The Next Step

I have enjoyed my 2 weeks away from the stresses and anguish of trading. Yes, I know it shouldnt be that way, people say its really boring when you crack it, but thats been my experience, and probably highlights exactly where I'm going wrong.
So I'm not sure how to proceed from here, or even if I am going to continue in my quest. I seemed to have some sort of an edge, I was generally in (small) profit, and I think that it is my mindset, confidence and attitude that have kept my profits small and made me struggle. While I probably couldnt definitively define my edge so that, say, you could program a bot to use it, I wonder how many other traders could do so for their edge? But, as people have said, there is no point me carrying on and trading as I was before, whether it was that I didnt have an edge, or that my emotions and mindset eroded a lot of my profits. That leaves me with 2 areas to work on. Im not sure how much I am up for the grind of watching loads of markets, defining some edges, and testing them with small stakes for a good period of time. For the mental game, the blog was supposed to help with this, and it has to a certain extent, but you can see as time goes on that the posts come less and less, and are saying the same things over and over, so I am wondering if the time has come to suspend the blog for a while. I am also considering cutting all ties with other traders, since it does my mindset no good to be struggling all day, while other people are saying "oh, its easy", " Ive made £x so far", or giving out advice which is well meaning but useless to me as I am at the moment.
So over the next few weeks I will probably be watching some markets, testing some stuff out, seeing how I feel about getting back into the grind, and looking for ways to further my mental development.
Thank you to everyone who commented, even the Anons, and the seemingly negative comments, which I took as being made to try and help me, and point me in the right direction.
The blog is not definitely closed, if I make startling progress in the next few weeks, and have something new to say, then I may make further posts

The End?

After 5 losing days in a row, all my confidence is gone, all my discipline is gone, i have no clue whats going on in the markets or in my head, and am just spewing money away. I dont know what happened as the first half of the month was decent, I was on for my best month ever. I did have a deal with someone that if I got over a certain amount, I would raise my stakes. Guess what was the highest I reached, before this 5 day losing streak? yup, the exact amount I needed to make before raising stakes. It could just be coincidence, or it could be evidence of self destructive behaviour. Whatever, my confidence is all shot to pieces, and theres no way I can trade properly like this.
I may drop back to min stakes for a while, but I dont know if I have the determination in me for more months of hard slog. Comments on this blog have advised me to give up, and it is something I am seriously considering. I will update the blog on the outcome

Tuesday

I wasnt able to trade this afternoon, so as soon I got back in, I sat in front of my PC and got ready to trade the evening markets. I guess I wasnt prepared and in the right mindset, because after the first two markets where I had small losses, for some reason I wasnt able to accept a 3rd losing position in a row. I placed a trade which went against me, and then looked to leverage my price by putting in another trade. This is something I hardly ever do, if at all, so I really dont know why I started doing it now. The price moved further away so I tried to leverage the price again. The market didnt recover as I thought it might so I ended up with a pretty big loss, about 27 ticks.
I dont know what I was thinking , I am usually okay at accepting losses. it didnt affect me too much, I knew it was a really stupid mistake, and kew the feelings and actions that had caused it. I traded some more of the evening races before I had to go out again, and made most of the loss back.
It made me laugh to look back and see that if I had just taken the smallish loss on the first losing position, I would have been in profit for the evening. I guess even with all the practice, all the knowledge of emotions and how they affect you, I am still going to make stupid mistakes like this now and again.

Im still here!

Thanks to everyone who left comments on my last post. A couple of people seem to think I am giving up, but I am still here. I havent updated the blog for a couple of weeks as I havent had much to say, and have been considering some of the questions that were raised in my last post. I am still trading as much as I can, am in profit most of the time, and am gradually erasing the errors that cost me so much( I hope).
On saturday the bomber was out and throwing his money into the market again. Last time I was trading when he was around, it cost me £78, so this time I was much more careful, only backed first, didnt leave any lays lying around, and tried to profit from him. It didnt work out so well, was break even most of the day, so I stopped early.
I am now trying to pay more attention to market conditions, and changing my strategy accordingly, instead of going in and hoping that the way I trade will work. Early in the week, for example, I find trading difficult and stressful, as there is not much money about, a lot of spoofing going on, and so have started looking for lower risk opportunities on these days, since, if I get it wrong, it is very difficult to get out again with just a small loss.
I am still considering the future, and how best to progress from where I am now. I do have doubts sometimes about whether I can really make it work, but for now am determined to keep trying and keep improving.

