Question to the more experienced long term profitable traders

[OnGoldWires]

I am neither "experienced" or "long term profitable", so I am not really qualified to answer.

However I can see that the entry is critical to trading success.

I believe when the experienced trader sees the market turn unexpectedly against them, they forget profit and they minimise losses. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

So the literal answer to question is the "non profitable trader" would have a bigger balance after 100 trades if the expert trader made the exit decisions, but it wouldn't necessarily be bigger than when they started.

I think the question perhaps should be, would the "non profitable trader" trader exit the market earlier than an expert when making a profit looks unlikely? - possibly.

However going back to the question and the phrase "non profitable trader who blows bank after bank", A "trader" buys and sells or lays and backs, in otherwords a trader has to exit the market to qualify as a trader rather than a bettor and I don't think you can "blow bank after bank" trading.

So in conclusion, the error non-profitable traders are more likely to make is not exiting early enough or at all.

[dt888]

Peter would close the positions that offered negative expectancy in his opinion and manage the ones that were good at that moment.

Agree

[Trader Pat]

I believe when the experienced trader sees the market turn unexpectedly against them, they forget profit and they minimise losses. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

I think that sentence pretty much nails it. Most new traders spend too much time thinking about the profit and not enough time concentrating on reducing losses. When you start to understand the market a bit better you realise it should be the other way around.

As for 'blown banks' I think I must be in the running for a world record for number of banks blown! Thankfully thats all behind me now but one of the difficultes about trading is that in the short term you can make money and not really have a clue what you're doing, I carried on like that for about 2 years! . This can then make you 'think' you're a good trader even when you're really just gambling instead of trading. When you dont uderstand whats happening on the screen in front of you and the market moves against you thats when frustration sets in, you can chase losses and go in play, ultimately blowing your bank.

[SeaHorseRacing]

I have the t-shirt with along with some others.

I have gambled out of controlled, sat and closed my eyes and just been crazy in the past. I think the most important thing to learn from trading is that you have to make a multiple changes to stop this behavior.

The most important "thing" to learn in trading is. Your going to get bad days. Regardless of how good you are.

I believe there are two phases to overcome to be successful in trading excluding market knowledge and practice.

1) When you have a bad day, trade and behave reckless. Learn how to overcome and prevent this

2) Knowing when luck really wasnt on your side which will see you succeed.
There are trades everyday where the market did not do what I expected it to. Rather then beat myself up I have learned that it is just noise in a small percentage of losses.

I think our brain also expects us to register huge returns for every race. Its mentality.
Never look at short term results. If anyone out there is really struggling to deal with control and blowing banks teach yourself to manage your losses and profits over a longer term.
Dont get me wrong. This is very hard to do. But anyone can learn it.

I only ever look at my P&L on a Wednesday. Not during the day or any other time.

I was going through some spreadsheets last Sunday and I was looking at February. One of my first ever decent months. I went 4-5 days of about 70% losses. Yet I pulled through a £280 and £150 trade that gave me a cracking week. Just on those facts shows why this game is so hard.

It takes a lot of work but its all about seeing the bigger picture.

If your new. Market knowledge will come with experience, Sit it out for 12 months and work purely on bad habits and learning about yourself. Everything else comes with time.

Teach yourself to close trades on your terms. Again not easy to do.

Passion is really important too. When i started trading I wanted to learn horses, greyhounds, tennis and football.

I am passionate about racing. I only trade horses and a bit of grehounds with the odd other market. Massive football fan but when it comes to trading I just dont have the drive or passion to trade it and i think thats why i suck at it and dont trade it. Along with Tennis.

Trading just for the money is not enough, have a passion or find something in it to learn a passion for it.

[ShaunWhite]

I only ever look at my P&L on a Wednesday. Not during the day or any other time.

Similar things have been said before but when your balance is displayed on the BA main window, how do you not glance at it occasionally? It's always nice to make sure everything is settled and you also see your balance when you log onto BF (which I always do as a precaution against BA crashing, even though it never has)

You might not know your exact P&L from a glance but you have a pretty good idea of it.

