That applied to me

It's about how much you want it and if that desire isn't enough then you won't make the necessary changes.

That applied to me

“Enough is enough - time to admit defeat”

.. that’s a damn shame, because it can, REPEAT, it CAN be done, for every loser there’s a winner,

there’s been times for me where I would be absolutely despondent throughout my horse racing trading journey but through countless hours of watching recordings of markets along with BA YouTube videos, over & over & over again I reached a lightbulb moment, if I can make a suggestion I would explore everything that BA has to offer within its software, no there isn’t any magic bullet so to speak but it allows you to solve many puzzles in the markets,

Good luck in all you do my friend

[cmuddle]

thanks eightbo for advice, sounds like a good strategy, will think it over

money management (risk overlay which sits on top of your strategy) but yeah.

nothing to think about; try it and see how you feel.

ps was not specific enough 1st time round — your max liability for the market should be a small % of your total bank/capital.
Base your staking plan off that to remove the emotional investment associated with the price movements.
Tweak % of bank roll as necessary based on how you feel. Everyone's risk tolerance is dif.

gl

thanks mate, appreciate your help

[Bubace]

Could anyone Recommend some screen recording software { free would be good } i use one at the moment but the picture quaility is terrible

Not looking to hijack someones thread, but just a quick question, and didnt seem worth starting a new one

cheers

[darchas]

Could anyone Recommend some screen recording software { free would be good } i use one at the moment but the picture quaility is terrible

Not looking to hijack someones thread, but just a quick question, and didnt seem worth starting a new one

cheers

I use Flashback Express Recorder - really straightforward to use and picture quality is more than adequate for what I need. There is a paid version if you want access to editing tools and such, but for purely recording and watching back trades, which is what I use it for, the free version is perfect.

[Bubace]

Could anyone Recommend some screen recording software { free would be good } i use one at the moment but the picture quaility is terrible

Not looking to hijack someones thread, but just a quick question, and didnt seem worth starting a new one

cheers

I use Flashback Express Recorder - really straightforward to use and picture quality is more than adequate for what I need. There is a paid version if you want access to editing tools and such, but for purely recording and watching back trades, which is what I use it for, the free version is perfect.

perfect

thanks for that

[pedro1886]

Is there traders who consistently profit from in running?

I've been focusing heavily for the past 6 months. All I seem to read is things like "eventually you lose or you could write on the back of a stamp the amount of people who are profitable from in running"

I got on ok with pre race but I started to self doubt. Maybe I just needed to spend more time in the markets.

It's after watching a few of peter's videos where he asks things like "when you win how much do you win? And when you loose how much do you lose?" A decent strike rate may not make up for a few bad runs in play.

I can see that it does take discipline eg don't try & make something happen or just lay a random horse. Get your one click buttons set up to make use of servants if you spot a B2L or L2B

Will inplay become harder once the crowds are back on course?

hi mate. very much possible.
as you say; dial down your size so that your worst outcomes are only a small % of the bankroll.
perfectly possible to just trade the order flow and profit without LV bu
I know a geezer who just looks for one horse to lay each race and that's his edge, another who is backing strong travellers if the price is right, me i'm trading order flow and only using LV for additional entry/exit/cancel signals.
You also want to decrease liability as the race goes on in anticipation of the increased volatility to level out your risk. If you set up audio cues to go off at certain %'s through the race and you can make a rules out of it.

ps don't think random trades won't get you anywhere in any mkt !

good luck.

Thanks.
from watching races I do the best with not putting pressure on myself. If my IP selection doesn't feel right I dump it. In the past I would wait & see out of hope that it would go in the direction I want.
I even watch races that I decide not to trade in. Turn off my ability to enter into the market & just watch & make predictions.
Trying to keep it simple & not getting into a position where I am doing something daft like laying a horse < 3 fences out or ending up in a trade with a pack of horses all in contention for the line is better for the bank & heart

[Morbius]

There was a horse who ran today named "Commit or Quit", thought it applies to the journey of trading quite well.