Under the Spotlight

I have been thinking about why i seem to find accepting losses difficult, and why my results are never as good as I think they should be. I have realised that I am quite critical of myself. For example, today someone stopped me and asked for directions. I didnt really do a good job of explaining, and after they had left I had lots of negative thoughts going through my head. "You're useless", " I bet he thought you were a right twat", "You cant even explain simple directions" etc etc. I think this happens with most of my activities of daily life. Every thought and action is under an intense scrutiny, and they hardly ever measure up to expectation. Failing, or not being good enough ( or not as good as someone else), is not an option for me. But failing, not being good enough, making mistakes, doing stupid things, are going to be a part of everyones every day life, so this leaves me in a cycle of striving and trying, failing, feeling awful, worrying about not succeeding, and then trying again. So each loss, each failure is a reinforcement of "Youre not good enough", and the feelings associated with that. Of course, its going to be hard to do actions that have a chance of "failing", and if a loss in trading is seen as failure then I am not going to be keen to put myself in situations where I end up feeling like crap.
I have a good idea where all these feelings came from, but how do I go about getting a better attitude, other than years of therapy? I was looking at some websites for sports psychology, and one of them had 5 statements that rang true with me (link)

• You Feel That Whatever You Do Is Never Good Enough - A Perfectionist Streak
• You Make The Wrong Decisions - Especially Under Pressure
• You Experience Fear Of Failure - Or Fear Of Success
• You Lack Belief In Yourself -Even Though You Have The Talent
• You Dwell On Your Mistakes - And Then Make More Of Them

The website does remind me of certain e-books trying to sell betting systems, but the 5 statements are definitely things I need to work on. How much is good enough? Would I be satisfied with £50 a day? £100 a day? Would I finally feel a sense of worth if I was earning more than AH? I should focus on the positive things, that I have been in profit for 9 of the last 10 months( and the 1 losing month was a very small amount), which is more than a lot of traders achieve. I can obviously trade, maybe I should just relax a bit and enjoy the ride.

June Summary

June was a month of mixed results for me. My PnL is more of a straight line up than it has been the last couple of months, and I have only had 5 losing days( 6 if u count the £0.05 loss), so I feel I have made progress in being a bit more consistent. I am still making too many mistakes though. A couple of inplay errors, some slack thinking and slack reactions, and getting caught out by the mad bomber on a few occasions, has meant that my profit isnt as high as it should be. A number of times I have put in a trade in a weak market, the market has moved away, so I put in another trade, it also doesnt get taken, and I leave them in, then the market comes back, and I sit there hoping that it will stop at my trades. Sometimes it does, but if it doesnt then it generally goes through both trades and moves a number of ticks leaving me with a loss that hurts both my emotions and my PnL, since it is a double sized loss. I need to be more careful to remove trades that have not been taken.
I guess I should be happy that I am in profit, seemingly only 5% of traders are. Its tough to keep a level head when you see or hear about others that are making good money and it can make me try and force things sometimes. If I can stay calm and concentrated, do the simple things right, and stay out of trouble, I should see my PnL grow.

Long Boring Day

Today started off badly, getting caught out by the mad bomber, and losing 8 ticks in the first race. Things didnt get any better as the day progressed. I wasnt able to trade as normal, for fear of getting caught out again, I had to try and stay out of the bombers way, and take advantage of him if possible. I really struggled, lost my rythym and confidence, and by 5pm was down 20 ticks. I took a break before the evening races and went for a walk. It was a beautiful sunny day and I had missed it all by being stuck indoors lol. Over the evening races I managed to make the 20 ticks back, and ended up break even. Today showed that I am still quite fragile when it comes to losses, and that a couple of bad results can still affect my trading, making me more impatient, less confident, and not able to think straight. I go on tilt very easily, and everything becomes over dramatic: "Oh no, I cant trade, Im useless" etc etc. Hopefully the way I recovered will give me a bit of a confidence boost.

A decent day

With encouragement from some people in The Geeks Toy chat room, I decided to up my stakes today by 1/3rd, to £1 a tick Book profit. Book profit really seems to suit me ( or maybe its just that I am finally getting a little less loss averse) in that I dont consider my stake or the consequences of a losing trade as much. I now think in ticks and if I am making 2 or 3 ticks most races, then I am happy to take a tick or 2 loss when needed. I found todays trading ok, although the markets were fairly volatile, which doesnt seem to suit my style. I was up 20 ticks after 14 markets, but started to lose my concentration, made a couple of mistakes, and struggled with the rather empty evening markets. I ended up 17.5 ticks in profit so I was happy with my first day at increased stakes.It is a long day trading from 11am (on the dogs), right through to 8 or 9 in the evening, I'm not sure if its worth trying to trade that long, as mistakes will inevitably creep in.

