Trading What I see !?

[goat68]

I'm convinced if I keep applying all the "tips" PW suggests in his Videos I will be heading in the right direction...

Easier said than done! If you could apply only a handful of those tips it should be relatively smooth sailing.

Btw speaking of concrete tips, I can try and throw one of mine if it helps. If you're using this thread as a daily trading diary of sorts I would maybe suggest a very simple process of finding and highlighting your biggest mistake for that day and then trying not to repeat it the next day, and so on, simply getting in the habit of finding just one mistake per day can do wonders for your trading after a few weeks. The idea here is obviously to start working from the biggest mistakes and work your way down, if you cut those out then it's much easier to progress, and if you don't know where to find them just have a look at your biggest losses.

Ideally I'd suggest to do the same with the patterns, if you try your hardest to identify one "pattern" per day, and then try to confirm it the next one if possible and so on, that is infinitely more complex but not a bad habit either.

The above process more or less is how I work in general, if you do it right then in a couple of weeks time your trading approach and performance will be light-years ahead of your old one! Like Pat suggested above, imho you can get a lot more out of carefully analyzing one day's worth of trading than mindlessly trading for several months without any analysis in your work.

But those are good results for such an early stage, you can progress fast with decent stake sizes since baby stakes just delay facing the inevitable. Best of luck.

Thanks Kai,
A good point, and very appropriate for today!
Not a good day, some big losers again...
I'm not convinced by an auto stop loss, but my manual exit is aweful!!
So reviewing one trade today went something like this:
1. Got signal on entry placed trade and entered exit orders
2. Started as I thought, and other runners confirmed
3. Turned sharply against, and was up against my mental stop exit -£20, but I didn't want to jump out as market could be fooling and other runners were still roughly inline
4. Ticked out suddenly to -£38... Damn it! What's it doing look at other runners, one has come in against what I predict, go back to exit, -£56 !!

Need to have a long think about that.......

Agree what you say about bet size

[goat68]

Another issue I see us my wins being too small maybe, I'm conservatively taking a chunk out of the predicted price movement, but for my bug losses I'm ending sometimes quite a bit bigger...
Not sure about letting the winners run...? Or just bigger targets?

[ShaunWhite]

my mental stop exit -£20

Your mental stop (loss or profit) needs to be a market led decision, maybe at a key price or when something happens in the market, not a cash amount.

"-£20" isn't telling you whether you should exit, hold or even add to your position. The PL column and especially that part where it turns from red to green is the least important piece of information on the ladder, in fact it's detremental unless you can treat it purely as interesting, but then disregard it when it comes to making a trading decision. Those should always be about what the market says rather than what your personal pain threshold happens to be. Same with your wins, don't snatch for quick ones to add to your strike rate or try and push them to target values or round numbers.

To see how much you're relying on the PL column (which the market doesn't give a damn about) try switching off the PL column and choose your min stake preset. Now just back or lay when you think the market says you should, and when you're done, hedge up, see how you did. That should also help break the mental block around 'opening' and 'closing' because you might end up backing or laying more than once in a row before finally squaring up any remaining position.

[ShaunWhite]

"1. Got signal on entry placed trade and entered exit orders
2. Started as I thought, and other runners confirmed
3. Turned sharply against, and was up against my mental stop exit -£20, but I didn't want to jump out as market could be fooling and other runners were still roughly inline"

1. You followed your plan. Good.
2. You followed your plan. Good.
3. You started to make stuff up on the fly.

Your initial bet was a carefully thought out one based on what the market was saying and a profitable exit was planned too. But when it didn't go to plan, and a large percentage won't, for your closing bet you decided there was a better way than planning and did it based on a phychological reaction to "£20" and guesswork about 'fooling' and coulda woulda shoulda.

It's perfectly normal thing for new people to do, it's all well and good before hand but in the heat of battle it all goes to pieces. I think you should reduce your stakes, the size of your positions is affecting you. They'll grow again soon enough if you're any good and it will happen in such a way that they won't be freaking you out so much.

[wearthefoxhat]

https://youtu.be/AApxtkGaeWc

Random post but I feel it's relative.

Good one.

Puts a few things in to some perspective. (my opinion of course)

"Monkey says to fish, let me save you from drowning." as he safely puts the fish up a tree.

[goat68]

my mental stop exit -£20

Your mental stop (loss or profit) needs to be a market led decision, maybe at a key price or when something happens in the market, not a cash amount.

