Watch the clock or TV carefully

Take heed of the title of this post!

I have just got caught out (carried away whilst trading and a race started while i had an open position) needless to say I had an open back bet with about £27 on it - and the race was a 5f sprint, I watched in horror as the horse lost the race wiping out my bank - Its done my confidence right in as you can see from the last 2 days trading P and L I was starting to get somewhere - I will not be trading the rest of the day now because of this and probably not tommorrow - I never had the race clock up and was not paying attention to the start time.


DAMM DAMM DAMM CANT BELIEVE I WAS SO STUPID - dont make the same mistake i did

Getting better

Its been a while since I posted a P an L shot - but over the last 2 days I seemed to have made great progress only using £2 stakes, its not a greaty amount to win but I think it shows that using that charts more seems to prove that it gets a bit easier to spot trends and get in and out of the market at the right time!

progress

I have been using the new charting candle sticks for a few days now and its certainly helped with my ability to spot better entry and exit points, but even more so thanks to Mark who sent me a message a couple of weeks back I have been combining this with analyisis of the betfair chart and been looking at support and resistance levels in the chart in the 10 mins up to the race and I have been getting better and better at getting in and out at the right times, I feel this is a major milestone and a definate lightbulb moment, in fact the biggest breakthrough I have had in a while and I cannot believe I had missed this part of the jogsaw for so long, I had no idea just how much information was in the betfair graphs and in all honesty was not using them at all, just try to follow the money!

It seems that the prices and trends are getting more predictable for me as a novice and for the first time I dont feel like a small fish in shark infested waters and I am able to feel my way around a lot more.

if anyone reading who had been through this could perhaps tell me that I am hitting on something?? even if not, its done wonders for my confidence, when you have half an idea whats going on I now find that scracthing trades is becoming more natural!

So I am going to play around with £2 stakes and try to get my strike rate up and start making small consistent wins!

new ideas

Hi There folks,

Been a wee while since I updated the blog and thought I would quickly write up my progress over the last week.

I have been using a new charting setup with the candle sticks the last few days in the advanced charting grahps and I have been watching the way the markets behave instead of trying to trade them, but the odd time I have been trading using just £2 stakes.

Someone said on my blog I should be having fun trying to work out what the markets are doing, and it was a great piece of advice I have actually been having fun trying to work out what a particular market/horse will do and the great thing is its been stress free and there are patterns that the markets follow and I am beggining to get pretty good at noticing them.

So if like me you are a novice and have been trading using real money, stop using money for a while and try and work out whats going on and you will actually notice more, as you are not getting frustrated about losing money and for me I was able to concentrate a whole lot more on what was going on and what my game plan should be when I start using money again, there is no real subsitute to using money, and you will also learn a hell of a lot putting money in the market but occasionally taking a step back may help you like it has me.

I also just read a great post from adam heathcote about getting in the zone before you trade, I am not a profitable trader yet, but I can relate to what adam says in the post word for word, I reccomend you have read at it


http://adamheathcote.blogspot.com/

The enrty is titled 'routine'

slow response

Enjoyed my day off relaxing yesterday as I see many others out there in traderland did, apart from peter webb who had what sounds like a horrible accident, get well soon! but peters comments about seeing good things even in the bad times ring true! look at his P and L shot for the aus races!!

Anyway, asides being very tired as I had about 3 hours sleep last night i am finding betfair very slow today and very nervous about trading, so I am going to sit it out again today and get back to my bed for some shut eye before a 12 hour shift toninght.

Hope eveyone else is getting on better, perhaps is just my brain!

Paul

Optimism

I have the utmost optimism most of the time, and I always see the bright side of life, especially when it comes to trading, but since starting the blog it went on a short uphill trend then bang, I am back to losing - for the first time in the last 5 months since I began my trading journey I feel like throwing in the towel, maybe just maybe I am not cut out for this, my bank of £50 is now halved, its only £25, but its not the money that matters its the pyhscoligical effect its having on me and my body I can actually today feel my blood racing and my heart pounding! so I think its best to have a rethink about my future as a trader before it gives me a heart attack, no amount of money is worth a life.

I just cant seem to figure out the way the markets moves, one minute I think I have it sussed and can guess which way a market is going to go and sometimes I get it right, but of late its been more wrong and even though I can cut the trades out quicker a lot of small losses hits the bank, the opposite of lots of little winds which is what I have been striving for.

I have no idea if 5 months is enough time or I should be trying for longer, I know everyone is different but the frustration is killing me, normally I can master things quite quickly and pick things up as I go along, but the horse racing markets are a complex beast which just might be beating me! perhaps some time just watching the markets for a couple days instead, who knows anyway time for a cuppa!

The trend is not my friend, today anyway!

