Pressure getting to me

Trading is often about how to take the appropriate risk without exposing yourself to very human flaws.
Trader Pat
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Naffman wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 5:38 pm
Emmson wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:50 pm
Derek27 wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:13 pm

I recall his location was a town in the UK.
Weston Super Mare/Bristol

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16429&p=153324&hili ... ol#p153324
Maybe came to the UK to trade but then went back home (CZE) when it didnt work out?
No he's from Bristol, nice lad always willing to help people out. I'm sure it will turn around for him.
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Naffman
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Trader Pat wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:22 pm
Naffman wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 5:38 pm
Emmson wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:50 pm


Weston Super Mare/Bristol

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16429&p=153324&hili ... ol#p153324
Maybe came to the UK to trade but then went back home (CZE) when it didnt work out?
No he's from Bristol, nice lad always willing to help people out. I'm sure it will turn around for him.
Hope so as he put a lot of effort into it
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ShaunWhite
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I had an email from him about 6 months ago saying he was skint and really in need of an income. Like so many he started this needing money fast and don't have deep enough pockets. Nice guy but even the smart ones can get seduced by how easy it all looks on YouTube.
Trader Pat
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ShaunWhite wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 8:01 pm
I had an email from him about 6 months ago saying he was skint and really in need of an income. Like so many he started this needing money fast and don't have deep enough pockets. Nice guy but even the smart ones can get seduced by how easy it all looks on YouTube.
Probably the most common mistake starting out, staking too big too soon
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Kai
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Shame if he's out of the game for whatever reason, temporarily or permanently, I think his quality posts were the main reason why I started getting involved on the forum more, big loss for the community overall.

Afaik he was doing well for years but maybe got a bit complacent in the end without saving up much, if that's the case I've seen that happen to quite a few people first hand. Comfortably full time for a few years but then get stuck in that comfort zone without any progress so the edge starts weakening. Could have easily happened to me if I didn't wake up in time, it's one of the more subtle pitfalls out there so it's easy to miss.

But he can pick up where he left off at any time though, even in 10 years time, and he will still probably be one of the younger traders out there :D Would be a big shame anyway wasting those amazing years being glued to the ladders all day.
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Kai
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Actually feels a bit unfair, openly speculating about the fate of a fellow trader. Even if someone has private information about him I'm not sure it's appropriate to share it without his permission.

Easy to forget that that some people also opt out by choice, like Adam Heathcote for example.

Being good at something doesn't automatically mean you should pursue it, and often people that excel at a certain thing are very likely to excel at a number of different things. We all act like trading is the ultimate profession but sometimes it's just not, at least not for everyone.

In any case, best of luck to Eightbo with whatever he's pursuing.
eightbo
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Location: Malta / Australia

Good progress made. Have been fully committed to trading for a while now and that won't be changing any time soon.

What Shaun mentions refers to my boom/bust cycles last yr.
Defo went full-time too early but that was intentional — a jump in the deep end and learn to swim sort of thing.
Interestingly though, whilst I'd regularly end up compromising my process/chase losses, I found that I'd never risk my last portion of ££. Probs due to a belief that "I'm a trader" or similar and that belief would become invalid if I was completely out of capital. This always allowed me to grow a new bank and the edge you have with tiny stakes is ridiculous so I'd scale up pretty quickly although the boat still had a hole in it so to speak meaning I'd eventually damage my account at some point and this continued for a while.

Have got some carpal tunnel issues due to so much PC use for half my life so not grinding as much as before and a goal for the end of this year for me is to transition to taking less trades for more size, focusing on my best plays.

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Now let's get back to discussing something more worthwhile than where I went that aims to provide some value to the forum rather than gossip:
Biggest breakthrough for me since disconnecting from forums would be understanding the biological mind we bring to trading (hardwiring linking uncertainty with biological danger/threat → trigger fight/flight response) and rewiring that in practice via mindfulness to ultimately achieve a mindset which mirrors the casino's — grinding out your edge for low-risk until Law of Large Numbers kicks in and pays you.
...Staying process-focused each day regardless of short-term outcomes with a new-found deep understanding that psychological concepts of being right/wrong and winning/losing are irrelevant when it comes to producing long-term consistent profitability. I saw a great succinct video titled Goals vs. Systems on youtube recently which I thought covers the concept pretty well so definitely check that out and connect the dots to trading.
You'll also have come across this if you've read the recent best-seller Atomic Habits by James Clear.
e.g. Here's a good quote from the book:
I've found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.

Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win.
Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.
In trading, this is establishing and bringing a standard practice of performance and survival to the markets each and every day.
By genuinely wanting to focus on the process each day and understanding that's literally my job as a trader as well as the most reliable way to get paid, I noticed that positive P&L just takes care of itself as you continue to accumulate markets where you've flawlessly followed your process.
I have my P&L hidden so I only see it at the end of the session but I noticed that when I hit the refresh button whatever number's there it feels as if it appeared by magic. More specifically, positive days do not feel "earned" like they have to me in the past, it's more like firing a random number generator or something. This suggests to me that perhaps I now truly understand that the outcomes of trades / P&L are primarily a result of a probabilistic environment and not manufactured by me or what I did. I do not feel as if I made it happen, I simply turned up, did my job, and the result is a byproduct of the randomness that day/week. Similarly, I also feel detached from losing trades/days also however there is still some residue of discomfort I notice I'm in drawdown but if I feel that is fading over time but even if it never fully fades, I still feel equipped to catch and subsequently deal with that discomfort when it arises. Usually this is temporary as whenever I catch that I redirect my thoughts and remind myself that I can always heal myself from any losses incurred by grinding out trades with edge if I accumulate enough markets and that's something I would say I believe now on an emotional level rather than just intellectually.

This leads onto another useful thing I can share which was creating a specific "Escape" routine (behaviour/habit) which I activate whenever I catch the presence of stress (via mindfulness/awareness),
or when I see evidence in my journalling inbetween markets that my performance (execution) is slipping. If after logging the market I see I've broken a rule I'll do a quick objective evaluation of the risk of continuing the session ("RoC") based on the rules that were broken and to what degree. Any grey areas of uncertainty then I lean to the side of prudency (where previously & for far too long, I leaned toward the side of continuing — usually accompanied by some meaningless justification in the moment). The purpose of this was to create for myself a second option when faced with a stressful situation, something that is automatic meaning it doesn't require any cognitive function as that gets shut off as bloodflow is redirected when fight/flight reponse is triggered, and means I can use that option instead of letting my "chimp" try and fight his way out of whatever's in front of him.
To make the process automatic it's pretty much a game of repetition. Initially I rehearsed this routine visually each morning (imagining various specific stressful trading situations and envision myself executing the behaviour) for a while as well as putting it into practice when the opportunity arose in the trading day. The visualisations get you started and soft-form a neural structure in your brain ready for use without having to have your capital at risk, then using it in practice strengthens the established structure more reliably from there. This combo can be applied to any behaviour/habit you want to introduce into your trading or your life so pretty powerful stuff; highly recommended. Anyway once you're happy with your accuracy of executing the behaviour in practice you can drop the visualisations (don't expect 100% accuracy right away, just stay committed until it's solidly formed).
For higher accuracy, it's a good idea to anchor the behaviour to a physical movement/action for example I tap my right leg a couple times at the start of the routine which basically acts a way of snapping out of any current state you might be in (e.g. if I found myself frozen, I knew I just needed to tap my leg and I'm away automatically from there).
I would add that having the casino-like perspective further increases accuracy i.e. It is easier for me to execute this escape routine now that I strongly value survival as a trader each day more so than wanting to "win", "be right", or similar. Why? I need to survive so that I can continue to grind my edge [like the casino] ...and I need to grind my edge to make money [long-term].
I also execute this routine anywhere in my trading where historically that point has been a gateway to shitty performance/execution of my plan, (even if I now feel that with my new mindset I don't need to). As a specific example, when my journal tells me I've passed my daily risk cap for the session/day and it's time to end the session, I'll just deploy the routine anyway because there's no downside to doing so, while the upside is preventing potential financial damage and/or a psychological setback. It also helps to act as repetition to further strengthen the neural structure for whenever comes a time I need to execute my escape routine in a legitimately stressful situation where I have capital at risk.
I'm not exactly sure on the specific timeline for when this happened but I noticed that sometimes I'll get triggered in day-to-day life, and I catch myself feeling an internal urge to execute my escape routine, which is obviously not applicable for the situation but it was not there in the beginning and acts as feedback to tell me the habit (neural structure) is decently formed at this point.