"-£20" isn't telling you whether you should exit, hold or even add to your position. The PL column and especially that part where it turns from red to green is the least important piece of information on the ladder, in fact it's detremental unless you can treat it purely as interesting, but then disregard it when it comes to making a trading decision. Those should always be about what the market says rather than what your personal pain threshold happens to be. Same with your wins, don't snatch for quick ones to add to your strike rate or try and push them to target values or round numbers.

To see how much you're relying on the PL column (which the market doesn't give a damn about) try switching off the PL column and choose your min stake preset. Now just back or lay when you think the market says you should, and when you're done, hedge up, see how you did. That should also help break the mental block around 'opening' and 'closing' because you might end up backing or laying more than once in a row before finally squaring up any remaining position.

Thanks for the feedback Shaun.
Apologies I was using -£20 purely to demonstrate in my post how far my illdisiplined trade went past my market led stop, to -£56, I scale my bets so my stop is about -£20.
Cheers

[jamesg46]

https://youtu.be/AApxtkGaeWc

Random post but I feel it's relative.

Good one.

Puts a few things in to some perspective. (my opinion of course)

"Monkey says to fish, let me save you from drowning." as he safely puts the fish up a tree.

happy you enjoyed it. Makes a change from me feeling that I'm annoying people when posting these, I can be a little heavy on Alan Watts at times.

[goat68]

Another crap day! Had a few trades that were bonkers! Kempton 6pm all front 5 just went out...and I couldn't see any high odds horse that came in, how is that possible?!?! Cost me that one, my horse was going against me, but I was looking at the others and they were saying trade still good!

I'm pretty sure now I am very good at trading at random! I have done all these trades and ended back up where I started!
Thus no edge!

[Kai]

I'm pretty sure now I am very good at trading at random! I have done all these trades and ended back up where I started!
Thus no edge!

Building a probability-based mind from a fear-based brain is no easy task

[goat68]

I'm pretty sure now I am very good at trading at random! I have done all these trades and ended back up where I started!
Thus no edge!

Building a probability-based mind from a fear-based brain is no easy task

Just trying to understand your comment! Very subtle..!
So I think your saying to succeed at trading you need to create a probability of an outcome strategy from a market that is actually fear based, ie.movements are based on traders fear!!

[Kai]

Isn't that we what we're all trying to do in a nutshell?

If we're all just trying to trade the probabilities while our various emotions and cognitive biases try and get in the way then the inevitable failure to do that usually means we end up trading our emotions and fears instead and the market takes us for an unpleasant ride.

To successfully get around that you have to find your own way of trading around your emotions. If most real risk (if not all of it) comes from not knowing what you're doing then you can mitigate that risk or eliminate it with enough knowledge and experience of your particular market, but people don't usually like getting their hands dirty and venturing too deep into the behavior of their own market. Even though that's where most of the edges are actually hidden!

There's an overkill of good advice in this thread alone, let alone on the forum as a whole, but it's not like one can just flip a switch and instantly apply some of it, that is why people offer advice in the first place

Just saying that if you don't yet know where your edge is coming from or whether you even have one, it would help to properly learn how to frame your trade and think probabilities instead of emotions and fears, meaning you know exactly what you're looking for and you know whereabouts to enter and exit in advance, based on whether you're right or not, and ideally you want the reward to be bigger when you do get it right compared to the punishment when you get it wrong.

If you took the time to truly break down all of the skills that you're trying to learn all at once (!!) then you'd probably realize why it feels so overwhelming at times and that maybe the best way to approach trading at the start is to keep it as simple as possible (K.I.S.S.), and build from there, having one rock solid foundation is more than enough to keep building further.

[jamesg46]

Im still convinced that the use of "edge" is the biggest killer of new traders. My issue with it is, an edge is perceived as having a profitable strategy and that's just not true imo.

An edge for me is a certain "setup" within a certain "strategy"

One of the most common traps most fall into (including myself) is thinking that you need to correctly guess the direction the market is going to go, for example, turning up and placing a lay trade because you expect the runner to drift etc.

Imo, people are instantly putting themselves on the back foot, the market hasn't proved itself in any direction so why try and guess it?

Something Peter tweeted out at the beginning of the year "people are obsessed with round numbers"

So for an example of my ramble,

Strategy: Competitive Hcap, early backed now drifting & above moving avg.

Setup: Scalp the break of round numbers.

The runner is drifting towards 4.0 (first entry a lay for the break through 4) a Seravnt used that offsets spreading your exit, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 & 4.4

Successful break, next target is a break through 4.5 (same servant) exits at 4.6,4.7,4.8 & 4.9 with an immediate stop if failing to break.

Successful break, next target is a break of 5 (you get the point)

Risk: Fails to break.

