My Trip Through Trading
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@matt-wood just because x teams have had 90% of shgs does not mean that by getting 1.2 odds is therefore value. If only it were that simple we would all be rich. That is a very basic approach. It will lend to variances. Its iv been trying to tell people like richard and others that yes data can tell us one thing, but actually the games need to be traded on merit. At least from your point of view you are doing the extra mileage. Honestly the only time ill recommend the shg as a beginner strat is if they have nailed down scorelines and leagues. Its the MOST important variables to this strat. Im sure we can all test a +85% shg filter, but actually the background variables like leagues are scorelines are the % makers. With these types of odds every % is huge. Compare that with late goals and its so much easier to be wrong a few times. Im not saying long term lates are better, but they are easier to learn and gain experience from. Id say thats why im able to adapt to most markets now. I understand what i need to do in order to make money back here and what situations work. Yes old tracked data can help here, but filters are just guides.
Beginner should track rather than trade. There are good strategies for people on here to trade while they learn. That might sound silly for me to say dont trade your own stuff, my blog encourages it, but you should never be using bank on trades. Your wanting to beat or at least match the pros consistently each month. The pros consistently make bank, beginners seem to get good and bad batches. 2 step forward 3 back. Its not that their trading is massively different but ill bet that they are getting better edges on the same strats. I dont have a magic wand for your own strat, but we both at least know its not ready to trade yet and infact it wont be until scorelines and leagues are set. If you need filters for finding games and going purely off data for shgs then protect every % and just wait till you have leagues to trade and scorelines to match. But always remember PRICE/VALUE is king.
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@darri said in Can I even trade...:
@matt-wood only thing id say is only thinking about the strike rate will present you with swings. Right now you havent got the right scorelines/leagues sorted for this. These will come in time. However, no point talking about 4-5 months worth of data predicting. So to help you right now, why dont you just focus on selecting the games on your filter that reach a good edge on the market. Im assuming (pull me up if im wrong) that youll just be trading games because it on your system and even if the odds are slightly ok to trade. Like iv been saying on my blog, these high intensive strats are lulling a lot of people right now because, its easy to get a batch of data saying 1 thing and that we are untouchable, yet when we trade it we see that variances happen and our old data was not realistic. Its a very hard strat to pull off. Its also a reason im happy to leave them. The risk/reward isnt great. Im now ultra selective, if i get in its likely because its on tv and i then have a viewing edge. Just a thought for you to think about. Yes strike rate is important but the edge has to be huge for you to avoid bad variances due to the odds people are taking. The more trades you do the more likely youll run into those cycles. Examples of this are everywhere on the forum. Id like my shg filter if entering at HT to be above 92%, if we use your 88.63% it then makes some trades weak compared to the average you are setting. That 4% is huge. Its why id say that shgs are in fact the worst strategy for people to learn first. Fine margins with terrible risk/rewards, its a recipe for disaster.
Thanks Darri. I had in my head some of your comments from around the forum about high sr strats in the last few months. Not sure how I can fix this to make sure Im getting a good edge. Something I need to figure out properly in my own head I guess, to make sure I understand it properly. It might be that after the end of this month I just go back to paper trading these until the end of the year and see what the numbers are like at that point.
Currently I don't trade every game that comes up on my filter. At ht I will check top goalscorers are on the pitch, check the fh action is good enough and watch the first 5-10 mins of the sh before entering. Also I am only trading the games on my filter which have a 90% or higher success rate on the ht scoreline.
As you say, months from now with the addition of league data I may get better results.
Just out of curiosity what 'style' of trade would you recommend for a beginner if shg is one you would not?
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@chris-osborne said in Can I even trade...:
@matt-wood To my struggling eye, Looks like you have the makings of a successful filter Matt.
Have you looked where the losses are coming from i.e. similar leagues or is it just random variance as we have both Summer and Winter Leagues hitting filters.
Thanks Chris, I hope that I have
I thikn the league information is going to come in time, just need to probably double my data set at least first to see a clearer picture.