Another thing I can say has helped my progress is accepting the presence of a "destructive" part of me (which I think this lies dormant within every one of us it's just a case of triggering it by finding yourself in the appropriate situation/circumstance — think Stanford prison experiment).
After I genuinely and fully surrendered to this idea (and that it would be with my all my life), I restructured the way I trade around the core concept of never finding myself in a situation where I'm activating that destructive part of me (only allowing certain market types to be traded, which strategies I'm allowed to use; usually based on their level of risk, the times I'm allowed to take trades relative to the start of race; the management of open positions, and even specific pyramiding rules which only allow me to add to a trade after X number of ticks and for only Y number of clicks of the mouse). It's far more restrictive and theoretically these things reduce my edge on a per-trade basis but this new approach is DRAMATICALLY more sustainable for me and the result is an airtight trading plan which appears to be easily repeatable day-in, day-out (that's the Standard Practice of Performance and Survival I mentioned earlier) and brings my Risk of Ruin (risk of blowing up) right down to near-zero.
...There's a good quote from sb somewhere on this, going from memory I'm pretty sure it was something along the lines of how we can eliminate the majority of psychology "issues" by simply trading better. I think that gets the job done for the most part but, at least for me, I feel I required both the casino-like mindset shift & the escape routine to allow me to patch up that last hole in the boat.
eightbo
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Location: Malta / Australia

When I went to post that my chrome crashed for 2mins and I thought I'd lost the post. Doubt I would've retyped it and would've chalked it up as an opportunity to train EQ, although I'm happy that didn't happen.
Leeds1919
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eightbo wrote:
Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:06 pm
This always allowed me to grow a new bank and the edge you have with tiny stakes is ridiculous so I'd scale up pretty quickly although the boat still had a hole in it so to speak meaning I'd eventually damage my account at some point and this continued for a while.
what edge do you mean is it just case of been able to get in and out of trades easier?
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ShaunWhite
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eightbo wrote:
Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:06 pm
What Shaun mentions refers to...
Sorry to have misjudged the situation 8. I'm glad I was wrong.
Diacritical Quark
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Leeds1919 wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:23 pm


what edge do you mean is it just case of been able to get in and out of trades easier?
I'm no expert but have encountered a few issues like this along my journey. Yes using smaller stakes allows you to get in and out of the market quicker but there's a few other factors to consider too. Using say £2 stakes allows you to remain somewhat invisible to the market, no one is going to bat an eyelid if you stick down your £2 stakes on top of say £200 already sat at a price, if however you put down £200 on top of £200 all of a sudden people react to that, you get people then trying to jump in front, take the best price, essentially you have affected the market, if you had an edge with £2 stakes taking say crossover prices you may find that trying to scale that up doesn't work.

Back in my more naiive days I thought I was on to something with a progressive staking plan (yes I know, I learned the hard way) in running laying under 2.0, had a great strike rate all hunky dory. Progressive staking plan was running fine starting with £2 and trying to get say £50 matched later in the afternoon if shit went south. Not so easy when it's £500 you're trying to get matched in a 6f sprint.
eightbo
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Location: Malta / Australia

ShaunWhite wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:46 pm
eightbo wrote:
Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:06 pm
What Shaun mentions refers to...
Sorry to have misjudged the situation 8. I'm glad I was wrong.
Np mate

Leeds1919 wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:23 pm
eightbo wrote:
Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:06 pm
This always allowed me to grow a new bank and the edge you have with tiny stakes is ridiculous so I'd scale up pretty quickly although the boat still had a hole in it so to speak meaning I'd eventually damage my account at some point and this continued for a while.
what edge do you mean is it just case of been able to get in and out of trades easier?
Exactly. Mostly I'm referring to thinner markets e.g. greyhounds or often US HR.
You can often rapidly recycle small amounts where people are just hitting the spreads on each side meaning 100% of your stake is getting matched but as you increase size you begin to get smaller % of your stake matched and thus lower % gains on your bank size for the same trade.

In "fuller" markets (p. tired, can't think of a better word) such as UK/IRE HR a small bank results in stake sizes which are small vs. the average bet size / matched vol. per second so you don't notice the degradation as you begin to scale up anyway near as fast as in the thinner mkts.

Plus [assuming you will hedge all of the trades you open], the more £ you need to get out the more slippage you get on exit.
Took me a few months of trading GH very aggressively to realise how dramatically my edge was being eroded when I'd be too big to exit at available liquidity, it often meant I was trapped and couldn't exit at the key levels/mkt structure when required and had to hold through and extended move against me and wait for a new range to form for me to begin dripping out. It was good experience/understanding of how strong of a contributor exit can be to the edge of your strategy and I recognised if this extreme (being too big) was eroding my edge then going the other way must only help matters.

