New blog post by Ryan Carruthers! I really am not cut out to be a Betfair Trader?
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Over my 9 years as a professional trader these are the things that stop people being good Betfair traders!
I see some many emails from people who say to me that they think they aren’t cut out to be a trader on Betfair and it breaks my heart because they have put so much time, effort and energy into trading and for them to stop is heartbreaking but I understand why because trading can be so emotionally brutal but you know that as you are deep into this series of blog posts now aren’t you? If you aren’t click here and I’ll email you all of them.
One of the reasons I don’t like getting emails from people saying that they aren’t cut out for trading on Betfair is because anybody can be a trader, literally anybody I am nothing special and I have managed to do it. Many of my members are the same, they have understood some of the principles I am going to talk about in this post that have helped changed their thinking around trading.
There are many things you need to understand, right now you are probably thinking you aren’t cut out to be a trader because of one of these reasons:
You are aiming for a big bank increase weekly
You are aiming to make a fortune - also staking too high!
You are playing around on the markets, for the adrenaline rush
You trade emotionally - a loss leads to a loss of the head
You don't work on your knowledge and follow something blindly
You have temporary trading methods - that used to work
You listen to everybody and everything
Over the course of this blog post I am going to break down these into detail, if you only want to read the one that relates to you skip through
Are you aiming for a big bank increase weekly?
My first thing to point out here is don’t, I know why you want to do this… you want a bigger bank so you can make more profit and get to where you want to be quicker don't you? But it doesn’t work like that, if you want 100% growth in a bank in a week be prepared to blow a few banks before you double the bank if you ever do. The goal here is to grow the bank consistently, I don't even look at a weekly or monthly bank growth anymore, I have moved to quarterly as this allows me to think longer term. The goal when starting out should be profit monthly, consistently at low stakes and to build the bank gradually - what happens when you are building the bank too fast is you don't trade with a clear head and you are always chasing what you shouldn’t be chasing - so stop, take the small consistent wins and move those forward gradually.
Are you aiming to make a fortune - staking too high?
Similar to the above, what you will be doing is staking way to high to make a profit, what happens here is that it is great for a few trades when it sort of goes well and you get out by the mere skin of your teeth but Betfair is a beast and she’s relentless when she catches you out for staking to high she will literally eat you alive and ruin your confidence, your emotions and the bank. Smaller consistent gains, I know its not sexy but remember those guys who do accumulators every week? How many of them win? You hear about the one or two great wins but the losses mount up, would you rather start slow, compound those profits then in a years time be trading and making a healthy amount every month? Or rather keep over staking, having to reload that account, being miserable and riding the emotional rollercoaster. Take your time when trading with Betfair.
Are you playing around on the markets for the rush?
This one is crazy, if this is you then you need a high octane hobby - like go windsurfing or something! You need to be cool calm and collected when trading, if you are trading to get the rush of trading then this will lead you to trading on emotion chasing something thats not what you should be chasing, you will be focusing on the rush not the markets and your trades.
You trade emotionally…
This one is tricky, we all start out like this we are human beings after all and we are emotional it is seriously tough to work on our emotional state when trading, think about the real reason you are emotional when you are trading? Most of the time there’s a reason you are letting your emotions get the better of you and only you know it, you have to be honest with yourself, if you are having money troubles and thinking that chasing the markets will help it won’t you will just make matters worse, start writing down how you feel when you are trading and think about whats motivating you to trade? Are those goals or outside forces driving you to make decisions emotionally on the markets? If they are be honest and lower the stakes, take some time.
You don’t have the knowledge and follow something blindly?
This one is what I see a lot, people see somebody post something up somewhere on social media and they jump on because the person seems to know what they are talking about but you don’t know the market, what happens here is the market moves like it does usually but you aren’t used to trading that market so you spend more time worrying about the moves the market is making and what your position looks like that what is actually happening, if somebody is posting something up think about why they did? How did they price this trade up? What was their thought process? Learn from this…. Then follow it in-play with no money, learn how the market moves when an event or mini event happens in the game or match so you are building your knowledge.
You are using temporary trading methods - that used to work!
Couple of things here, variance and the worlds change! A lot of people have strategies that work and have stayed very true to the rules of that strategy - this is great but…. You have to constantly be assessing your portfolio of trading and measuring the success of these how are they performing against the previous quarter? Does it still work? Sometimes it isn’t a huge upheaval needed either its a fine line here I have seen people be so close to having something only to throw the towel in when it was only a minor change needed in their system, so track everything so you have data on your selections (you can export your data from BTC stats to excel for easy filtering).
The last one… you listen to everybody and everything
Listening to people is great, I have learnt so much from my members and I hope that I have been able to give back to them as well, its what drives me daily to make BTC great but you have to do the trades, so listening to me for example talking about my tennis trades in the first set is no good if you don't like to trade that way or you know that if you trade that way it makes you more of an emotional trader. Listen to people, learn from what they are doing, how they are approaching their trades and build upon these yourself. One great thing we have in the forum is people not only listen but they also share, so they share their approaches which when you start talking out loud and getting some feedback on your trading makes a huge huge difference and enables you to become a much better trader.
I’ve really hit on some of the issues that over my years with BTC I have seen and heard people say, none of this is rocket science guys, its about learning from others, speaking with others and then controlling you and how you trade. Together we can all learn to be better traders and we can trade our own strategies.
By reading through the whole series of these blog posts you are now aimed with everything that you need so that you can take charge of your trading, no longer trading out of your depth, trading for greed. You have the tools to create a trading plan and execute it and notice when you aren’t following it and why.
If you want to watch this whole series of videos you can, the links are below:
Video 1:
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&t=46sVideo 3:
Video 4:
&t=2sVideo 5:
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