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@matt-wood only thing id say is only thinking about the strike rate will present you with swings. Right now you havent got the right scorelines/leagues sorted for this. These will come in time. However, no point talking about 4-5 months worth of data predicting. So to help you right now, why dont you just focus on selecting the games on your filter that reach a good edge on the market. Im assuming (pull me up if im wrong) that youll just be trading games because it on your system and even if the odds are slightly ok to trade. Like iv been saying on my blog, these high intensive strats are lulling a lot of people right now because, its easy to get a batch of data saying 1 thing and that we are untouchable, yet when we trade it we see that variances happen and our old data was not realistic. Its a very hard strat to pull off. Its also a reason im happy to leave them. The risk/reward isnt great. Im now ultra selective, if i get in its likely because its on tv and i then have a viewing edge. Just a thought for you to think about. Yes strike rate is important but the edge has to be huge for you to avoid bad variances due to the odds people are taking. The more trades you do the more likely youll run into those cycles. Examples of this are everywhere on the forum. Id like my shg filter if entering at HT to be above 92%, if we use your 88.63% it then makes some trades weak compared to the average you are setting. That 4% is huge. Its why id say that shgs are in fact the worst strategy for people to learn first. Fine margins with terrible risk/rewards, its a recipe for disaster.
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@matt-wood To my struggling eye, Looks like you have the makings of a successful filter Matt.
Have you looked where the losses are coming from i.e. similar leagues or is it just random variance as we have both Summer and Winter Leagues hitting filters.
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Well a rough day yesterday on my SHG filter. After my previous post describing my rocky month I had been slowly clawing my way to a green finish. Yesterday saw an end to that
Another two losing games, making 7 for the month so far. Previous highest as mentioned was two. I am going to carry on with my trades the same as I have been doing since I am mindful of making kneejerk reactions. This is just, hopefully, a run of bad results. I guess this was always going to happen at some point.
My filter still has a success rate of 88.63% from raw data (after 431 games). I think this is still a good rate so the future may be just a case of me refining on league success rates and possibly HT scorelines too. This should, in the long term, cut out some of those losses.
Just keeping calm and carrying on as is I think is the best play for me now. Being focussed on not making mistakes is still top priority for now. So far this month, despite the losses, I dont think I have made any (yet to double check yesterdays trades for errors).
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Been lacking in updates recently so apologies to all, mostly an admonishment to myself though.
Been a rocky month so far.
Ups:
Did not even think about trading anything during the international break. This is a big step for me as I had previously suffered FOMO during internationals. The, final, acceptance that I can just simply NOT TRADE for a week or so is quite refreshing.
Filter continues on with a good strike rate of 89.87% (this is without any further assessment, purely the filter results). It is also building my data nicely now and approaching 500 games. Coupled with this are the fact that I am now starting to see some meaningful stats for HT scorelines and the individual leagues are starting to accumulate games too. All this is moving towards a time when I can, hopefully, filter the filter further by assessing these numbers.
Downs:
Have had 5 losers so far this month. This has given me a hit of 9.25pts. Previous to this the highest number of losing games in one month was 2!. Happy continuing though as the stats are still strong as mentioned above. Also still slightly in profit this month with a week or so left.
Take away from this month so far for me is to take time off during international breaks and forget trading.
Also to not panic if I have a bad turn of results. My data is still good and I don't think they were bad trades, just not winners.Nice to see the winter leagues popping up now too
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@chris-osborne yes another great way, I think this really helps.
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@ryan another way of thinking about losses is as your overheads whereas your winning trades are your sales
Sales - overheads = profit
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@matt-wood Tortoise wins always in the end.
I am trying to think more about the losses as a fee not a loss, I got this from the psychology of money book.
It spoke about how to think about your investing losses as a few, because you need them to profit in the long term and you need to keep your head to play the longer game to be able to enjoy results like you are seeing now.
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Excellent month Matt, looks like your starting to see the start of something good keep it going
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Well done mate, delighted you are getting the results you deserve. Your hard work is paying off.
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@darri Thanks bud. I currently have no intention of leaving the mistakes out of the monthly post. Having them on here is keeping me focused on them and holding me to account too.
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@matt-wood Excellent work, glad to see you’re making such decent progress!
