My Trip Through Trading
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@james-woodroffe Cheers mate, feels good to do a whole month with no mistakes
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@darri Thanks Darri. Ive always had in the back of my mind the possibility in the future of switching it to a set and forget style if I want to. I am currently tracking how it would do when backing the next goal and backing the next +1.5 goals as set and forgets. The next +1.5 is surprisingly profitable so far.
My loose plan is to continue trading the split stake style for this season as it forces me to pay attention to the game and focus more. Once I feel my focus is good enough as a habit I may switch in the future and start to develop a second system. That is way off in the future for now though.
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@matt-wood Fantastic! This is what we like to see, not only someone who has done it the correct way but also a genuinely decent bloke starting to reap the rewards of effort. Really happy to see this mate.
Im not someone who does split stakes but im glad these have worked for you, in the long run with this sort of strike rate if you did fancy moving away from inplay trading ie screen time you could switch to a set and forget to a more SHG style. Cutting out the cash out/greening up.
A very good place to be. Stick at this and continue to think about this no mistakes thing. Actually dont think about winning or losing just make sure you dont make mistakes, the strategy should work for you if you execute it correctly. Great to see progress in just 1 month since we all last spoke about your trading.
Awesome stuff bud!!
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@matt-wood such a cool monthly report to read mate. Well done. Zero mistakes definitely something to be proud of
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Great month Matt, especially the zero mistakes and not forcing anything with so few trades in August
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@lee-woodman Thanks Lee. I totally agree with you here. I think over the past couple of months I have mentally dropped any idea of making money in place of creating better habits for trading. It has been and is actually quite a feeling of relief to not be at all concerned about the money and just to be concentrating on the process and the skills.
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Good work, especially the lack of mistakes or discipline slips and the reduced number of traders. They will always happen but to see none in a month is great progress. As it’s been mentioned a few times recently I think the first year or two is more about changing habits to suit trading and it looks like you’re doing that. That’s the way I’m trying to think of it, not so much ‘I need to make x pounds right away’ but that ‘I need to develop skills and habits to become a trader’. Then with those skills and hopefully a decent amount of data we can push on to the next level!
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Month round up: AUGUST (month 4)
5.43pts profit.Total trades: 29
Down again from last month. Probably my smallest month yet but expect this to pick up once the winter leagues start hitting the filter.
Winners: 21
Happy with this although the % is lower than the previous month.Of the 8 that did not win 5 were scratch trades (not really sure how I should be recording these yet) 3 were total losses. Did a previous post about the start of the month being rubbish. 2 games in particular were good trades and would do them again but just stayed 0-0 (learning to hate this scoreline lol).
Mistakes: ZERO!
Biggest progress this month. Really happy with this as I have been working very deliberately on cutting the mistakes out. Honestly this feels like one of my biggest achievements so far. I like to know it is not 'me' that costs me money. Need to do this again and again now until it becomes habit.
My filter is coming along nicely now. Just passed 300 games and has a strike rate of 90.07% for a shg. This is without any kind of league or scoreline filtering. Once it hits 500 I will take a look at how to filter the filter to get better results.
Will do a bit of an update on my filter once it hits 500 games and I have had a proper look at it and all the things I am tracking on it.
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@matt-wood said in Can I even trade...:
Quick lesson that has just solidified in my melon.
Pros on here such as Martin, Ryan, Keith, Darri and others are always saying pick one thing and work on that alone. I 100% agree with this and it is the fastest (although wont feel like it) way to long term sustained success.
There is, however, a small caveat to this. If you start this as a total beginner, like me, it may be that you need to try a variety of trading strategies before you learn what 'style' suits you as a person. There would be no point an individual working on something that was at odds with their personality, it just won't last long term.
It may be that the complete beginners need to spend 6mnths or more (lots more for a block head like me) learning this. The correct way to do this would be to paper trade ONLY. This will help you learn market movements, learn strategies and get the general 'feel' for trading and its environment. DON'T make the mistake I did and try this with real money, even tiny stakes. I got very lucky really (only can see this with hindsight) and only lost around 40% of my initial bank in the first 12 months of learning.
Once you learn your preferred 'style' and the areas that you 'feel' the most attuned too you can then focus on that and ONLY that to master it.
This lesson has solidified for me now (15months in!, I'm a slow learner
) Particularly since I am learning that whilst you can follow the pros on here, and will probably make profit, when something dosen't work or a system needs a slight tweak, you won't understand why or how to do it since it is not 'your' system.Building your own from the ground up means you know it inside out and will (or certainly should have) also tracked lots of data which you will understand how to use to best effect. So when a tweak is needed, or some refinement of rules are needed, or something changes in the world, (covid for example) you will understand how your system needs to alter and can quickly see from your data what the answer might be.