Ive been reading up alot and watching a lot of videos again and before trading today I was under the assumption that I would be able to trade a bit better as after watching many trading videos and reading other bits of advice about following trends and waiting for breakouts I have already lost £7 in three races today so far!! I was full of confidence today before trading, now I am really hacked off!

Looking at the at graphs from the 3 horses there was a definate trend on them, I then susses out the upper resistance and lower resistance levels and the upper ones were broke which upon reading and watching other vidoes/advice out there you would think they would continue to drift, how wrong! they all came back in with a vengeance and actually broke the lower price resistance and kept shortening, I dont know if its the odds ranges I am trading, or becauase its a monday! dont go thinking you have it all sussed! because you get proved wrong again and again! now back to trying to trade again!

Thank you kindly!

To Mark,

I just wished to say thank you very much for the comment you left! as you stated I will not be publishing it and will go through it just now and start watching the relavant markets! well done on the new job as well! id love to get out of the taxi business! time will tell! I would have emailed you, but there is no retrun address on the blog postings as you can imagine!


Kind Regards
Paul

downhill rollercoaster

Well I must say today I am cheesed off, normally I am upbeat and positive even when I am losing, since starting this blog using £50 starting bank I am now at £35 which means quite a loss over the 2.5 weeks ago I started this.

My mind is a muddle - I find at times there is too much information out there to help you?? I know that sounds strange, but if you watch too many videos and read too many articles it seems to confuse me, dont know about anyone else, I know there are no that many blog readers on my blog just now! I cant seem to find a groove to sit in or get my own style.

One good thing about the blog though is that since starting it it has definetely helped with my discipline I have not let a single bet go in running, which was my major downfall, and I can now scratch trades a lot quicker so its progress but not money making progress, what I now need to do is stop losing money, and at some time making money will follow????

Just now I trade using pure price action, ie folllowing (or trying to follow) the big price moves, but I either get it wrong or get in too late and miss it, and today seemed particularly hard with movements as there did not seem to be any great ones and the liquidity was low in some races towards the end of the day, in the past ive tried rading form etc and try to figure out which way a horse will go, but that lost me money as well, ive tried working with stop losses but thats not working as the prices are too jumpy and just take my stop loss anyway before going in the direction I thought it would go and I see the profit I was going to make dissapear in front of my eyes!

I feel like hitting my head off a wall but my entusiasm to learn and crack this never seems to fade, its becoming like a drug.

I guess i just need to learn to read the markets better and use betangel a bit more proficiently, one minute I think im making progress and then the next it goes to pot!!!

Arrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

If you could hear me scream your ears would be sore!.

Perhaps my downfall is that I only use the ladder for trading? maybe I should be scalping more, but I find the ladder interface easy to use and understand and the multi ladder I use when there us no clear favourite, perhaps I need to start looking more at scalping or bookmaking? or do I should I become good at swing trading first!!

Rollercoaster

For me subject field of this posting is what the last 3 days have been like, and apart from my lack of experience I put it down to tiredness, as some of you may know I am taxi driver just down and work nightshift to allow me to trade during the day, but latley as with everything in the economy just now the trade is suffering, so much so so that I am having to work much much longer hours to make any kind of living at all, to show you how bad things are (this will give you an idea of how bad the economy is) about 6 months ago I could make on a friday night after expenses £300 for 12 hour shift, this friday I made £70, and that was on a pay weekend for most people who get paid at the end of the month, so you would expect to it to be busy!

I know this deviates from the topic, but it ties in with what experienced traders will tell you, you really have to be in the zone and focused on your work, if you are tired like me, (well shattered) you will make rash desisions and leave trades open for longer which is exactly what I done over the weekend, I knew when I woke up late on Saturday morning that I should not have traded, and the same on sunday, btu even though I lost money, I actually still learned - the mistakes I made only re-inforced what I was beggining to understand about trading, you have to a half fulll glass all the time, not just in trading, but in life in general I think to make this work!

I have to work again tonight but will hopefully finish early enough to get a good nights sleep and take things a bit easierduring the week, and hopefully be more in the zone!

I have often thought about another job and could easily go and do something else and something a lot more challenging, but that of course would not allow me the freedom to trade (or learn to trade) so the challenge continues and this week should see some more positive results once my batteries re charge!

down a wee bit again!

Not much to to say today other than being a a few pounds down again over the last couple of days, mainly from yesterday - I really struggled yesterday as it I felt that there was not a lot of money in the markets and no great price movments, which meant just as I fired an order in and expected it to take of the price was quickly settling back in the other other direction meaning I kept getting small losses, the lesson learned however was to look more at not just the graphs, but the WOM and Momentum meters at the same time I think this will come with time and experience -Just now I find it difficult to remember everything to look at in the correct order when placing a trade, great thing about betangel is that all the information is there to help you make the right trade but it takes plenty of practice to read it all at the same time!

