A question for newbies & beginners

The sport of kings.
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Korattt
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Serious question as I’m really interested, how far away do you think you are from being successful at pre race trading & why?
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jimibt
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Korattt wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 11:42 am
Serious question as I’m really interested, how far away do you think you are from being successful at pre race trading & why?
good question, tho i think it would be helpful if you could frame it from your own perspective with a few bullet points that help you measure your own success, that way, you'd get hopefully a nice reliable bit of feedback given the prompts.
Korattt
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jimibt wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 11:44 am
Korattt wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 11:42 am
Serious question as I’m really interested..
good question, tho i think it would be helpful if you could frame it from your own perspective..
ok Jim, I’ve taken & edited this from one of my old posts from another thread,

“as for my journey so to speak it has been one long roller coaster, although it is something I absolutely love doing,

I can't remember when I started looking at trading but it was due to stumbling across both BFBOTMANAGER & Caan's blog & video's on YT, bought CB's Pre Race Guide & Video Pack after earning £100 on BFBM through backing & laying at SP one Saturday, until then I hadn't a clue on horse racing but thought to myself, "it can't be that easy can it?", so I didn't pursue that method through scepticism & looked more to trading manually.

Think this was around October 2014 when I first discovered trading through Caan & during this time I didn't take it that seriously due to other ventures (self employed business) but when I lost interest in this I looked to trade full time to which I attended a course at Bet Angel HQ down in Hook, rented an office out & basically took the bull by the horns, I'm pretty much a do now & think later kind of guy, in hindsight I took the wrong course, I should've attended the Masterclass instead of the Horse Racing Workshop.

I was pretty stupid really, well very stupid, why?, well because I thought that after going on the course I'd cracked it, the thing is I hadn't taken into consideration all the other stuff that goes into daily trading Pre Race, if I'm honest I think that I should’ve attended both courses before even thinking to trade full time.

There are things with trading that are I think overlooked or easily forgotten about, like for example looking for opportunities that aren't there, getting overconfident, totally misreading markets with similar "fabric" which turn out to be a totally different material, how two days are never the same, how Betfair works in tandem with exchange software, in fact there's loads of stuff that only come to light with experience, so that's why I say use low stakes to start off with, there are so many variables to daliy Pre Race Trading.. so many.

The office idea was a disaster, too much going on in the building, frequent false fire alarms, being able to hear telephone conversations in the corridors, was asked to be moved but it didn't work out so I sacked that off to continue trading from home.

Since leaving the office I've gone back to work twice & quite to do this full time & as I type in a full time job but for various reason at the moment I am at my trading desk full time which has been useful as I have picked up on things during this time.

If I can give anyone any advice to anyone looking to get involved with trading it would be this.

Don't quit your job, save a bundle of cash, say £2k to 3k (or what ever you're comfortable with) & learn HOW the markets work, don't just GUESS where the way the price will go, DON'T get in because you WANT to be RIGHT, if you persist with this you WILL learn HOW the markets move & why, & for gods sake use SMALL stakes because you will be able to learn how the markets move with small stakes, you need to fully understand why things happen.

Trading has at times been incredibly frustrating for me & I've fell in & out of love with it numerous times, however whenever I've come back to it I've learned a little bit more each & every time,

Have to be honest & admit that I've lost a small fortune with pursuing this, more than the aforementioned £2k~£3k, however it's not the amount that bothers me, what does bother me is the amount of time it's taking me to get to a level where I'm able to do this full time, and that's why I think I have to travel back down to Hook sometime to confirm what I think what I've learnt from when I was last down there”.


.. so in answering my own question as a "wet behind the ears" newbie I would have said 6 months?, a year?, when in fact it's a lot LOT longer.
spreadbetting
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Korattt wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 12:02 pm

Have to be honest & admit that I've lost a small fortune with pursuing this, more than the aforementioned £2k~£3k, however it's not the amount that bothers me, what does bother me is the amount of time it's taking me to get to a level where I'm able to do this full time, and that's why I think I have to travel back down to Hook sometime to confirm what I think what I've learnt from when I was last down there”.

What do you think is missing that the magic bullet of training will solve?
Korattt
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spreadbetting wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 12:57 pm
Korattt wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 12:02 pm

Have to be honest & admit that I've lost a small fortune with pursuing this..
What do you think is missing that the magic bullet of training will solve?
hopefully the mechanics of a market in fine detail
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ShaunWhite
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There's plenty of students who've spent 50 grand and 4 years full-time pursuing a career that never happens.

I saw a facial surgeon on TV who had to study for 17 years! before they were qualified, as a doctor, then as a surgeon, and then as a dentist.

They earn less than a top trader.

Trading is just like any other non-menial job, expense, time and no guarantees.
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napshnap
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ShaunWhite wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 1:26 pm
There's plenty of students who've spent 50 grand and 4 years full-time pursuing a career that never happens.