[Derek27]

Being a good trader means being a good accountant as well. If I was losing £100 a day, I wouldn't want to be oblivious to it until I've lost £700.

[SeaHorseRacing]

I only ever look at my P&L on a Wednesday. Not during the day or any other time.

Similar things have been said before but when your balance is displayed on the BA main window, how do you not glance at it occasionally? It's always nice to make sure everything is settled and you also see your balance when you log onto BF (which I always do as a precaution against BA crashing, even though it never has)

You might not know your exact P&L from a glance but you have a pretty good idea of it.

Go into settings and remove the balance from being displayed.

[SeaHorseRacing]

Being a good trader means being a good accountant as well. If I was losing £100 a day, I wouldn't want to be oblivious to it until I've lost £700.

Your loses should be minimal. Only now and again should be making a screw up of a big loss.

[to75ne]

error

[to75ne]

Being a good trader means being a good accountant as well. If I was losing £100 a day, I wouldn't want to be oblivious to it until I've lost £700.

Your loses should be minimal. Only now and again should be making a screw up of a big loss.

a large loss is not necessarily a "screw up". in my experience its mainly down to either betfair fecking up or a quick drastic change in the market, for instance a horse bolts (odds on fav) throws the rider minute or so before the off, price collapses in an instant, all you can do is the smart move get out, hit the c button and bail out and then red up. might be a large loss but it is an excellent result.

[spreadbetting]

In defence of seahorse he's only saying don't make your short term p&l the main focus of your trading as it can easily lead to the temptation of chasing after a few losses or bad start. Most of us will have a good idea of how we're trading during the day anyway, if anything we generally underestimate how little profits can add up and checking weekly can be a nice surprise.

But at the end of the day you have to play to your own strengths and weaknesses not someone else's, if that means checking every so often just do it, he's only saying what's helped him. I bot the markets so check my balance every morning to make sure things have gone expected from the end of the previous days racing, if I didn't check I could easily lose thousands if there's an error. Even my manual trading I'll look at the end of the day to see how much I've won but I've been trading a long time now so I rarely take no notice of the bottom line unless something obvious needs tweaking. If keeping a track on your p&l keeps you focussed do it , if it negatively affects your trading then you need to address the reasons why.

[SeaHorseRacing]

I agree. I dont trade with any bots so have no need to check my balance but if I did I think looking at your balance once a week would not be a good idea.

When I was struggling with managing my account I was totaling up all my results ignoring the blank blows and It was showing I was a constant winner.

The constant small wins are bread and butter.

I used to sale telecoms years ago and i remember going out one day and found out 3 sales from previous week had cancelled so I was wondering the field feeling so shit that I need to make 800 before I even make money. So i just went home.

Its such a mental thing, for me anyway. With trading especially the winter months, a weeks worth of work can be undone with in 2/3 trades. For me that is so painful and the only way to overcome it is to ignore it.

When you get yourself in a position where your not reliant on the money. You just gone on with it and you know when your ready to withdraw you always have a chunk to take.

For me. It works and for anyone struggling work on it.

[ShaunWhite]

Go into settings and remove the balance from being displayed.

True, I forgot about that, but it's still on the BF screen. Actually it's not a big deal for me. You know how you're doing anyway without seeing the balance in the same way you always know the time to within 5mins if you never wear a watch.

[Derek27]

Being a good trader means being a good accountant as well. If I was losing £100 a day, I wouldn't want to be oblivious to it until I've lost £700.

Your loses should be minimal. Only now and again should be making a screw up of a big loss.

It's not a question of what your losses should be, but what they are!

It's important to monitor your performance closely - that doesn't mean that you have to read too much into one day.

Can you imagine the CEO of Tesco being asked to explain their massive quarterly losses and replying "sorry, I only look at the accounts once every three months so I wasn't aware".

[ShaunWhite]

Looking at your P&L frequently is only an issue if it affects your psychology. If you can't look at yesterday's results without it bothering you then you're not going to cope very well with a bad result from 5 minutes ago.