That applied to me

If one wants to make it to to the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak then they've got to keep going through the darkness.

That applied to me

The length of that tunnel is different for everyone and with a conscious & logical approach you can change the speed at which you're going but nobody starts on the right end.

That applied to me

It's about how much you want it and if that desire isn't enough then you won't make the necessary changes.

That applied to me

“Enough is enough - time to admit defeat”

.. that’s a damn shame, because it can, REPEAT, it CAN be done, for every loser there’s a winner,

there’s been times for me where I would be absolutely despondent throughout my horse racing trading journey but through countless hours of watching recordings of markets along with BA YouTube videos, over & over & over again I reached a lightbulb moment, if I can make a suggestion I would explore everything that BA has to offer within its software, no there isn’t any magic bullet so to speak but it allows you to solve many puzzles in the markets,

Good luck in all you do my friend

+1
As was said....the learning curve can be different time periods for everyone. Don't ever allow yourself to feel stupid or a failure. Remember that the smartest people often take the longest time to solve certain problems. That sounds weird but it's true and based around multiple level complex thinking processes. Some people are literally too smart to solve problems quickly simply because they are capable of deeper analysis which in many cases wasn't needed. In poker it's called levelling.

[Korattt]

I know that for the peole who have figured it out you might think its not that difficult to do but if you dont know you dont know.

1B41859C-799A-4AAC-BD88-CE43B5D768B6.jpeg

you CAN do this, you really can, the amount of times I’ve nearly thrown the towel in & thought, nope, there’s no way that the likes of PW can be successful at this & I can’t,

6A4E03CC-828A-4921-A07B-6F7A650094E8.jpeg

there has to be a way, there HAS to.. and there is, for some people it just takes longer than others

2D121B8B-7E14-4D47-9BF8-11CB5ACA1B5F.jpeg

[Morbius]

I know that for the peole who have figured it out you might think its not that difficult to do but if you dont know you dont know.

1B41859C-799A-4AAC-BD88-CE43B5D768B6.jpeg


you CAN do this, you really can, the amount of times I’ve nearly thrown the towel in & thought, nope, there’s no way that the likes of PW can be successful at this & I can’t,


6A4E03CC-828A-4921-A07B-6F7A650094E8.jpeg


there has to be a way, there HAS to.. and there is, for some people it just takes longer than others


2D121B8B-7E14-4D47-9BF8-11CB5ACA1B5F.jpeg

Good post and there certainly IS a way but THAT way is as you say only derived by perseverance.....Endeavour to Persevere as Abraham Lincoln once said. The key not just with trading but with cracking any complex field is to first figure out the nature of the problem that you are addressing. Unfortunately this can take a lot of figuring out. This is why there is an entire industry built around selling the dream and a large reason for that is because millions of people globally have either not invested wisely for their futures and pensions and/or are in poorly paid jobs with little or no security.

The potential when done right to exploit this literally blows away any potential profits that you can make trading especially sports markets where there are liquidity issues. If trading wasn't such a difficult nut to crack then this industry wouldn't exist. But getting back to the nature of the problem thing again, the vast majority of traders simply never perform an industry appraisal and never understand the nature of what they are going up against. So the natural follow on process of this is that they simply never ask themselves the relevant questions.

So just what are those questions? Simply it's this.

1. Who in the market is taking my money?
2. How are they taking it?
3. How are they exploiting my strategy?
4. How do they operate?
5. What can I do to exploit their strategy?
6. How can I improve my own strategy?

Any financial market isn't passive in its nature, you don't just lose money by accident in the same way that "billions are not wiped from the stock market" by accident which you often here on news channels every time the markets take a dip. Less commissions these are zero sum games, money in financial markets doesn't disappear off the surface of the planet, it goes somewhere....usually large hedge funds but someone somewhere is making huge sums of money. The same applies with sports markets and horseracing. Traders need to understand that money is being TAKEN from them by participants with superior strategies that are more in tune with the reality of the market.