I had just £2 in my bf acc. at one point last yr and managed to grind it up to £82 in a 24hr period through pre-race across aus gh, uk gh, aus hr, uk/ire hr, and us hr - pretty much just ended up going flat out to see what I could get by the 24hr deadline.
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IIRC I was risking the full stake on every trade which wasn't really sustainable and I wouldn't have been able to repeat it each day for example but +4000% in 24hrs is only possible because of the low starting bank and helps demonstrate the point ppl commonly mentioning of not needing much starting capital in sports trading because if you have a sound strategy and can execute it consistently it scales real fast
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Leeds1919
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Thats really interesting thanks for such a detailed answer
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Kai
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Refreshing to see the nitty-gritty of trading discussed in more detail.

Regarding your £2 experiment Eightbo, this is exactly what I would expect from someone of your background, it should definitely be part of your skill set and the ladder should be your playground, especially a thin half empty one.

I have found that the more you try to scale the harder it is to trade and get matched at good prices overall, like I'm sure everyone else has realized, sometimes if I get matched way too easily or too fast a silent alarm goes off in my head just to make sure I haven't overlooked anything.

But on the opposite side of the spectrum on markets with massive volume there's also an argument that it gets much easier to trade, you've already seen for example that Peter can't lose on Cheltenham for that reason, I've touched on this topic in my preoff essay the other day as well. If you work out why that is and where the edge is coming from that can unlock other markets for you as well.

One of the more subtle pitfalls is when you get into a grindy trading rhythm and you may not find real quality time to work on a more scalable approach, until the grindy approach starts weakening and you eventually drop it to finally free up time to pursue a better one. Not talking about you but about others in general, and partially about myself, since I've switched up my bread and butter markets/sports a few times already and plan on doing more of the same.

Regarding the IQ and EQ stuff that we talked about earlier, you really don't need me to tell you how bright you are, you can tell a lot about people from their posts alone but another potentially big pitfall here is when you overthink things and are too bright for your own good, I think many including Peter have said that some incredibly smart guys and academics just don't get the markets at all, so focusing too much on your own self and your EQ while the only thing for me that matters is the market and the edge itself, studying it to such extent until it's dead obvious how you should approach and trade it, and then it's just a thing of practice past that point.

You can only analyze your performance up to a certain point, before getting absolutely wrecked by diminishing returns, there's no chance you can maintain world-class peak performance because complacency will make sure of that, if you know your markets inside and out then trading them will get boring and you are almost guaranteed complacency. It's more than enough to operate on a reasonably higher level with a good enough edge, so if you ask me it's worth taking the time to develop one.
stueytrader
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eightbo wrote:
Sat Aug 24, 2019 3:09 am
Appreciate the posts and to hear some of your views. My train of thoughts went down a negative rabbit hole last night which is quite rare for me.
hat kind of drawdown as it's fully deserved and it beats the alternative (occasional gambling to chase a bad day) by a country mile.

In a similar theme to Kai's post, someone shared a proverb with me yesterday — "Necessity is a mother of all inventions". I already decided a long time ago that I was going to make it or 'break it'. I've found the mind tends to find a way when you give it no other option and similarly half-asses things when you know you've got a plan B to fall back on. I'm not completely insane, I know that if the time comes I'll rewrite plan A if I need to but fortunately no immediate danger just yet.
Hi eightbo,

I was going to start a thread of my own, but after reading some of the posts here I wanted to reply with my own.

While my trading has kept fairly stable and positive in recent times, my wider financial life has not. I have had several recent setbacks costing me a fair amount of my money and planning. I am pretty meticulous, have a spread sheet with all income/outgoings spreading well into a year ahead all times.

Without going into detail, the main point is that within the last few months something has changed in terms of my relation to my trading income. I'm currently looking to rely on it for around the next 4 months, as my main income.

This is a shift for me - I've only ever looked at trading as a side income previously. I will be gaining my other income back (in around 3 months time) but until them I've become reliant on what I make from trading. I am not one of those that chose to go 'full-time' or 'pro' as a trader. But my situation has landed me with that, outside of trading.

I do have possible 'Plan b or c' options on income/finance that are not to do with trading, though both are also uncertain right now for me. Like you said in your OP, bills are on my horizon, and this time will depend largely on my trading income alone.

I must admit to some current trepidation right at the moment, despite knowing I can look at my records for months in succession of earnings from my trading activity. That was done without pressure of 'having' to make those earnings. I'm in a somewhat different boat. I just hope I don't lose my paddle right now. :?

Hope this doesn't seem too much of a hijacking for your thread sorry, but I felt some issues here resonate a lot with me right now.
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