Frustrated Newbie - any advice?

[stiwdiobet]

Hi Everyone, I've been using BA for a few weeks and am enjoying it, I definitely don't see it as something quick to learn but even though I'm losing money, I'm enjoying it but frustrated at the same time.

Can anyone share their experiences when first starting out? Were you frustrated? Did it seem that every trade goes against you, as it seems sometimes when I open a trade. I read somewhere that a lot of newbies feel there's a conspiracy against them, lol and I can certainly empathise with that feeling sometimes.

So I've watched the videos and read a lot, and some good advice was to learn one thing, master that and then master something else.

So really I'd like to hear any suggestions as what you think a newbie focus on to master first and have a chance at being profitable, lol a couple of £ a day would be a start.

I read Dallas's blog about the various type of Scalping which was great and interesting, but even that, most of the time, doesn't seem to go the way I expect.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers
Darren

[ShaunWhite]

No easy answer unfortunately. Anything and everything is potentially profitable, or potentially loss making, and whether one thing is easier than another is down to the individual. Try to choose something you feel plays to your interests and strengths, if you're techy that might involve some sort of stats or automaton, or if you have a passion for horseracing then you'll probably enjoy trading that manualy for 6hrs a day. But if you've no interest in horseracing that's going to get tedious, and you might be better off looking at football or cricket etc.

Focus on one thing, but also accept that if it's not suiting you then there's plenty of others, just give things a proper chance though rather than flitting from one thing to another.

Whether or not you find it frustrating depends on your expectations. You're probably not going to see any real progress for at least 6 months or more, so if you accept that then there's no need to get frustrated until it's been well over that. Until then, just losing slightly less each week is good progress.

[Derek27]

Take a look ar the BA academy videos.

I experienced that frustrating time but looking back with hindsight, the early days should have been the least pressurising period, trading with £2 stakes and just pennies to lose. It's also a good time to experiment. For example, if the market keeps going against you try entering 5 ticks away, see if it continues to go against you, misses the order or bounces back. You'll gradually build up a picture of common patterns.

[spreadbetting]

I'd agree with Shaun, ignore horseracing for now it'll drive you nuts with prices seemingly bouncing in and out at random. Scalping horseracing for a newbie is probably the worst thing you can do as you'll have lots of littles wins convincing you you've almost cracked it yet every so often all your profits will be wiped out and more. Start thinking about why prices move and if you could possibly pre-empt them or even move enough for you to jump on the train.

[ShaunWhite]

Scalping horseracing for a newbie is probably the worst thing you can do

I've always thought that, a dozen things to keep an eye on and you need reactions like a wild west gunslinger. All in the most competitive 5mins of any market anywhere. Looks easy though, so it's tempting.

[darchas]

I've been there so can empathise with your frustration, as I'm sure many can on this forum. Like some of the answers you've had so far unfortunately I don't have an easy answer. One of the best things you can do imo is reset your expectations - even your 'lol a couple of £ a day would be a start' is actually really tough to achieve and tells me you might not yet have a grasp on how difficult a journey is ahead. It took me a good 3-4 years I'd say before I was in a place where I had an approach that was making me pennies a day - this is actually a massive break through moment, you realise you can make money and it's just a case of scaling up (which brings it's very own challenges!). I might be an outlier here and maybe on the slower end, I have been through all that frustration - but when I look back I wouldn't swap any of it. Every dead end, every blind alley, every kick in the teeth taught me something. So I know it's tough and not good to hear but it's something I think you need to go through to actually build a strong enough foundation for long term success.

As to what to involve yourself in first - I'd say something that you're interested in. There's a certain stubborn streak that I think you need, or at least I did, you pick something, a particular market, and you watch and poke and prod and get your hands dirty and little by little you start to get the measure of it. This is probably easier if you have an interest in it and the more knowledge you bring to a topic from outside trading I think the better (although not everyone would agree with this).

Good luck!

[Kai]

So really I'd like to hear any suggestions as what you think a newbie focus on to master first and have a chance at being profitable, lol a couple of £ a day would be a start.

Greyhounds probably. Those are some of the smallest markets on the exchange and learning how racing markets are formed from scratch is not a bad place to start since you'll be playing around with pennies anyway.

Fully mastering that market can get you up to 4 figures daily if you don't mind the grind, or at least into 3 figures if you get any decent at it. It's not a dead end either, skills you develop will directly translate to other bigger markets where you can build on them further, and you can still automate parts of the greyhounds edge once you move on to bigger markets etc.

I think a complete newbie stands virtually no chance on UK horse racing, but plenty of newbie threads around, should definitely read a few dozen at least, can avoid most of the bigger mistakes by doing that, but not all of them unfortunately. Godspeed.

[stiwdiobet]

Hey thank you everyone for taking the time to reply and such good honest opinions. Ive actually been watching the markets on Horses and they just thre me, no betting just thinking well the fav is going out so the second fav is coming in, but the bet on sometimes and it changes instantly lol

So i tried scalping the greyounds just by using the make market feature which has been having some return, only pennies but its more the fact that there seems to be some logic behind it, ie back and lay are close and matched money both sides is close etc, woudl be good to see if I could automate that somehow and test it.