I played full time poker for years and made my living that way. Poker is just like any other financial market when you juxtapose certain things. You don't lose money in a poker game through lack of skill and knowledge despite the fact these are certainly real reasons. You also lose money in a poker game by other participants exploiting you and your strategy. Poker like trading is deeply adversarial. Who in their right mind would reveal years of learning and experience and edge to you and if they did, that's a red flag that its no longer an edge and past its shelf life. Every time you look for a short cut without work then you just provide fuel to the previously mentioned industry.

[Morbius]

As an add on to what I just said using the poker analogy, it is a huge misconception that you lose money merely based on your own lack of knowledge and skill. I knew many professional poker players years ago who made good livings who were not good poker players.....they were merely better than the mean average opposition that they faced. When I played full time in 2002, I did so with a fraction of the knowledge that I have now.

So money isn't automatically made by your own skill and knowledge or lost through a lack of it. There is a saying in poker that you can be the tenth best player in the world but if you continue to sit in games with the other nine players who are better than you then you will lose money. So a world class player can be a net loser and a poor player can be a net winner. The better you are as a poker player then your POTENTIAL to make money increases but its not automatic that you will. This is the same as trading.

There are major players operating on a betting exchange who have a much greater impact simply because of lower liquidity. Traders need to do an appraisal as to what these people do, trust me.....it can be figured out with perseverance. BF was created on financial markets so the answers can be found studying those concepts and seeing which ones transfer across and which ones don't. Of course there is volatility on an exchange, there is volatility in poker, blackjack and any other financial market you can care to mention but volatility isn't your true enemy, the ones that take your money are. So you have two goals as a trader....better your own trading knowledge and experience but learn who is taking your money and how and never forget why the PC exists in the first place.

[wearthefoxhat]

As an add on to what I just said using the poker analogy, it is a huge misconception that you lose money merely based on your own lack of knowledge and skill. I knew many professional poker players years ago who made good livings who were not good poker players.....they were merely better than the mean average opposition that they faced. When I played full time in 2002, I did so with a fraction of the knowledge that I have now.

So money isn't automatically made by your own skill and knowledge or lost through a lack of it. There is a saying in poker that you can be the tenth best player in the world but if you continue to sit in games with the other nine players who are better than you then you will lose money. So a world class player can be a net loser and a poor player can be a net winner. The better you are as a poker player then your POTENTIAL to make money increases but its not automatic that you will. This is the same as trading.

There are major players operating on a betting exchange who have a much greater impact simply because of lower liquidity. Traders need to do an appraisal as to what these people do, trust me.....it can be figured out with perseverance. BF was created on financial markets so the answers can be found studying those concepts and seeing which ones transfer across and which ones don't. Of course there is volatility on an exchange, there is volatility in poker, blackjack and any other financial market you can care to mention but volatility isn't your true enemy, the ones that take your money are. So you have two goals as a trader....better your own trading knowledge and experience but learn who is taking your money and how and never forget why the PC exists in the first place.

+1

If a strong poker player transitions to trading, either on the stock market/sports markets, there are many attributes that they can bring to the party.

traits.png

If anyone is weak in any of these areas, it will cost them. In poker a poor call, or a mistimed raise, in trading, poor execution...etc

In both cases, if you "play" out of your comfort zone, bankroll, ie: trades too big, a cash game/tournament bigger than you're ready for, it's likely not to end well. There will be times you could get away with it, but...the probability is, you won't.

[eightbo]

...

For that one I always think of this image which I think I first saw during Rio 2016 olympics:


Really hits home when you think about the swimmers who've gotten up at 4am to do lengths 5,000 times on top of disciplined diet, strength training, restricting their social activity/partying, etc.

Man, I've got so much respect for those guys!
Bet if you'd ask any of them when they first found out they'd be representing their country in the olympics they'd say it was all worth it.

