Could not find the time to trade much on Saturday and ended up only having enough time to try a couple of ideas out briefly. One style that I like and will be using much more from now on, is closing my trades in parts where possible. Basically using part of my entrance stake to lock in some profit as soon as the markets moves my way. This puts me in a stronger position allowing me to place the stop further back. It also gives me more confidence to hold onto the remaining net stake longer and close out at the end of the move. Typically after one/two ticks I would close a third or half of my stake, and if it looked promising I would allow it to move on until I could see adequate signs to close out fully. This is what I was doing today and it worked out well. Of course to do this I did have to raise my stakes slightly in order for me to break down my closures into multiples of £2. I was therefore using £2, £4 and £6 stakes today for the racing.
I did not trade every market and tried to be more selective in my trades. However I did try to trade most of them as I knew there would not be too many being a Sunday. I traded a total of 19 markets today, 12 horse racing and 7 footy matches, all prerace/prematch as usual. I was quite pleased with my results as I managed to not lose on any market.
Although promising signs I do feel that my style needs much improvement as many mistakes were made. The vids are really openeing my eyes to the errors as I had hoped they would. The only issue with the vids is that you need to make a lot of time to watch and analyse them properly. I speed them up with my media player and go over them a few times making brief notes on each market. This is proving effective and I want to do this after every trading session. However I do need about as much time to review as the length of the actual vid, maybe a bit more somtimes. So I have made a new rule which is to not start another trading session until I have gone over all of the previous session's vids. If I have not, then I would simply use the time of the next session to keep reviewing the previous one until I am upto date. I'm hoping this will drive me to do it as it can be rather monotonous at times, feels similar to what homework was like at school!! Improvements are already noticeable, in particular I am finding watching the graphs at high speeds is internalising some of the patterns and making me spot them earlier in their formations.
I might go one step further and record my thoughts via a mic, syncing it with the vids. I think this will help me identify when I am losing my focus and slipping into a weaker temprement. Sometimes when sitting in silence I don't realise that I am tiring and before I can prevent it, I've placed a couple bad trades and need to spend most of the remaining time trying to get the book green before the race starts. If I can slowly eliminate these instances I would be profiting much more. Will probably pick up a mic next time I'm in town. Training myself to say my thoughts out loud might be a bit odd at first but It shouldn't be too tough to get used to.
Should also note I moved my trading screen about a bit today to make more use of the space. I basically split the two widescreens in half, giving my 4 smaller sections. The ladder is on one of the central sections, this makes it much easier to glance right and left and use the other sections. The market overwiew is better for me when it is narrow, as all the price movements are easier to notice. The candle stick graphs for the 3 favs are now far left. On the far right I switch between the guardian or the undocked unmatched bets tab allowing me to monitor it at a glance whilst committed to a market. Switching between runners is very easy so I did not feel the need to have 3 ladders open simultaneously. No doubt I will probably move everything around again.
Got much footage to get through so I'll leave it at that for today. I'm hoping to trade tomorrow as I'm off work, but it all depends if I manage to get though the footage in time.
Peace.
2 comments:
Hi,
Just wondering what type of trading you do on football, you say prematch are you just scalping the market before the game starts?
Hey bftrader,
The Soccer trading was all prematch using £2 stakes over and over. I match about £4-£14 a match and aim to hedge out at KO. Sometimes (about 1/5) I close in the first min of the match, always out by 5 mins. I do often make my market rather than open, get matched and then place my close. It makes more sense to do this as you need to be in the market as long as possible to get matched. The risk/reward ratio is something I love about prematch footy trading, as at worst you can only lose a couple of ticks (if you close before KO) and have plenty of time to react in comparison to the prerace markets. The more I do it the more I feel that always closing at KO is worth it, even if it means a small loss on some games. Long terms profits without the risk of a first minute goal would warrant an increase in stakes for the strategy. Will keep minimal stakes for now until I feel the time is right. Still getting a feel for these markets and how they move.
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