Monday

Over the last 2 days I have managed to make back nearly all the money I lost on saturday. I am really pleased with how it is going, and feel like I am still learning a lot and making progress. I am now also looking for opportunities to back first, to try and avoid the big punter if possible. It also helps with learning to read the market, and if there are twice as many opportunities then hopefully it will mean twice as much profit. I changed my staking last week, I am now using Book Profit staking, which means that I make a set amount, greened up, for every tick. I find this is better than just staking £35 on every trade, as if you lose 3 ticks at 6.6, and then make 4 ticks at 2.2, you are still looking at a loss. I have it set to £0.75 a tick and it seems to be working well. I am continuing to grow in confidence, although I am still a little tentative at times. I need to have more belief in my self, and confidence that I can deal with any situation as it comes up to the best of my abilities.

No Imagination

A bad day today, not simply because I was trading badly, but because I showed no imagination, no adjustment to market conditions when it was called for.
Over the last week or so, someone has been punting huge amounts, 20 to 30 thousand pounds often, on a single runner, and moving the odds by 10 or more ticks. I knew this was happening, but just carried on trading in my normal manner, which usually entails laying first, although its not set in stone, I am just used to looking for opportunities for a drift.
I have managed to avoid him over the last couple of days, but it was inevitable that I would get caught eventually, and so it happened today, for a £15 loss. The loss threw me, and I lost my discipline and control in trying to find ways to exploit the punter. I tried laying another runner when the large amount came in, but instead of going out this runner also came in, for another £7 loss.
I need to use my brain more in thinking about the situation, rather than just carrying on happily as if the market is the same. Maybe these events will help me to identify opportunities other than my lay-first technique.

May Summary

May has been another tough month for me. The first few weeks I was all over the place. I wasnt thinking properly about my trading, was too busy seeing what other people were achieving and trying to emulate them, and was probably trading almost at random at times. Heres the PnL graph for this month.


With my PnL looking like a line drawing of the Alps, I was making stupid mistakes, and was starting to doubt whether making it in trading was possible for me. The big loss on 22/05 was due to a huge spike moving the market 10 ticks or more, but I had something like 6 trades in waiting to be taken, which is just careless. Even without this spike, I was having way too many large losses, sometimes £4 or £5 using £20 stakes, and it was killing my trading. That was my lowest point of the month and I decided to do something about it.The total on 23/05 is mostly due to an arb on a betfair offer, but as you can see, I managed to turn things round for the rest of the month. I realised that I wasnt trading methodically, with an edge, and was putting in trades hoping it was the right place. I was trading every race, with no real idea why I was opening trades( of course, I had some sort of criteria for putting in a trade but it was all a bit up in the air and random). I that I would look at each market, determine a point where a trade seemed more likely to succeed, and then just sit and wait. If the market didnt reach that point( I might adjust my likely trade depending on what had happened in the market) then I would do nothing. If it did reach my point, then I would trade. The first thing that surprised me was the amount of times the market was reaching my trading point, even from seemingly far away. I was also suprised that the points I had selected did seem to be more successful than not. From then on, following this method, I havent really looked back. The big losses are gone, just 3 losses over £1 in the last week, none over £2 ( the loss on 26/05 was due to an in-play mistake and doesnt count :p ). I am much more relaxed when trading, making it easier to watch and take in all the market information. taking up better positions means I am not chasing the market around, and am less likely to be caught in play, as any losses I have are small, and i'm not going to be frantically opening and closing positions close to the off. It really does feel totally different. I am hoping this is the big step forward, the eureka moment that I have been needing to really get to grips with trading. Some people have been saying the markets have been good for trading over the last week, so maybe this has something to do with it, but I know I have struggled during supposed good weeks before.
heres my average win and loss graph, and strike rate graph for the month




You can see my average loss has come right down, my average win has slightly, although this is partly due to reducing my stakes half way through the month.

I am going away for a few days at the start of next month, I am actually dissapointed about that, as I am keen to continue and see if I can make more progress. Maybe its a good thing that I can take a break, clear my head, and come back recharged and ready.

thursday

Just a quick note to say that I am still coming along nicely and getting more confident about my trading. I very rarely have a loss over £1 now, about 5 in the last 2 weeks i think, and its so much less stressful! Being so much more relaxed makes it easier to watch the markets and take in the information.
I made just under £6 today with £20 stakes. As I get more confident in my reads of the market, and in my identification of good opportunities, I am hoping this figure will rise a bit.

Steady the sinking ship

This month has been the worst month I've had for a while, and seeing as I said that about last month too, my confidence has slowly been draining away and doubts and thoughts about whether I can really make this work have been creeping in as the month goes on. After a good month in february it seems like my trading has been getting steadily worse. Over the last 2 weeks though, after a bit of thought, and advice from some people who read the blog, I have managed to steady things a bit, and am not spewing money away( although there have been 2 days where big spikes caught me out for a big loss). My average loss has gone down dramatically, I have managed to eradicate the £3, £4, £5 or more losses that I was encountering too frequently, my strike rate feels like it has increased too. My average win has also gone down slightly, and I am not making what I would call good totals every day, but I feel like there has been a genuine improvement and I have a good base to go from and improve my profits.

