Here's a potentially controversial view from a novice Betfair trader of only one month standing (15 years and ongoing in financials).
Money management is for losers! It's just a way to enable you to lose for even longer. It's death by a thousand cuts.
By trading at 2% of his account a trader is saying to himself that he fears that there is a possibility that he will lose 50 times in a row and with that kind of psychology he'll probably find a way to make it happen. I usually find that this kind of money advice is promoted by people selling money-making systems that don't want to get sued by losing clients. Or by middle men hoping to milk their customers by keeping them in the game for as long as possible.
In any speculative investment anything is possible even 50 straight losses but how many consequtive losses could you really stand, even at 2%, and still carry on. Your subconscious would probably lock your mouse button finger way before 50, you probably wouldn't be able to go near the markets because of the fear of loss, you would probably tell yourself that you're just re-evaluating your strategy. (It happened to me in the days when you had to phone in your order to a broker to place a financial trade, my subconscious just paralysed my telephone arm after a series of losses, it took me a year to recover).
Losses are just a cost of doing business, like paying rent on a shop. The trouble with this business is that you can do everything right and still lose and that is something our brains find very difficult to handle. We are beings that learn from cause and effect and reliable repetition of events and when that doesn't work we are in a world of pain and indecision. This is what makes 95% of traders fail, its nothing to do with systems or money management.
If a trader can't shrug off a loss and get on with the next trade he's in the wrong business. If he can't afford to lose he's in the wrong business. If losing hurts at all, he's in the wrong business. No type of speculative trading is for poor people trying desperately to supplement their income. The psychological pressures are hard enough to cope with even when the cash doesn't matter.
That doesn't mean you don't try to contain your losses, you just use some common sense and not a rigid formula.
In odds trading surely the idea is to complete the cycle and have no money invested in the market at all by the time it starts so the only loss should be when a trade goes against you which you can either hedge before the off or take it in-running if you dare.
I am still trading small stakes from a small account while I find my feet but I will still put it "all in" several time a day, fully intending to take it all out again before the off.
I expect I will continue to do so as my account either grows or I give it up. Obviously there might come a point when the bets would be too large to get quickly matched.
Apart from always trading with a stop and a limit(offset) there is nothing practical you can do if the Betfair server goes off line its just another cost of doing business. If you trade big stakes you should probably have a standby system with a mobile internet connection, as a back up in case your landline internet goes down.
Let the debate begin.
if so you would profit pittents. The only way to make something decent would be to increase the capital then. A lot of sports traders (Pre Race trading) risk say 25-40% but isn’t this kinda real risky for the following facts