Of course got to keep Survivorship Bias (good video) in mind here but I said those who got into the olympics here as opposed to winning a medal to offset that a good chunk.

PS this now a motivational thread   Just Kidding

[cullyboy]

Well after 5 years trading horse racing markets it's time to admit defeat. For the first 3.5 years I was trading In running horses and was making £100 a day but with an unreasonalble risk attached. So after a while I switched to Pre Racing markets which I thought would be too difficult to figure out and I was right.

I must of tried every graph and data analysis going. Ive made progress and gone backwards so many times I cannot remember. I've heard all the advice going. I understand what the over round is and how it works. I've used MACD signals on multilple time frames and I've used excel files to record everything under the sun.

So now what Im going to do is record my markets and put them up on a new You Tube channel in the hope of showing people how not to trade. I've joined 2-3 trading groups but they seem very clicky and nobody provides you with anything you can positivly use.

This has been a complete and utter failure. I can make money on football markets quite well but it was the Horse Racing I was determind to master but I just dont understand how it can be monitored across the market.

Thanks & Goodbye & Good Luck.

I know that for the peole who have figured it out you might think its not that difficult to do but if you dont know you dont know.

I actually told myself I wasn't going to bother replying to these cry for help threads after the last one I replied to turned sour but helping people is part of my nature I suppose and my belief systems. It (as has been mentioned) is difficult to advise someone properly when there is so much information missing. However there are so many issues at work here that it is difficult to know where to begin.

When you come onto a forum like this then you must do so with the belief that no one is going to reveal their edge to you and the overwhelming majority of posts will be generic meaning, enough to help you but not enough to make you profitable. However that doesn't make them useless because to get value from a site like this requires a lot of cross referencing and reading between the lines.

Secondly, it comes across to me that your trading education lacks depth. Now before you come back at me on this point and accuse me of "knowing nothing about you" like the last poster I replied to did, you are going to have to take my word for it in many regards. When someone is further down the road than you with their education then a lack of it stands out like the proverbial sore thumb.

A deep trading knowledge isn't learning about indicators and studying charts. These are peripheral. Everybody studies these and everybody takes their own data from them. MACD, RSI, Stochastics and anything else you care to use will not make you a trader. Getting into the intricacies of MACD for example is like learning all the different ways you can use a hammer and chisel but without skill and knowledge, those tools cannot carve a beautiful statue. I said this before on a previous post but your experience has a lot more value than you think.

Learning all the ways not to do something IS PROGRESS. In fact many Investment Banks prefer traders with actual trading experience even if they haven't been successful over someone with a run of the mill Masters or 2:1. Now I am not trying to drag you back into something that you are looking to stop doing but for a deep trading education then you are looking at 3 years minimum and 5 for most people. Do you need 3-5 years to make money on a betting exchange....NO! But the point is that there is a great big trading world out there and with so much to learn, you are not going to crack the problem by fiddling about without serious research and study (if that is indeed what you have spent the most time doing).

Trading successfully is not about learning to trade...it is about evolving into being a trader. Only when you are far enough down the road (the right road) will you realise what that means. Learning indicators and studying charts is gimmicky and there is no correct path for anything gimmicky. There are other problems too, many people on this forum have a lot of experience and knowledge but struggle to pass it on because how do you pass on experience and insight??? You can't know what it is you don't know. I keep notes on everything and my learning advances more rapidly as a result of writing things down. My trading books cannot be resold because I have butchered them with notes, but guess what? When I look back at my past notes then I often cringe even after several years of studying....why....because you can't know what it is you don't know!!!

I came on this forum for reasons similar to you and I have found tremendous insight.....but....no help was given to me directly and I never expected it. I had to read in between the lines but the really good stuff was confirmation of what I already knew which was valuable to me. Just because you have been at this 5 years doesn't mean that you have spent 5 years doing it right and please don't get angry with me saying that because nobody wants to think that they have wasted time. I don't regret any time that I spent studying areas that on reflection will not help me in the final equation simply because I have deeper knowledge and I know that will strengthen my mind set.

