New Member Intro - Tom
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Hi, my names Tom and I’m pleased to have joined the Betfair Trading Community this morning after a couple of weeks listening to the podcasts.
I’ll tell you abit about myself as I’m looking to dive fully into the community to build relationships in order to help me on my trading journey and also help others wherever I can, especially with the mindset aspect which has been my biggest hurdle!
I’m gonna go way back, as writing out this journey to where I am now is helpful to me more than anything, so I’m going to start at school, I hated it! I never fully switched on at school and although fairly bright I never applied myself and was always skipping school to drink cider in some park with my mates and as such I left school with basically no qualifications.
I rolled into crap job after crap job straight out of school but always had a burning desire to start my own business, I’ve always hated authority so I was sure this was the path for me!
Having always had a really keen interest in vintage scooters I saw an opportunity to start a spare parts business in my early 20s and enjoyed around 12 months of success. I never realised at the time how my lack of focus and discipline I had ingrained in myself from previous years would be my downfall with this business and as things started to fall apart, so did I and I entered a period of pretty serious drink and drug addiction.
Fast forward about 7 years later and I’ve had enough, I’m mentally unwell, physically unfit and my business is in serious debt!
I know I have to change something so i close the business and I pack up and leave my hometown hoping that a fresh start will give me the clean break I need and thankfully it did, I’m now into my 2nd year running a successful business with an end goal of selling the business on in future, with that goal in mind I know I need something else, no some much financially but mentally I need a big challenge.
I’ve always been fascinated in “smart money” making money earn money and more importantly winning, I don’t mean just gambling and getting the thrill of a win I mean seriously researching your move be it a bet, a trade or a chess move, just the process of applying yourself so hard into something that you earn your win.
Unfortunately as you might have gathered from the previous posts, this isn’t my natural mindset and every day is a struggle to overcome this and keep myself disciplined, almost daily I’ll finish off having a winning day on betfair set up in my office and then temptation gets me and I can’t let go and suddenly I’m trading at home on my phone in the kitchen whilst trying to cook the family dinner.
For me the path to becoming a successful trader is discipline, that’s why I’m here. To make myself accountable to other people and if needs be other people can be accountable to me. I’m a long way off where I want to be but I am finally on the right track and if I can help anyone along the way I’d be buzzing too!
Sorry this was such an essay and to anyone who has managed to get this far please feel free to contact me if you ever feel you’re in the same place as me so we can help each other
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Just dropping in to update this, @Keith-Anderson this is something I have seriously considered for quite a while and I have finally decided to make an appointment with a GP next week as I feel like I can’t stop making bad decisions and sometimes I feel like I push things right passed any acceptable limit, whether it’s time, financially or other and not just with trading.
I have decided that I am going to leave scalping of any kind for now as I just can’t get my impulses under the control.
However some good news is I’ve worked really hard at some other mindset and trading practices over the last couple of weeks and have finally starting to control my trading in terms of where and when I open a trade and have even managed to kerb my dirty phone trading habit!
I’ve forced myself to dedicate a couple of hours in the evening and the following morning to research and plan my trades for the day and each day it’s becoming easier and easier to only focus on these trades, it might not seem like much but for me this has been a huge step forward.
I don’t really feel like I have much of value to add to the forum at the moment so take abit of a back seat but I’m sure so many other people must fail due to having an impulsive native that I’m determined to overcome this and hope I can help others do the same so as I start overcoming these problems I’m going to start diarising them on the forum
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Welcome @Tom-David , great intro by you! This is certainly the place to learn, all the members are awesome and there really are so experts here!!
Good luck with everything and I'm sure we will chat in the forums!
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@tom-david said in New Member Intro - Tom:
@keith-anderson
I’ve wondered that for a long time mate, I always mean to look into it but keep getting distracted
I have ADHD and I’ve been involved with an ADHD charity for the last 10 years.
Looking at your brief history you’d definitely be a candidate for ADHD.
I bet you don’t take criticism too well? You would even struggle with constructive criticism?
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@ryan-carruthers
Yeah I’m into that mate
I’m open to suggestions
Thanks for sharing the podcast BTW, I listened to it yesterday and really made sense to me, I’m going to try and put some of that into practise but it’s going to be hard
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@keith-anderson
I’ve wondered that for a long time mate, I always mean to look into it but keep getting distracted
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Sounds like you have ADHD @Tom-David ?
All the best people do!
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@tom-david I think we need to create a forfeit for you if you break the rules and trade on the phone?
It's just a fear of missing out
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@ryan-carruthers
Thanks Ryan, appreciate that mate, I’ll give that podcast a listen this afternoon when the girls are out shopping.
I did a little trading yesterday and although it worked out ok I’m still not happy with my approach to it, did a lot on my phone again thinking I can spot opportunities without actually researching them
that is a constant struggle for me. so I’ve decided from today I’m going to delete all the apps from my phone, I have an awesome set up at my desk with big screen and desktop with proper software so I’m going to really work hard on splitting my time this week so trading is done at dedicated times.I like to think I mainly focus on pre race horse trading so for the rest of the month I’m determined to stick to just this. I’ve filtered the races today and picked 2 I’m going to trade, I normally just jump in and out when I have time so assuming I can stick to my plan today I’ll be happy win or lose.
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Amazing write up and I love to hear people really opening up it’s a great way to get the members to know you and really work on helping you get better not just in trading but every other aspect.
I know how you feel about the trading on the phone when cooking dinner etc... I have a really obsessive personality and know that it can lead me to not being present in the moment - something I’m always working on, I’ll link a podcast I listened to recently and it was pretty interesting talking about putting things into containers.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-mind-of-george-show/id1504361992?i=1000509536631
Welcome to the community - great to have you. If you need anything just shout buddy.
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@darri
Nice one mate thank you, I really realise that there’s something wrong with my mindset when it comes to trading. I absolutely know 100% what my pitfalls are I just struggle to actually stop myself from doing them. I’m hoping that being completely open about it and having some accountability for my actions will retrain my brain as I’m determined to get this nailed.
Looking forward to reading through everything and getting some discipline in my trading
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@tom-david There are numerous profitable strategies, thats the easy part, the hard part is managing yourself mentally to not overuse, chase losses, FOMO etc. Id say thats the part i enjoy speaking about most on here. Welcome to BTC lad, any questions just ask. Matts right with the btc academy and then those blogs (not self promoting my own
) youll find a good starting platform for ironing out that mindset and get a bit more understanding of when and where to use a strategy you have a business like mindset outside of trading, so just bring that into this and youll be laughing. Most of my examples i use are trying to explain to people to treat this like a business rather than a betting platform/hobby. So hopefully in that regard youll catch onto this quick. -
Thanks Matt, I’m buzzing to be involved, don’t get me wrong I probably prefer working on my own in practice but in reality I am always battling with myself to not enter a trade or chase a loss and that’s where I feel like I can benefit from the community and hopefully offer that support back out to others as well.
I’m making my way around everything slowly and will have a good look through the link you’ve posted!
Thanks again mate
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Welcome to BTC Tom. Sounds like a bit of a journey!
This is certainly a fantastic place to learn as everyone here will help you if they are able.
Discipline is probably the most important thing in trading so you will pick that up here. Tons of great stuff around the forums from people. Read it ALL, pick out the things that apply and work for you, use them continuously and you wont go too far wrong.
Just in case you have not come across it yet, Martin posted this up a few days back. A great place to start reading.
https://forum.betfairtradingcommunity.com/topic/2698/btc-members-forum-trading-blogs-list-links-here
Best of luck mate.
