How long does it take to judge whether a system is working?

Trading is often about how to take the appropriate risk without exposing yourself to very human flaws.
Post Reply
Charon
Posts: 70
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 1:09 pm

Just curiosity from my side; is your strategy based on historical stats? Is there any race-selection involved?
User avatar
ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

FrogThimble wrote:
Mon Apr 16, 2018 5:46 pm
Across the first 20 races my bank is down to 90.7% on the start of the day.

Very small sample but I can see why it's happening that way and it's enough to persuade me to give the short races a miss.
Test, refine, repeat ad nauseum.

Tiny, tiny, tiny stakes. I'd have my liability at about 0.01% of my R&D bank for any one loser.
10% in an afternoon is going to bust you before you find anything, but I think you're realising that.
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

Charon wrote:
Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:12 pm
Just curiosity from my side; is your strategy based on historical stats? Is there any race-selection involved?
No, it's not based on any historical stats. It was (or is) based purely on the mathematics. I understands maths rather more than I understand horses, to be honest. There is race selection but, again, that's on mathematical grounds too.
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

ShaunWhite wrote:
Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:31 pm


Tiny, tiny, tiny stakes. I'd have my liability at about 0.01% of my R&D bank for any one loser.
10% in an afternoon is going to bust you before you find anything, but I think you're realising that.
I've taken the last 6 days off in order to think through and refine my strategy. I've come back today to begin again with my new rules in place and a really tiny experimental bank to see if I really can do this before I play with bigger money.

The things I've concluded in my time off are:

1) The need for a stricter escape safety Servant that will cut my strike rate but also cut the size of my losses on the bad trades.

2) Forget about Irish races altogether - for some reason which I can't work out they seem to defy the mathematics of my strategy in a crazy way. So it's just UK races from now on. I might be totally wrong on this but I'll not lose many chances by swerving them, I suspect.

3) Be more selective in which races I try to trade on. I now have a new mathematical rule for that which prevents me trading on horses that are either side of a specific price range.

4) I was wrong about short races being a problem as such... it was other factors at play in them which made me think they were a problem.

5) Increase stake size at the start of each day only rather than at the start of each race (Effect being that during any one day each race should see me staking a slightly smaller percentage of my bank before reverting to my default percentage to begin the next day).


So on my first day back, with this new more conservative approach, my rules only allowed me to trade on 8 of today's races. My old rules would have seen me attempt 26 trades today... So these refinements will seriously limit my activities but, hopefully, not my overall profit if I am basically right... Though with sitting out so many races I am a bit concerned about the boredom factor and breaking of rhythm.

Anyway, here is today's results:

Wincanton 2:15pm: +£0.27
Wincanton 3:20pm: +£0.10
Market Rasen 3:30pm: +£0.09
Market Rasen 4:00pm +£0.09
Stratford 4:10pm +£0.09
Wincanton 4:25pm +£0.25
Market Rasen 4:35pm -£0.02
Wincanton 5:30pm +£0.09
Day 1.jpg
I will update this thread each day in order to keep myself honest and within my rules.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
User avatar
ruthlessimon
Posts: 2094
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2016 3:54 pm

FrogThimble wrote:
Sun Apr 15, 2018 10:41 pm
The chart is this:
Thought you might be interested in this Frog (following strategies all created with 1mth of data)

The following image is a pre-off strategy - with 10 variations - each variation is an extra tick require to enter when the criteria are met. (i.e. 1 = criteria met & 1 tick extra, 2 = criteria met & 2 ticks extra etc etc)

Image

What's interesting is how similar my initial strategy looks to yours - & how a solid looking methodology quickly degrades when small changes are made - hence a big query as to whether the initial strat was even an edge - or I'm just proving certain pre-off markets are inherently mean-reverting :lol:
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

ruthlessimon wrote:
Mon Apr 23, 2018 3:47 pm


What's interesting is how similar my initial strategy looks to yours - & how a solid looking methodology quickly degrades when small changes are made - hence a big query as to whether the initial strat was even an edge - or I'm just proving certain pre-off markets are inherently mean-reverting :lol:
That's really interesting. I'm hoping my changes will improve my strategy but it's really early days. The first go round fell apart at around 100 trades and I'm not even a quarter of the way there on my refined version. It'll take me a long time to find out given that my new rules vastly reduce the number of races I can play.

I daren't play pre-off markets though - it strikes me that those are for the really clever and brave people.
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

Day 2:

15 of today's UK horse races met my rules. I had a pretty decent day except for the final race - but even that wasn't a disaster compared to what would have happened under my previous rules. I managed to get out without any crisis other than the downer of ending the day on a low point.
List 2.jpg


So I'm up to 23 trades now and the chart is as such:
Day 2.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
User avatar
MemphisFlash
Posts: 2126
Joined: Fri May 16, 2014 10:12 pm
Location: Leicester

my bot seems to be heading in the right direction
85 trades.PNG
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

That's pretty impressive, MemphisFlash. I hope I can get mine to that point too.
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

Day 3:

20 trades bringing my total up to 43 trades so far. Overall it was a mildly profitable day. I recovered from the loss at the end of the previous day but also ended today on a bad trade too.
Day 3.jpg
Strike rate for today: 75% (15/20)
Strike rate overall: 79% (34/43)
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
User avatar
MemphisFlash
Posts: 2126
Joined: Fri May 16, 2014 10:12 pm
Location: Leicester

Capture.PNG
Trading The british, Irish, American and Australian Horses
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

That's seriously impressive, MemphisFlash... I wish my graph could be as smooth. I'm having a pretty rough day of it so far today. My graph at the end of today is going to look very interesting (and not in a good way) if this continues. Still, early days, only 6 races have qualified for my attention so far today.
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

Day 4:

Just 13 trades today because very few races met with the conditions of my strategy. This takes my total trades up to 56.
List 4.jpg

Those that did meet it were pretty hard work. I ended the day on a new high point on my graph though.




Day 4.jpg

Strike rate today: 77% (10/13)
Overall Strike rate: 79% (44/56)
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
weemac
Posts: 1216
Joined: Mon Sep 16, 2013 8:16 pm

I'd imagine that staking to % of bank will be dramatically skewing your graph. Try level stakes to get a clearer picture, imo.
User avatar
MemphisFlash
Posts: 2126
Joined: Fri May 16, 2014 10:12 pm
Location: Leicester

had a bit of a dip in my bot today but i traded 124 races
Capture.PNG
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Post Reply

Return to “Trading Psychology”