5 years is a long time to be doing something so you have certainly built up a lot of knowledge. My guess is as has been mentioned, you are probably not far off and maybe it is something that needs tweaking but that could be with your understanding rather than your methods. If you struggle to make money doing a certain type of trading then that in itself is good because it is driving you to the right area. Without getting too technical, I spent a lot of time on market neutral strategies and other advanced strategies and never got beyond there being a piece of the puzzle missing. Only in the past two weeks have I answered that problem but knowledge like IQ builds on itself.

Without this post dragging on forever, volatile markets require specific trading knowledge and strategies to handle them. Whether the market pre-off is made deliberately volatile or is a sum total of all the traders actions mixed with a lack of liquidity is unknown to me, but the fact is it is volatile but remember.....a betting exchange is a financial market, the exchange was designed on such. I don't know how much studying of financial markets you have done and day trading theory but I would advise you to learn this stuff but my fear is that after 5 years you have lost the heart for it. If you make money on football then stick to that and scale up, build on your knowledge base and compound your knowledge. Remember that your TRUE EDGE comes from compounded knowledge and is an organic process.

[jimibt]

Well after 5 years trading horse racing markets it's time to admit defeat. For the first 3.5 years I was trading In running horses and was making £100 a day but with an unreasonalble risk attached. So after a while I switched to Pre Racing markets which I thought would be too difficult to figure out and I was right.

I must of tried every graph and data analysis going. Ive made progress and gone backwards so many times I cannot remember. I've heard all the advice going. I understand what the over round is and how it works. I've used MACD signals on multilple time frames and I've used excel files to record everything under the sun.

So now what Im going to do is record my markets and put them up on a new You Tube channel in the hope of showing people how not to trade. I've joined 2-3 trading groups but they seem very clicky and nobody provides you with anything you can positivly use.

This has been a complete and utter failure. I can make money on football markets quite well but it was the Horse Racing I was determind to master but I just dont understand how it can be monitored across the market.

Thanks & Goodbye & Good Luck.

I know that for the peole who have figured it out you might think its not that difficult to do but if you dont know you dont know.

I actually told myself I wasn't going to bother replying to these cry for help threads after the last one I replied to turned sour but helping people is part of my nature I suppose and my belief systems. It (as has been mentioned) is difficult to advise someone properly when there is so much information missing. However there are so many issues at work here that it is difficult to know where to begin.

When you come onto a forum like this then you must do so with the belief that no one is going to reveal their edge to you and the overwhelming majority of posts will be generic meaning, enough to help you but not enough to make you profitable. However that doesn't make them useless because to get value from a site like this requires a lot of cross referencing and reading between the lines.

Secondly, it comes across to me that your trading education lacks depth. Now before you come back at me on this point and accuse me of "knowing nothing about you" like the last poster I replied to did, you are going to have to take my word for it in many regards. When someone is further down the road than you with their education then a lack of it stands out like the proverbial sore thumb.

A deep trading knowledge isn't learning about indicators and studying charts. These are peripheral. Everybody studies these and everybody takes their own data from them. MACD, RSI, Stochastics and anything else you care to use will not make you a trader. Getting into the intricacies of MACD for example is like learning all the different ways you can use a hammer and chisel but without skill and knowledge, those tools cannot carve a beautiful statue. I said this before on a previous post but your experience has a lot more value than you think.

Learning all the ways not to do something IS PROGRESS. In fact many Investment Banks prefer traders with actual trading experience even if they haven't been successful over someone with a run of the mill Masters or 2:1. Now I am not trying to drag you back into something that you are looking to stop doing but for a deep trading education then you are looking at 3 years minimum and 5 for most people. Do you need 3-5 years to make money on a betting exchange....NO! But the point is that there is a great big trading world out there and with so much to learn, you are not going to crack the problem by fiddling about without serious research and study (if that is indeed what you have spent the most time doing).