Does anyone have advice when it comes to scalping greyhounds or the greyhound market in general? Never thought id enjoy the grehound market but it feels to me a watered down or safer market than the horses but i coudl be totally wrong.

[Dave C]

Fully mastering that market can get you up to 4 figures daily if you don't mind the grind, or at least into 3 figures if you get any decent at it. It's not a dead end either, skills you develop will directly translate to other bigger markets where you can build on them further, and you can still automate parts of the greyhounds edge once you move on to bigger markets etc.

I'm sorry, are you suggesting here that you can manually trade greyhounds and make 4 figures a day? (those figures could be £10.00 I suppose)

[Kai]

Fully mastering that market can get you up to 4 figures daily if you don't mind the grind, or at least into 3 figures if you get any decent at it. It's not a dead end either, skills you develop will directly translate to other bigger markets where you can build on them further, and you can still automate parts of the greyhounds edge once you move on to bigger markets etc.

I'm sorry, are you suggesting here that you can manually trade greyhounds and make 4 figures a day? (those figures could be £10.00 I suppose)

Nah, probably not Not spent much time on this market myself, a few years ago for mostly educational purposes, didn't go above lower 3 figures. Did meet two traders that narrowly specialized this market for a very long time, they would go up to 4 figs sometimes when they hit a few bangers.

Seen quite a few decent greyhound traders around as well on social media (idk if they sell anything nowadays so I edited out their names), but iirc they had 2-5 on average per race and would jump on 60+ races in a day. That's probably a bit more realistic, reaching around 4 figures over a week. The grind is brutal though and not for everyone.

OP did say he'd be happy with a couple £ per day to start with, which he can accomplish by playing around with 2 stakes on doggos, so not a bad starting place for a newbie I reckon!

[abgespaced]

OP - I'm at around that 6 month mark where you start to see things turn a corner, so maybe this will help with some kind of medium term outlook.

On that note, know that I am not yet profitable like lots of the ol' boys around here. But I am, with my most recent level-headed trading, breaking-even. I feel that is a pretty good milestone in itself.

I'm going to go against the grain and suggest taking a look at what goes on in-play. Most of the trading advice is for pre-race markets. Personally I never found that interesting nor very profitable. You are competing against every other bastard doing the same thing, so you're playing a kind of meta game. You learn a lot about the markets, but not so much about what drives the markets.

What I love and simultaneously hate about in-play is that it forces you to look at what is actually going on in the real world- the actual events driving the prices. Just looking at pre-race it's easy to forget the fact that the prices are merely a representation of the probability of events occurring. The real world events drive the prices, not the other way around.

When you start wondering why this or that trade went against you, it's very easy to start blaming the market. But it's hard to argue that if the price goes against you because your team or horse lost, that it's the market's fault.

Anyway, just my 2 cents worth. I've lost more money on sports than I've made on horses. But the latter makes up for my mistakes on the former and I only trade in-play. Come to think of it, if just stuck to horses I'd be lifetime profitable by now

[Kai]

OP - I'm at around that 6 month mark where you start to see things turn a corner, so maybe this will help with some kind of medium term outlook.

Took me 6 months just to discover scalping Managing expectations is a big one, the frustration that OP talks about is understandable, trading looked so easy from the outside that I was convinced I would master it within 2 weeks maximum.

I joined the wrong community and was only looking at the markets from basic betting angles, wasted the first 5 months on stuff like LTD and CS with far too many ups and downs and false dawns, not to mention variance. Pure trading approaches and learning to scalp especially was a game changer though, blew right through PC allowance soon after that, then things kicked off at a faster pace after studying Valor Esperado materials.

Testing strategies on spread out markets can be a huge time sink and ultimately a waste of time if it ends up leading nowhere, ideally you want your market to be available every day so that you can make daily progress and get some momentum going.

I'd like to hear any suggestions as what you think a newbie focus on to master first

You would do quite well to just master any one thing first and foremost, that should be challenging enough!

Have to really go balls deep to penetrate that initial efficiency of the market, casual superficial flirting with any market will mostly likely get you nowhere.

[Derek27]

I remember my first scalp. Layed a horse (very early) for £1K at about 2.74. Got matched. Back order at 2.76, waited 30 seconds, then bottled out and closed trade.

More money than sense at the time, that trade used up most of my funds.

[Derek27]

Have to really go balls deep to penetrate that initial efficiency of the market, casual superficial flirting with any market will mostly likely get you nowhere.

Balls, penetrate, casual flirting, all in the same sentence. That will get flagged up by a lot of search engines.

[Kai]

Have to really go balls deep to penetrate that initial efficiency of the market, casual superficial flirting with any market will mostly likely get you nowhere.

Balls, penetrate, casual flirting, all in the same sentence. That will get flagged up by a lot of search engines.

Sorry, that was a saucy one I'll admit We all have to do our bit to promote the exchange