Just read that betangel is sponsoring tonights card at wolverhampton! I am gutted I cant trade it, so will just have to settle for reading other traders experience of tonights card! hopefully you all get some good green up!

slowly getting there

Over Friday Sat and Sun I made a small profit, well £10 of it was from sunday, so it shows the kind of days I have been having, either breaking even or making a small loss, but yesterday I felt things just clicked a lot more and I was able to scratch my trades very quickly if I got it wrong, and I also found new confidence in my graph reading abilties that allowed me to let trades run for longer! Analysisg my mistakes over the last 3 days has allowed me to progress as I try not to make the same mistakes over and over again, and not to be so trigger happy when entering trades.

if I cant see it, dont do the trade has been my motto now and it seems to be working, over all I have made a profit in the last 7 days of just over £20.00! not much, but I am now realising that it's little and often that I need to be practising and try and nip in and out of my trades quciker, nicking a few ticks here and there to help grow my confidence!

I still feel like a blind man when wandering through some of the markets not quite knowing which direction to go and cant quite feel my way around, so what I do when I dont know what to do is a take a guess and if I get it right I note it down and I am starting to get it right more than wrong, through time I assume this will give me the confidence to enter these markets and enter some trades! intitially for me I want to reach a target of £100 a day as this is roungly what I can when in my taxi! but working from home tax free (well apart from the premium charge) and without dealing with drunk people and getting a social life back are just as important to me, cant wait to get my first premium charge from betfair!

Hello there,

Just a quick summary of my last two day, there was no trading for me yesterday as I was having one of those days that you take every now and then to 'do thngs' such as go the bank, dentist and get the brakes done on the car and a couple of other odd jobs, I always try and get things like this done in the morning to allow me to trade in the afternoon, but I ran over time yesterday and was not back in the house til after 4pm!.

So on tuesday I made quite a few mistakes and made a £6.10 loss which means I am about breaking even since starting the blog, but this forced me think about what I was doing wrong and I went through every losing trade with a toothcombe and tried to figure out why I had go it wrong, the great thing about doing this type of analysis is that for me I was able to pinpoint a repeating trend about my trading desicions that was making me get it wrong and now having had the chance to really sit down and think about it and ask a very good friend about it that I am now able today to try out a new strategy and hopefully improve my results!

It was a a real lightbulb moment for me, and what it also made me realise is that I still have so so much to learn about how the markets work!

I have lightbulb moments almost every day when trading and take note of them immediately, this has a really positive effect for me and provides great motivation to keep going as I know that for a long as I keep having regular lightbulb moments that I am still learning thereforeI keep going and, things will happen, as Peter Webb said on his blog a couple of days ago, good things come to those who wait!

Not so good, but a profit all the same!

Yesterday I found tough, I dont feel I was very focused at the start of my trading day yesterday and was being interuppted by the phone and my 2 dogs, so started about 5 quid down.

Normally when this happens I give up and dont trade until the next day or throw it all away in running, but Ive found since starting the blog it has really helped my discipline and I was determined to turn it around and started to win back my losses so I sweated the rest of the day out and started to get some wins back.... not a grand profit all the same but at least it's a profit!

Things looking up!

I started Yesterday with another £50 bank and made good progress, all right not a huge sums but I was more disciplined and not letting things go in running and scratching more trades quicker.

I decided to be more selective about my trades and instead of trying to trade every single breakout on the graphs I waited until the big money came in and only traded those price movements, I was going to try and use stop losses yesterday but decided I needed to learn to do without them and managed a full day without letting a trade go in play, which is a first for me.

It's often said on other blogs and video's that doing nothing is doing something and yesterday I just waited and waited until I saw an opportunity and acted on it, there were a couple of races I could not see an opportunity on, and just sat it out altogether which is a first for me as well!

There were a few races where I was not fast enough to act on a price movement and instead of getting in mid way I just left it and moved on to the next race....I find it harder to spot opportunities to trade large field handicaps where its really diffculut to see a potential favourite or loser and these are the races I could not trade yesterday, I am sure through time I will be able to spot something in these races but for now I am happy to sit them out. Patience really is a virtue.

Ive always drunk from a half full glass so I am looking forward to today and see if I can push myself a wee bit further!

Obvious cock up

I mentioned yesterday in my opening post that I think you really have to work at learning to trade 24x7, obviously I did not mean sitting in front of your pc all day every day!

What I meant is that for me and I am sure others who have went through or are going through the learning curve of trading is that it really consumes your life, for example yesterday when sat down for dinner with my fiance after losing my bank, Evonne was trying to talk to me about arranging this car and that car and the colour of her bridesmaid dress for our wedding, but all she got was a blank expression from me......all i could think about was what I done wrong!

Same applied when I was out in my taxi last night, normally I am sociable and chatty with my passengers, but lets just say I did not get much tips last night as my mind was consumed about thoughts on trading and where I went wrong, anyway it was saturday night most of them would not remember anyway.