Trading successfully is not about learning to trade...it is about evolving into being a trader. Only when you are far enough down the road (the right road) will you realise what that means. Learning indicators and studying charts is gimmicky and there is no correct path for anything gimmicky. There are other problems too, many people on this forum have a lot of experience and knowledge but struggle to pass it on because how do you pass on experience and insight??? You can't know what it is you don't know. I keep notes on everything and my learning advances more rapidly as a result of writing things down. My trading books cannot be resold because I have butchered them with notes, but guess what? When I look back at my past notes then I often cringe even after several years of studying....why....because you can't know what it is you don't know!!!

I came on this forum for reasons similar to you and I have found tremendous insight.....but....no help was given to me directly and I never expected it. I had to read in between the lines but the really good stuff was confirmation of what I already knew which was valuable to me. Just because you have been at this 5 years doesn't mean that you have spent 5 years doing it right and please don't get angry with me saying that because nobody wants to think that they have wasted time. I don't regret any time that I spent studying areas that on reflection will not help me in the final equation simply because I have deeper knowledge and I know that will strengthen my mind set.

5 years is a long time to be doing something so you have certainly built up a lot of knowledge. My guess is as has been mentioned, you are probably not far off and maybe it is something that needs tweaking but that could be with your understanding rather than your methods. If you struggle to make money doing a certain type of trading then that in itself is good because it is driving you to the right area. Without getting too technical, I spent a lot of time on market neutral strategies and other advanced strategies and never got beyond there being a piece of the puzzle missing. Only in the past two weeks have I answered that problem but knowledge like IQ builds on itself.

Without this post dragging on forever, volatile markets require specific trading knowledge and strategies to handle them. Whether the market pre-off is made deliberately volatile or is a sum total of all the traders actions mixed with a lack of liquidity is unknown to me, but the fact is it is volatile but remember.....a betting exchange is a financial market, the exchange was designed on such. I don't know how much studying of financial markets you have done and day trading theory but I would advise you to learn this stuff but my fear is that after 5 years you have lost the heart for it. If you make money on football then stick to that and scale up, build on your knowledge base and compound your knowledge. Remember that your TRUE EDGE comes from compounded knowledge and is an organic process.

cullyboy -that reads well. i would add to that, that often the simple things (in pre-race) are the most difficult to assimilate, purely because they APPEAR so random. they are not!!

if i could impart one little TIP (re pre racing), it's nothing subversive or radical. literally, because we operate within a closed system (book%), then any and all price movements are constrained by those laws... nothing more. think of pistons, or a fat bstard on a waterbed. downward pressure exerts an equal (or distributed) force in the opposite direction. as it's a closed system, that pressure is exerted in a very specific way to the other actors...

anyway -you get my drift (pun, sorta intended!)

[eightbo]

can sympathise with the 5yr grind, my 1st 5 years were losers, yr 6/7 slight profits but with a lot of stress still only now pushing on yr 8.
75-80% of lifetime markets in the last 2 years, some automation in there but learning curve def. sped up by staying in the game more.

seems ridiculous when I read that thought i'd have it cracked in the first 1-2 yrs. "i just have to not go in-play" — seemed like i was always 1 step away from consistent long-term profitability. can't believe how long it took and still have the odd scare here and there in that department but less dramatic now if it does happen as have learned to treat the capital with a bit more respect over time.

all the dumb stuff i was doing in first 5 yrs came in handy edge-wise later, many situations now where I have a good idea what someone is doing with their stake and why when giving away value, or how players might react after certain situations because I used to do those specific patterns the same way. Sometimes other guys who have travelled dif. paths may be asking themselves why the market is doing something strange and assuming someone knows something they don't whereas I might hit it aggressively with confidence knowing it's actually just someone trapped in a position and acting predictably / based on their emotions