Have to laugh

Was finding it quite quiet today, not really getting anywhere but staying out of trouble and had a tiny profit for the day, when WHAM, a huge spike took 6 orders that I had in the market, and moved the market 10 ticks in the wrong direction. Nothing much I could do, my own fault for having so many orders in I suppose, I waited a few seconds to see if it would recover a little, it didnt, so I closed out for a £18.75 loss on that race. It is so discouraging when that happens, funny how you dont see it on Jack Birkheads videos where he has lots of orders scattered around the market. I was starting to feel a little more confident about how my trading was going, since I have definitely seen an improvement over the last week. Now I have basically no chance of even getting into profit for this month.

slow and steady

Back to a straightforward day today, only had 2 losing races out of 15, only losing 50p, and overall making over £6, which is not bad for £20 stakes. It does seem like I am taking up better positions, and that being more patient( or less greedy?) has helped me cut out a lot of the stupid losses I was getting. Having to wait longer before opening a position runs the risk of becoming more tied to that trade, and not accepting that I can still get it wrong, and I think thats what happened yesterday to some extent. Also the longer I trade, the more mistakes I am likely to make. Yesterday towards the end I was getting a bit careless, and my big losses happened because I had more than 1 trade entered, and when the market went against me, either a spike or a move,the other trades got taken and I was left with a bigger than normal loss, which led me to chase.
As someone pointed out recently, there have been 4000+ races this year. If I had made £0.40 a race on average( as I did today), then I would already have made £1600, which is a lot more than I have actually made. I need to lower my expectations, not think about what other people are making, and focus on being consistent and disciplined.

1 step forward, 10 steps back

It was all going so well, after a 3 day break I had continued from where I left off, and had what felt like a decent total, no big losses. Then in 1 race a big spike caught me out and left me with a £6 loss, no warning, no way of recovering, seemed a bit tough, but I battled back over the next few races, and got back into miniscule profit again. I guess I had been trading too long at this point, as, in my last race I got caught out by a late move, was looking at a £3.50 loss, wasnt able to deal emotionally with the loss well enough, started chasing on another horse, which then also proceeded to go against me, then got caught out by the inplay signal, managed to close out in play for a total loss on that race of £10. Ten seconds of indiscipline and inability to accept losses, wiping out a whole days work. Why couldnt I accept the £3.50 loss? I suppose I felt dissapointment and anger and frustration that I had messed up again, and wanted to wipe out the loss( and the bad feelings) immediately. It felt like the day would have been wasted and I didnt want that.
Even with all the time spent, and improvements made, I am still making basic, stupid errors that should have been cut out months ago.

day 2 of the "new start"

I am pretty happy with how things went today. Was similar to yesterday, no huge losses, no panics, no staring at the screen in disbelief and feeling like shit. I was patient, picked odds where I felt I was likely to make a successful trade, and waited till the market reached those odds. I only had 2 losing races, both under £1, and overall made £7, my best return( comparing for stake size) for a long long time. I still need to work on taking the opportunities, as a few times I waited "to make sure" and missed out. Fear of a loss, any loss at the moment, is playing a big part in my trading.
I now need to keep a level head, and put in more practice till I become more confident that I am on the right track. I wont be able to trade for the next 3 days, but maybe a break will be good to clear my head.

a bit of improvement

Taking advice from comments on this blog, I have been thinking more about why and where I open trades. Sometimes it does seem like I am just thinking "Ok, I have to do something in this market, lets do X", which is probably not a good strategy. Today I was a bit more selective about what trades I did, and if I didnt feel that there was anything available, I didnt just trade for the sake of it. I have still had losing races, but managed to keep them all to below £1, no huge losses today, which is a great improvement. Not a huge amount of profit either, but any is good at the moment.

confuzzled

A couple of months ago I thought I was starting to really get to grips with horse trading. I was regularly making a profit, and even my bad days werent so bad. Recently though, I just cant seem to do it. I dont know if its just frustration creeping in, but the number of races where I have a big loss seems to have risen dramatically. Today I had a medium sized loss, battled back to break even, and then got hit by a huge loss. This pattern is happening all too often and I dont know why.
I have already dropped back in stakes, to £20, I think I need to spend more time recording and reviewing my trading.

April summary

Not much to say except a very poor month for me. In play mistakes, and a bad week due I think to raising my stakes, and all my profits were wiped. I still have a long way to go :(