Then the lightbulb moment arrived as they so often do and the mistake I made was glaringly obvious, as most of them are! If you look at my rough sketch taken from my tired brain this morning you see that I was trading the favourite Black Beauty 16.55 newcastle.

The betfair price graph was showing a strong consistent steamer and in the blink of an eye I placed my back bet, as the horse was steaming in all day, it was a sure fire thing that it would continue coming in in the few minutes up to the race going off.

How wrong was I? no sooner had I placed my back bet and the priced drifted out almost violently from about 3.0 right up to 5 in a matter of about 30 seconds, now I was in a losing position of about £19.00 even when I greened up, Or red up! so no matter who won the race I was losing £19.00 of my hard earned bank, instinct and past experience told me that I should take this loss and move on as 9 times out of ten it will go in running and the price will not come back in to the bottom level unless the horse is running really well, but I let my emotions get the better of me and lost my abilty to get out of the trade....low and behold it lost and the price drifted out in running losing my entire back bet and bank!



After it happened I looked at the racing post website for other clues, and had I done this before placing my intitial trade I would probably not have made the trade as only one tipster was backing it, the second favourite had 7 tipsters backing it, so it was an obvious drifter, but the betfair price graph told a different story
.
Also looking at the ladder there was no money in the lay columm above the £800 odd pounds that was sitting there, it was in black and white that it was going to drift, but inexperience and enthusiasm wiped out my discipline for a split second.

I need to be more cautious when placing trades and scratch them much faster, I still dont understand why it steamed in all day right up to the race though?

I hope you can make out the sketch I am not the best at freehand, I wish there was a way to look at befair price graphs and previous races.

I am going to try and video my trading sessions from now on so I will try and post videos up on the blog of me making mistakes like this and hopefully one day getting it right!

What a cock up

Well I thought Id make a hash of it on my first day of the blog, hopefully this will give you an insight into what it takes to become successful trader. Or not!

I should really write this in the about me section but who cares Im not looking for an audience more using this as a way to vent my frustrations, success? or failures in my quest to become a profitbale trader.

To let you know where I am at, I have been messing about on the exchanges for a few months with no degree of success so far, my losses far outweigh my gains and I thought it would make a refreshing change for some people thinking about doing this too see a losing blog! not that I am negative about my abilty to crack this, (I will manage it some day) but I wanted wannabe traders to see that its not simply a case of going on a course with peter webb and then coming home to a betfair cash machine.

The courseis great, and is perfect to open your eyes on how the markets work, but it is certainly not a magic wand that will make you rich overnight, you have to work work work practice practice practice? no doubt there are some naturals out there who can trade very well very soon! but I dont fall into that category!

The above dumps from my betfair account is taken from the 1st december til now and it shows a couple of hundred quid loss on the horses, I dont believe this is a real loss though, but more paying to learn? you have got to lose money in the start I reckon before you can make some, so be prepared to lose!

The next one is my P + L from today which shows mostly wins, but 2 big losses where I let the horse go in play and lost my whole bank, which means I cant trade again with real money until monday when I get some more cash on the bank, so sunday for me is purely for watching! bummer.

My biggest issues or traits that I am sure are holding me back from being profitable is that:

A: I cant scratch trades quick enough
B: when a trade goes the wrong way and I end up in losing position I feel as though I have to let it go in play, because its got to come back in surely? might work the odd time! but 9 times out of ten its stung me! look at my overall P + L !! if anyone out there can help me conquer this let me know! otherwise I will keep going until it happens naturally?....one day please!

Its great to see alot of traders doing really well out there and some remarkable figures being posted out there with money that some can only dream of, it used to really piss me off reading those and frustrate the hell out of me!

Ive always been the kind of guy that says, if he can do it so can I!.... throw that rule out the window when learning to trade!! I now can read those other blogs and be happy for the guys making the bucks and can acutally get inspiration from them to continue my quest!

I gave up a profitable business to do this? who could blame me? looking after 15 plus staff, dealing with tax, employment law and all the other things that running a business cant be!

I now drive a taxi on nightshift purposely to allow me to trade full time during the day on the horse racing markets, I beleive that is the commitment it needs to become successful!

As for today, in my relative experience I found the markets a little lacking in cash and not too many great price movements? I always find saturdays harder than any other day, which is contrary to the other traders who find them easier! I made a few ticks here and there but in the the end I screwed my bank once again by not sracthing quickly enough and and letting in running take over my brain! I cant stress how important it is to scratch a trade as soon as it you see it going against you! thing is I can say that all day and teach you how important it is all day but cant seem to master it myself!

Anyway, I must dash I have a curry to eat and now have to ferry drunken arseholes around glasgow for the next 12 hours! oh the joys? I ask myself why I do this most days! the answer is all around me! just look at some of the P an L's on other blogs!