I saw a facial surgeon on TV who had to study for 17 years! before they were qualified, as a doctor, then as a surgeon, and then as a dentist.

They earn less than a top trader.

Trading is just like any other non-menial job, expense, time and no guarantees.
Sometimes I think that I'm a betfair's menial with a good fee (which won't be so good when i'll hit the 250k limit soon).
arbitrage16
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Hofstadter's law - any task you're planning to complete will always take longer than expected, even when Hofstadter's law is taken into account.

Your question, which is the kind usually posed to make people feel better about their own situation, is simply too broad IMO; "Success" is wholly subjective and so general as to render its use here fairly pointless.
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brimson25
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I'm as close and as far as ever.

I've been around gambling and poker for many years. I've been (very) successful in both and taken some (huge) real beatings from both. My long-term failure in each is pretty much certain; my leak is my anger/ self-loathing and sabotaging behaviour. I suspect it will be the same for this. I sometimes think that catastrophic defeat is actually what I want. If I'm ever able to get a grip of my own mind, I think I could get good regular returns. Chances of getting said grip are probably somewhere between 10% and 20%. Time scale? Unsure, about 6 months, I'll know.

The sad truth to the question: why do many gamblers gamble if they keep losing? ... is that they want to lose because it's a sort of affirmation of their internal "I'm a screw-up" narrative. (That's why the "when the fun stops, stop" slogan is so funny. It stopped a long bloody time ago).

I think that's probably not quite as true of most traders, who, judging by this forum seem more level-headed and grown-up.
Korattt
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arbitrage16 wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 1:51 pm
Hofstadter's law - any task you're planning to complete will always take longer than expected, even when Hofstadter's law is taken into account.

Your question, which is the kind usually posed to make people feel better about their own situation, is simply too broad IMO; "Success" is wholly subjective and so general as to render its use here fairly pointless.
appreciate your comment - thank you, any newbies out there with a comment?
Last edited by Korattt on Tue Jul 10, 2018 4:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
spreadbetting
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brimson25 wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 2:12 pm


I've been around gambling and poker for many years. I've been (very) successful in both and taken some (huge) real beatings from both. My long-term failure in each is pretty much certain; my leak is my anger/ self-loathing and sabotaging behaviour.
Not sure you can be successful and a long term failure, the successful sections are probably just good runs of wins and then the inevitable long runs of losses are your beatings.

I've never been too convinced of the self sabotage argument people use , that's a kind of chicken and the egg type situation, the loathing and sabotage hardly comes when people are doing well it just comes out as an excuse when they start to do bad, of which poor runs will always be inevitable. In general people fail because they don't have an 'edge' over the market and then have bad money management skills when things go wrong which compounds the issue. It then becomes a case of people blaming the latter rather than admit the former as it's always easier to find quick answers.
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brimson25
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Maybe.

But I think it's at least conceivable that people self-sabotage.

I'm also not convinced that it's somehow preferable or more laudable to say that you're a self-sabotaging nutter, than that you don't have an edge.

It's probably for me a bit of both, but it's very hard to prove I suppose. And given it's hard to prove, you can pick either explanation - nutter vs no edge; losing is losing is losing.

In any case, to return to the question, how long do I think it's going to take me to crack? Probably never.

I shall log off for the final time (whenever that may be) with a shameful P/L history. Oh well. :)
arbitrage16
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brimson25 wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 2:12 pm
I'm as close and as far as ever.

I've been around gambling and poker for many years. I've been (very) successful in both and taken some (huge) real beatings from both. My long-term failure in each is pretty much certain; my leak is my anger/ self-loathing and sabotaging behaviour. I suspect it will be the same for this. I sometimes think that catastrophic defeat is actually what I want. If I'm ever able to get a grip of my own mind, I think I could get good regular returns. Chances of getting said grip are probably somewhere between 10% and 20%. Time scale? Unsure, about 6 months, I'll know.

The sad truth to the question: why do many gamblers gamble if they keep losing? ... is that they want to lose because it's a sort of affirmation of their internal "I'm a screw-up" narrative. (That's why the "when the fun stops, stop" slogan is so funny. It stopped a long bloody time ago).

I think that's probably not quite as true of most traders, who, judging by this forum seem more level-headed and grown-up.
Recommend a book called psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
Korattt
Posts: 2405
Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2015 6:46 pm

brimson25 wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 4:33 pm

In any case, to return to the question, how long do I think it's going to take me to crack? Probably never.

I shall log off for the final time (whenever that may be) with a shameful P/L history. Oh well. :)
keep plugging away, you will find a way
spreadbetting
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brimson25 wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 4:33 pm

It's probably for me a bit of both, but it's very hard to prove I suppose. And given it's hard to prove, you can pick either explanation - nutter vs no edge; losing is losing is losing.
But if you can correctly identify why you're losing it's a lot easier to correct it.
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