How long will it take to learn to trade

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How many markets did you trade before you started being consistantly profitable?

500
16
19%
1000
7
8%
2000
2
2%
3000
5
6%
4500
2
2%
6000
4
5%
7500
6
7%
9000
3
3%
10000+
41
48%
 
Total votes: 86
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Euler
Posts: 24701
Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: Bet Angel HQ

I'm not sure there is a 'right' answer.

I jumped when the market was immature so I didn't realise until about 18 months in that this was actually a huge opportunity. I feel like you need to experience all the ups and downs before you can really say you know what you are doing.

The middle of winter feels nothing like the middle of summer! So I'd say not a number of markets but an amount of time.
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northbound
Posts: 737
Joined: Mon Mar 20, 2017 11:22 pm

Euler wrote:
Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:49 pm
I feel like you need to experience all the ups and downs before you can really say you know what you are doing.
+1

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”
convoysur-2
Posts: 1110
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2012 10:00 am

cant count just markets ,because theres so much other stuff involved as well,,
but no less than 10.000 hours.
Wolf1877
Posts: 367
Joined: Fri Sep 08, 2017 10:59 am

I'm not at consistent profitability yet and I suppose it depends on what you define as trading as say horse racing trading is very different to football and manual trading is very different to automated trading.

On football I think I have finally had my light bulb moment this week and I'm pretty confident that consistent profit starts right now. Disappointed it took me so long to figure it out! Still lots of work to do to fully develop and deploy comprehensive strategies for football.

On racing, wow where to start. Having started dabbling only in September I've not been through a summer flat season yet and I tend to be busy most weekends so largely my experience has been on low grade races which can be extremely volatile and frequently highly manipulated by other traders or syndicates. With manual trading I can generally make a profit before the markets really kick into life in the last few minutes, then it is more of a game of chance with the dice seemingly loaded against me. My relatively untrained eye finds it very difficult to detect when a market is being pushed one way late on with the intention of profiting from a reversal and when a market is being pushed one way and then being pushed further still in the same direction. Intermodal in yesterdays 20:15 at Newcastle was a good example of odds being pushed to both new lows and new highs in the last 4 minutes before the scheduled start. For me success or failure in horse racing will rest on my ability to analyse data and develop automated processes.
iambic_pentameter
Posts: 443
Joined: Wed May 18, 2016 1:24 pm

Whilst profitability is ultimately the end goal, it's important to remember that profitability can only come through discipline, mindset, risk management, market cycles etc.

I'd also suggest that like any other field, the people at the top never stop learning or improving.

The other curve ball that we have to deal with, is our ego - I'm sure we can all recall a time where we've pulled off a great trade and declared ourselves to be (insert your own example here)

The reality, of course, is that we need to be emotionless and robotic in our trading.

Success is a journey and not a destination etc.

Iambic
themcg
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2016 8:06 pm

i started manually pre race trading properly in may 2015. id been doing a bit at the weekends for about a year before that but i was off work with a broken leg so i thought id give it a serious go. i traded almost every day for 4 months, you could count on 1 hand the number of days off i had. I didnt really get anywhere i had stopped a few rookie mistakes like going in play and over staking very early but i was still at a loss at the end of every week. When my leg was fixed i went back to work and trading weekends til April 2016. Then in April i got a new job that paid £120 a week less than the job i had but the hours were better suited to trading. So again i started trading 7 days a week. It was pretty much all one way traffic until july this year when i eventually called it a day. i had the odd winning week but nothing worth talking about. And after over 10000 races i was no closer to cracking it than i was when i first started. If the trading journey was London to Edinburgh after 3 years i still wouldnt be out of my street. So if you think 5 or 10000 markets traded will be some guarantee of success i can tell u its not.
eightbo
Posts: 2154
Joined: Sun May 17, 2015 8:19 pm
Location: Malta / Australia

Forever learning it seems! Personally, I must be between 5k horse racing markets. Have too many different files to get a decent estimate for sure though.

I'd say I had the knowledge to be profitable around 1k, but obtaining the execution to stick to my rules is taking much longer than I ever imagined at the 1k mark. :ugeek:
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mcgoo
Posts: 898
Joined: Thu Jul 18, 2013 12:30 pm