Stop: Immediate after a failed break.

There are plenty of setups within strategies & Peters recent video shows that nicely (3 trades backing.)

Kai also makes a good point, people don't learn to trade around their emotions.

The above is a pretty aggressive and at the same time risk adverse way of scalping the break of round numbers. In and out but at the same time each successful break creates a buffer if the next target fails.

Good luck but its much more than just sticking a few quid either side of the book, believe me I've sent myself in circles for years, literally like a dog chasing it's tail.

[goat68]

Im still convinced that the use of "edge" is the biggest killer of new traders. My issue with it is, an edge is perceived as having a profitable strategy and that's just not true imo.

An edge for me is a certain "setup" within a certain "strategy"

One of the most common traps most fall into (including myself) is thinking that you need to correctly guess the direction the market is going to go, for example, turning up and placing a lay trade because you expect the runner to drift etc.

Imo, people are instantly putting themselves on the back foot, the market hasn't proved itself in any direction so why try and guess it?

Something Peter tweeted out at the beginning of the year "people are obsessed with round numbers"

So for an example of my ramble,

Strategy: Competitive Hcap, early backed now drifting & above moving avg.

Setup: Scalp the break of round numbers.

The runner is drifting towards 4.0 (first entry a lay for the break through 4) a Seravnt used that offsets spreading your exit, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 & 4.4

Successful break, next target is a break through 4.5 (same servant) exits at 4.6,4.7,4.8 & 4.9 with an immediate stop if failing to break.

Successful break, next target is a break of 5 (you get the point)

Risk: Fails to break.

Stop: Immediate after a failed break.

There are plenty of setups within strategies & Peters recent video shows that nicely (3 trades backing.)

Kai also makes a good point, people don't learn to trade around their emotions.

The above is a pretty aggressive and at the same time risk adverse way of scalping the break of round numbers. In and out but at the same time each successful break creates a buffer if the next target fails.

Good luck but its much more than just sticking a few quid either side of the book, believe me I've sent myself in circles for years, literally like a dog chasing it's tail.

I think I am missunderstanding people's comments, for example Euler stated on page 2 of this thread you need to anticipate price action, my mind read that as direction...!

Anyway I'm going to go away now and stare at a few hundred markets.......... !
I've asked enough of you lot, so thank you anyway

[jamesg46]

Im still convinced that the use of "edge" is the biggest killer of new traders. My issue with it is, an edge is perceived as having a profitable strategy and that's just not true imo.

An edge for me is a certain "setup" within a certain "strategy"

One of the most common traps most fall into (including myself) is thinking that you need to correctly guess the direction the market is going to go, for example, turning up and placing a lay trade because you expect the runner to drift etc.

Imo, people are instantly putting themselves on the back foot, the market hasn't proved itself in any direction so why try and guess it?

Something Peter tweeted out at the beginning of the year "people are obsessed with round numbers"

So for an example of my ramble,

Strategy: Competitive Hcap, early backed now drifting & above moving avg.

Setup: Scalp the break of round numbers.

The runner is drifting towards 4.0 (first entry a lay for the break through 4) a Seravnt used that offsets spreading your exit, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 & 4.4

Successful break, next target is a break through 4.5 (same servant) exits at 4.6,4.7,4.8 & 4.9 with an immediate stop if failing to break.

Successful break, next target is a break of 5 (you get the point)

Risk: Fails to break.

Stop: Immediate after a failed break.

There are plenty of setups within strategies & Peters recent video shows that nicely (3 trades backing.)

Kai also makes a good point, people don't learn to trade around their emotions.

The above is a pretty aggressive and at the same time risk adverse way of scalping the break of round numbers. In and out but at the same time each successful break creates a buffer if the next target fails.

Good luck but its much more than just sticking a few quid either side of the book, believe me I've sent myself in circles for years, literally like a dog chasing it's tail.

I think I am missunderstanding people's comments, for example Euler stated on page 2 of this thread you need to anticipate price action, my mind read that as direction...!

Anyway I'm going to go away now and stare at a few hundred markets.......... !
I've asked enough of you lot, so thank you anyway

Dont stop asking, its a way of learning.

Peter is 100% correct. You can anticipate price action within a trend just like my example. That's my take, not Peters opinion, I'll leave Peters opinion to Peter.

[smallplayer]

hi Goat and all repliers. interesting thread. thanks to all the experienced traders for replies. as a learner myself i find them useful. just curious Goat..how many races have you traded so far and what bank you using to produce those figures you quoted earlier. also, do you trade all race types and if so, do you vary approach/strategy to suit race?