Friday 7 August 2015

Lack of discipline

It's really hard to keep the discipline with low stakes. Today I couldn't manage it, and I overstaked. Obviously I lost the trade... When some things don't work right during the day, the risk for irrational behaviour is quite high. Today I had some frustrating actions at the stock exchange, and it influenced my tennis trading. I was not patient like the last two weeks. After a trade didn't go the direction I wished, I tried to scalp offline with a high amount. My player started the 3th set with serving, so I decided to hold the trade for 15:0 to recover the five ticks, which I lost while the girls were on the toilet. Everything went wrong: 0:15, 0:30, 0:40, break... Putintseva rised her lead to 3:0, and I closed the trade. Murphy's law, McHale fought back and my initial trade (even if it was without discipline) would be a winner.

Just seconds after I lost the trade, I transfered a big part of my money back to my saving account. This lack of discipline was only possible, because there was too much cash at Betfair. Like you know, I just trade with two Euros... so I don't need a bank of 1'000 Euro! It only gives you the possibility to make bad moves, which you regret afterwards. Now I have a bank with 100 Euro, which is more adequate to my stakes.

What else I changed? I recognized that not all the strategies have a low risk profile. Two of them are back strategies. When you enter the market too early, the trade can go very bad against you. Sometimes is tempting to back the favourite after he lost the first set, but if he/she continues to struggle, the position has a very bad leverage. With lays under 1.10 you can't make much wrong. The liability in comparison to the possible profit is very low.

It's normal that you have setbacks in my stage of a trading career. It's not the end of the world, if you make the right learnings out of it. The financial damage hurts, but in the long term these kind of experiences help to improve. Even the best traders made mistakes before they succeeded. It just shows that I am not over the mountain yet. I will try to fight back, obviously not with chasing losses, at the weekend. I will keep the KPI on the right side unchanged, because the mistake happened outside the strategies that I am testing at the moment.

4 comments:

  1. Sorry to hear about that.

    Chasing losses with higher stakes is the oldest mistake in the book for a trader, it derives from human instinct! I struggled with it in my path, like I told you before.

    Try to stay positive and although I don´t want to sound repetitive: think long-term. If you had won today with your overstaking, you would do it again in the future. Also, sometimes trading is about not losing money; when you are having a bad day it is better to stay away from the markets.

    Taking the money from your account is a wise decision and I must say you don´t even need 100 EUR to trade with a 2 EUR liability; of course if something uncommon happens, like in your injury post, it is good to have a good bank.

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    1. Thanks for the nice words. Yes, it was a newbie mistake and should not happen. I adjusted two or three things, which will help to strenghten my mind. A professor told that 60% of trading is mental. That's why it's so difficult. You have to make things which are against human behaviour like redding fast and let the green positions run.

      My hitrate was/is good so far, but it pressured me too much to have 75% right trades to be breakeven. I changed the risk/reward-ratio a bit, so the breakeven will be around 60%. This gives me more freedom. I will enter more often (so more volume --> hopefully more profit) and will have less problems to accept a loser.

      Beside I had a small mistake in my strategy, which I corrected. I think the small setback is marked off. With a bank of 100 Euro there is not much risk to act stupid like I dit at Thursday. Is definitely enough to trade with 2 Euro... now I need internal growth and then I can rise my stakes. It's okay, I just decided not deposit any more money to Betfair. If this money is gone, I stop to trade. So easy it is :-)

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  2. Taking the money from your betting account may seem like a good idea to help with your discipline (or lack of) but it'll only help in the short term. As soon as you reload it won't take long for the same mistakes to happen again.
    It's a common mistake-without proper approach to sticking resolutely to the strategies (stop loss, let winning trades run) then you'll never make this a success.

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    1. Sure, it's a short term measure, which helps for the moment. It was a mistake, we don't have to exaggerate now. It's just normal in the beginning of a new approach.

      About the KPI, you wrote at the blog of Mr. Know-it-all... It's difficult to be transparent for the readers, but you can believe me, that was a reason why I didn't include this trade (the won injury trade I didn't neither). I don't like to sell anthing, I don't like to show, how good I am... there is no reason to fake my numbers. To avoid these kind of discussions in the future, I will not publish anymore financial figures. Perhaps after a while a chart or a printscreen to document my development... people can believe it or not, in the end, it's a diary for me, where the readers can give feedback. That's well appreciated if it's constructive and not destructive. Mr. Know-it-all is also welcome, but he has to come down from his high horse.

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