Flip flopping favourites

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ShaunWhite
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brimson25 wrote:
Tue Mar 06, 2018 4:11 pm
And of course my handsome, and record pre-horse race trading green of 18p ;)
:mrgreen:
A new pb is a new pb however big it is......from tiny acorns do mighty oaks grow.
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ShaunWhite
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brimson25 wrote:
Tue Mar 06, 2018 4:23 pm
Lots of guessing, not informed action I suppose.
We primates don't especially like uncertainty, we split into two camps both certain that we're right. (I'll quit there before the brexit debate sparks up again)

That's why your average punter doesn't give a monkey's (unintended pun) about value. They back a horse because they think it's going to win, not because they think it's going to win 4.63 times out of 10. Savvy people who try to migrate punters to exchanges on the lure of value don't understand the minds of the audience, because their own mind is so hard-wired in the other way, ie value being the sun, moon and stars.
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Derek27
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brimson25 wrote:
Tue Mar 06, 2018 4:11 pm
And of course my handsome, and record pre-horse race trading green of 18p ;)
How I miss the days of trading with a £25 bank, when you could be pleased with an 80p profit, or the worse thing that could happen is that you lose £2. :)
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ShaunWhite
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Derek27 wrote:
Tue Mar 06, 2018 4:55 pm
brimson25 wrote:
Tue Mar 06, 2018 4:11 pm
And of course my handsome, and record pre-horse race trading green of 18p ;)
How I miss the days of trading with a £25 bank, when you could be pleased with an 80p profit, or the worse thing that could happen is that you lose £2. :)
Everyone's different I guess, I found losing £2 on a £25 bank every bit as painful as losing £100 with a £1000 bank.
Losing money just hurts your wallet (unless you're daft enough to have next month's rent sat in your bf account), it's the feeling of failure that drives a dagger through your heart.
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brimson25
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There's a comment above from Derek, which has got me thinking. (Sorry, can't work out how to do the quotes thing).

My trading bank is £500, not £25. So, suddenly I wonder in trying to be really disciplined, I'm actually being way too nitty? I'm currently using £5 stakes, so obviously 1% of my bank. I'm thinking I'd feel ok with a maximum liability on any one market of around 4%. I hate losing anything, as you say, because it's a mark of something going wrong, I'd like to build aggressively, but I don't want to wreck my confidence. I guess that's an age-old trade-off.

I had hoped to find rules about best practice on this stuff, but but people tend to be very delphic and enigmatic about their banks, and their bankroll management. (Or perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places). And perhaps there are no rules really, for what is individual risk tolerance.

Cheers for all your comments today all, much appreciated.
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Derek27
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brimson25 wrote:
Tue Mar 06, 2018 6:06 pm
There's a comment above from Derek, which has got me thinking. (Sorry, can't work out how to do the quotes thing).

My trading bank is £500, not £25. So, suddenly I wonder in trying to be really disciplined, I'm actually being way too nitty? I'm currently using £5 stakes, so obviously 1% of my bank. I'm thinking I'd feel ok with a maximum liability on any one market of around 4%. I hate losing anything, as you say, because it's a mark of something going wrong, I'd like to build aggressively, but I don't want to wreck my confidence. I guess that's an age-old trade-off.

I had hoped to find rules about best practice on this stuff, but but people tend to be very delphic and enigmatic about their banks, and their bankroll management. (Or perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places). And perhaps there are no rules really, for what is individual risk tolerance.

Cheers for all your comments today all, much appreciated.
Click on the quotation mark button of a post to insert the quote.

The percentage of your bank that you stake or risk is largely down to your style of trading and level of risk, and it's certainly better to be cautious than over stake. The downside of under staking is that you may not be making the best use of your resources. I reckon if you're consistently profitable for a period of time and the percentage of your bank at risk at any one time is small, it may be worth considering how well you could do with slightly higher stakes, percentage wise.
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ShaunWhite
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brimson25 wrote:
Tue Mar 06, 2018 6:06 pm
There's a comment above from Derek, which has got me thinking. (Sorry, can't work out how to do the quotes thing).

My trading bank is £500, not £25. So, suddenly I wonder in trying to be really disciplined, I'm actually being way too nitty?
Cheers for all your comments today all, much appreciate daily.
While someone is still paying to learn then stakes should obviously be as small as possible whether you've given yourself a £50 or £5000 training budget, which may or may not be sat in your BF account. The actual figure needs to be big enough for you to care but small enough so you don't care too much.

The least cryptic answer I can give you, and it's only my take on it, is that I try not to think about staking but think about risk instead. Everyone will have their own comfort level and for me I prefer not to lose more than 0.5% of my bank on any single trade. Others will no doubt have different figures in mind depending on their trading style, consistency and mentality. I don't like to shuffle money in and out of my account so I probably keep more of a cushion than is strictly necessary for if/when longer term things come up which need funding.

So, staking, whenever I enter a market I have a positional (not financial) stop in mind and I try and stake so that the stop is approx that 0.5% limit. The stake therefore changes depending on if my stop is 5 ticks away or 25. For a b2l it might be 50% stake instead of ticks. If you start with £stake you can suddenly find yourself with a risk you didn't expect and you get shaken off a position because a perfectly normal amount of movement puts you in the freak out zone. Avoiding surprises, for me, was the key to avoiding doing stupid things too.

However, it's only a rule of thumb that serves as a sanity checker, often I'll trade smaller and occasionally bigger, but by design rather than by accident.

Disclaimer:
I've no proof that any notions I've concocted are correct and I'm no guru but hopefully that will give you another angle to consider. I'm definitely not one of the hardcore heavy hitters who's bothered about their stake size affecting the market or trying to push as much through as possible.
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Derek27
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ShaunWhite wrote:
Wed Mar 07, 2018 2:09 am
The least cryptic answer I can give you, and it's only my take on it, is that I try not to think about staking but think about risk instead. Everyone will have their own comfort level and for me I prefer not to lose more than 0.5% of my bank on any single trade. Others will no doubt have different figures in mind depending on their trading style, consistency and mentality. I don't like to shuffle money in and out of my account so I probably keep more of a cushion than is strictly necessary for if/when longer term things come up which need funding.

So, staking, whenever I enter a market I have a positional (not financial) stop in mind and I try and stake so that the stop is approx that 0.5% limit. The stake therefore changes depending on if my stop is 5 ticks away or 25. For a b2l it might be 50% stake instead of ticks. If you start with £stake you can suddenly find yourself with a risk you didn't expect and you get shaken off a position because a perfectly normal amount of movement puts you in the freak out zone. Avoiding surprises, for me, was the key to avoiding doing stupid things too.
I pretty much agree with that. I accept losing 1% of my capital on a market, but when it's near 2% that's the time I consider getting out regardless of the chances of the market moving back in my favour.

Adjusting your stake to market volatility is equally important. Scalping between 11.0 and 11.5 may require similar stakes to swinging between 2.3 and 2.8 - 24 tick difference between the two trades but the price interval is the same.
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brimson25
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Thanks very much, both. That's very helpful. I'll keep plugging away.

It's more an internal battle - the gambler me wants to pump it up and get going; the sensible me knows I'm still learning and that I shouldn't be an idiot. :D
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brimson25
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14.20 at Carlisle felt very similar. Sory vs Spin the Coin. Feels good to recognise patterns. Or at least feel as if I am!
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