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@matt-wood excellent write up mate
i think the mistakes tally should always be on your summary posts until you have 3-4 consecutive months of 0 mistakes. Thats when youll have nailed it. Dont worry too much about knowing if you have an edge. Just focus on the consistency of not making reds. If your strategy is good then as long as your limiting the potential reds (mistakes/going against the plan/fomo) youll make profit. You might think its a small gain but as you have seen it adds up. You start compounding that and a bigger bank comes quicker than you think. Keep this up mate, fantastic stuff -
Its that time again, comes around quickly!
Month round up: SEPTEMBER (month 5)
3.15pts profit.Total trades: 24
Roughly the same as last month but next months will include the winter leagues properly so maybe numbers will go up a little now.
Winners: 16
Continues a downward % trend month on month, will have to keep an eye on this going forward.Of the 8 that did not win, 5 were scratch trades and 3 were outright losses. 2 of those losses came on one day and both games had the teams get a 0-0 for the 1st and 2nd times in the season. Good trades, numbers and players were good, inplay was good so would do those again (applying this to all 3 loses).
On a plus note it is good to see that although the winning % has been its lowest ever I have still made profit. If I am understanding things correctly (please tell me if not) then this would imply my edge is good enough to cope with losses.Mistakes: One.
I am ok with this one as it was not a 'trading' mistake but more one of distraction. The good lady was particularly ill on one day and I was distracted by concern for her (not to blame her as that would get me in far too much trouble
). Traded a game I thought was on my SHG list but was actually a test game for something else. Happy that it was not a specific trading mistake but a key lesson to be learned none the less. If my mind is not focused on trading 100%, DON'T TRADE. There are always more games.The end of Sept also marks the end of Q3 on my records (calendar year, not financial). 12.37pts profit for the quarter. Quite frankly I am chuffed to bits with this
This would mean a near 50% bank growth per year if I could keep it up.
More important that the numbers for me at the moment though is how this quarters profit happened. All three months were green! This is what makes me feel confident for the long term. Had the quarter been green from a bumper month one month and a loss on the other two I would not be nearly so happy. I am proving to myself a level of consistency here which is fantastic for my confidence going forward.Onwards and upwards, the tortoise wins in the end
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@matt-wood A few years back I moved to a new job with more responsibilities, etc. and after a while came down a case of the ol' imposter syndrome myself. Around the same time I listened to an interview with Stephen Pressfield and it completely changed how I view it, and haven't struggled with it since. In my typical manner I wrote it out and saved it on a Google Doc, here's what he said:
I don’t believe there is such a thing as being an imposter. I believe you are on the spectrum of getting better and better. The trick is self-belief. Who says you’re an imposter? That’s the voice of resistance in your head trying to sabotage you.
There is also an ego with imposter syndrome that you think people are thinking about you, when the reality is nobody cares. Nobody is trying to catch you as an imposter. Nobody is worried about you, they are worried about themselves.
We all struggle with doubt, the truth is are you going to identify with that doubt or push past it?When I set out to write my first book, by definition I have never written a book before so how do I know I can do this? If you think “of course I can write this book because I’m a genius” that’s the wrong way to think about it. That’s ego. To me it’s “What do I know about myself that’s evidence I can write this book?” For me it’s that I’m a hard worker, I don’t quit, I ask questions, I’ve written other things. So you focus on the traits you know you’re qualified to do.
Hopefully that is of some help.
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A new reason to hate the international breaks has recently reared its head, for me at least.
After having no trades for so long 'bad' ideas are starting to creep into my head. Not the fomo or forced trading ideas, think I have cracked those now, but rather something akin to 'Imposter Syndrome'. This is obviously a tad over dramatic
but I do feel like something will go wrong now.During this time with no trades I have caught myself thinking things like;
How do I trade?
How do I carry out my strategy?
How will I know if I am selecting a 'correct' game?
Surely I have just been lucky so far
Its silly to think I can 'predict' a second half goalAt the grand old age of 41 I know myself pretty well now and as a result am generally a confident person. So when I take the time to think about it I can squash these thoughts quite quickly but they still creep in when Im not thinking about trading.
It seems the mental side of trading comes in many forms, not just fomo, and the need to work on this side of things is probably never ending.
If you find yourself thinking these thoughts like me then spend some time before the weekend games begin to refamiliarise with your chosen strategy and go over your data to help put your mind back into the 'feel' of your trading system.
Once the weekend begins, aside from the caution around post international games, go slow, do your research and stick to your plan.