I have been trying to automate trading on Betfair for years part time. I forget how many years (more than 5) and have had long gaps in terms of consistency during that time.I was far more focused on the automation from a technical challenge perspective than thinking about what trading actually meant. I started watching PW videos at the beginning of the year and it changed everything about how I view BF markets and myself- I had a few realisations about how important your nature is re trading , during this period.I started reading and watching videos about trading psychology as it became apparent that this aspect is key.When I realised that the market was turning against me at the exact instant that I opened a trade because I was looking for it-it nearly blew my mind (had a reminder of this today when my mindset wasn't right-had to reset and slowly moved into profit-tough days still). Trading does seem to reflect ones mind/nature very accurately.When I got this, I stopped losing and my BF balance graph evened out. I have continued with the automation and am finding some success there too now. It is not easy but I still enjoy the challenge. I started trading horses 'properly''(manually) about a month ago and have made $70 over about 250 markets in the past month.Not exactly stellar but I haven't had one losing Saturday yet.It is difficult in Oz ,I find, with a full time job as you only really have Saturdays to trade and the UK markets are on too late for me(young family adds challenges). My personality is not geared towards risk taking so I have found that if I find an edge I have to stick to it like glue and let expectations go. On that, of course finding an edge is bloody important and obviously a big part of success but I think one needs both-edge+psychology (know thyself has never meant more to me than now) .Anyway, I guess as long as I am not losing badly, I keep going. I would love to do this full time but perhaps I don't have 'it';that said if I can make money as little as it is, I reckon most people can do ok with effort. I also think that a hobby like this keeps the grey matter going like few other pursuits, so I try remind myself of that when I have an off day. Best of luck!
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ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

The distribution of votes isn't quite what I expected. If I'd got the selections right I guess it would look like this (below), with the peak being at around a year/10k mkts/10k hrs, with a few people getting it unusually quickly.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
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Derek27
Posts: 23477
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 11:44 am
Location: UK

Perhaps some people have a natural aptitude for trading and some don't and take a lot longer to learn it ?
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harsh
Posts: 131
Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 1:26 am

I like the voting system. Through one question, many other answers can be fetched.

Above question required atleast 600 votes, to get close to accurate results.

Total members in this forum = 18436
Consistent traders 10% = 1843.6 (No. of members can vote)

Why members are not voting, can be many reasons, couple of I say,
1.They are non-active.
2.They are not consistent(this proves above 10% imaginary value wrong)
snowman
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Aug 02, 2017 7:52 am

I started to try and learn to trade two and a half years ago. Part time because I worked, still do.
Lost countless £100 start ups. gave up for 3 months then tried again, same result. Couldn't take a red race, had to go in play. Gave up again.
Tried 6 months after that, watching PW videos (and others), 'Froze' when a race went against me, watched the red go from £1.60 to £4.80 to £11.20, £27.30 etc. You don't need me to tell you, desperately let the race go in play & almost sob with relief when the horse lost. But I was just prolonging the agony, because sooner or later, the horse won & I lost (say) 90% of my bank. Gave up for another 3 months, got BA Pro in July.
Watched hours & HOURS of videos mainly about scratching but others too. Lowered my stakes, so that I didn't have to wait for a trade to finish before being able to go back in. In this way I'm often able to make profit on other runners, which lowers the bad trade red.
Finally, and thankfully, got a lightbulb moment and these are my recent results, last 4 days actually:-
Sunday 18 Races - 1 Red for £1.33 - Net Profit £17.32
Monday 14 Races - 2 Reds for £4.65 & £10.52 - Net Profit £19.33
Tuesday 12 Races - No Reds - Net Profit £17.51
Today 22 Races - 2 Reds for £1.70 & £4.62 - Net Profit £52.59
No races allowed to go in play.
A pittance for some of the experts of course, but i was able to start accepting losses, because I realised I could still make a profit at the end of the day.
I really hope it takes no one as long as it took me.
Iron
Posts: 6793
Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 10:51 pm

If Google ever dabble in trading on Betfair, the rest of should pack up and go home! 😂

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42251535

To go from learning the rules of chess to being probably far better than any human in history within a few hours is breathtaking.
vhdgkl
Posts: 63
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2016 9:26 am

The opposite for me...
i learnt to trade very early..i saw adam todd videos in 2003-4,and i copied it :D :D

golden age for years...my edge?first on the queue, any possibilities to manipulate the market(in some situations i backed for many money the odds from 12 to 8,4-8,2,and wenh appeared many money to back then i layed all to 9,6-9,8..and i gained very well) .. ,and scalping following the trend+wom.

in 2009-2010 finish every possibilities to be first in the queue,and the other things...so i tried and tried,and after thousand hours to studied trading,i gave up.

in that period i gained many money on the other markets...i manipulated small markets(san remo italy song festival),i put the money and i managed full market :mrgreen: ...or,another way,when a singer sang a song then the odds ,ever, go down..ever...i backed at the start of the song,and i layed before started new singer :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:


incredible how everything has canghed...today if i put money on betfair i have only one way:lose money


so,i learnt to trade very early...but after spent thousand and thousand(20-30-50-100 thousands? i don't know) of hours i stopped to being able to trade :mrgreen: :mrgreen: ( :( :( :( )
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ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

I thought this video explains it pretty well How Long Does It Take To Learn To Trade?
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