THIS ALL DAY LONG! Cracking advice, I have harped on about this for years.
What's the point of you trading like me or anybody else - you aren't them. Yes you can 100% learn from them, take what they do and make it your own.
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I lost all enthusiasm for football last year with no fans which included trading to the point where the only games I watched were our games,
It took just one half of the Brentford v Arsenal game for my enthusiasm to return which was started in the euro’s.
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@chris-osborne Thanks Chris. I did a similar thing to you, tried out loads of things, testing and trading, made loads of mistakes but I have learned a fair few things about myself in the process.
I have learned that I like time decay and unders trading, it very much suits me. However, and this was hard to accept, I DON'T have the discipline for it. I always end up chasing. Maybe I will return to it once I have more experience.
How have you found your testings and enthusiasm since the return of fans? For me its much more exciting to watch a game and I think the home teams are being pushed on more, also seems to be more 'needed' goals. When a team is losing they feel the pressure from the fans now. Would have to check the stats on both of these but seems promising.
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@matt-wood Excellent post Matt, I100%agree with what your sayinh about new traders trying a number of different strategies - Paper Testing only until they find there style and there attitude to Risk.
I've been testing a number of things over the past year but did stop around the start of the year as too many unusual results due to COVID and complete loss of interest in football without fans.
Since the start of Summer Leagues I've been testing a number of things and purely by chance from something that wasn't working may have stumbled on something with potential which I'm focussing on currently akthough no where near ready to go public yet and unlikely to be for a few months until Winter Leagues established.
Good luck
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@lee-woodman Thanks Lee, adding that to my list
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@matt-wood I would recommend reading or listening to ‘the essentialist’. It’s an absolutely perfect carryover to what you are saying about trading, and what the pro traders have been saying to us about testing, collecting data, studying and exploring different markets and trading types etc then select one trade to focus on and master it by going small (or granular as Ryan would say
). It doesn’t mention trading but I’d suggest reading it now with trading in mind -
Quick lesson that has just solidified in my melon.
Pros on here such as Martin, Ryan, Keith, Darri and others are always saying pick one thing and work on that alone. I 100% agree with this and it is the fastest (although wont feel like it) way to long term sustained success.
There is, however, a small caveat to this. If you start this as a total beginner, like me, it may be that you need to try a variety of trading strategies before you learn what 'style' suits you as a person. There would be no point an individual working on something that was at odds with their personality, it just won't last long term.
It may be that the complete beginners need to spend 6mnths or more (lots more for a block head like me) learning this. The correct way to do this would be to paper trade ONLY. This will help you learn market movements, learn strategies and get the general 'feel' for trading and its environment. DON'T make the mistake I did and try this with real money, even tiny stakes. I got very lucky really (only can see this with hindsight) and only lost around 40% of my initial bank in the first 12 months of learning.
Once you learn your preferred 'style' and the areas that you 'feel' the most attuned too you can then focus on that and ONLY that to master it.
This lesson has solidified for me now (15months in!, I'm a slow learner
) Particularly since I am learning that whilst you can follow the pros on here, and will probably make profit, when something dosen't work or a system needs a slight tweak, you won't understand why or how to do it since it is not 'your' system.Building your own from the ground up means you know it inside out and will (or certainly should have) also tracked lots of data which you will understand how to use to best effect. So when a tweak is needed, or some refinement of rules are needed, or something changes in the world, (covid for example) you will understand how your system needs to alter and can quickly see from your data what the answer might be.
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@darri you made this suggestion to me ages ago re not constantly checking the score as well as switching off your balance and it’s worked wonders. @Matt-Wood it does take some time to get your ahead around it and I’m still not 100% on the score checking but what it’s helped massively with especially more recently is FOMO. I meant to say yesterday that that is a fantastic SR top stuff mate.
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That’s a cracking tip from @darri one I need to look at.
@Matt-Wood that’s a cracking strike rate hope it carries on, just remember not every trade is going to win and not worry about the losers as long as the process is fine and you are trading for the right reasons and not going off plan
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I heard it said somewhere to "focus on the process and not the outcome" and that kind of stuck with me. If you have the SR longer term then itll come. If you place 100 trades, on average 11 or 12 will be losers and some of those will be ruined by VAR, some will have 57 shots on target and the post will be hit 12 times or whatever and some will just be dead games. Theres no harm having a quick check to see if getting involved was the right thing to do in terms of saying 'did i follow my plan' but if it was part of the plan then you have to move on, even the best strategy has losses, thats where the bank management comes in to ensure we are staking correctly
I try to detach myself a little from the outcome of the trade once its placed. I do have a bad habit of watching the result but i dont let it affect my emotionally. I concentrate on getting my plan as concrete as i can in the morning so i consider every scenario and set my staking. So for a SH goal trade it may be that i intend to get involved just after HT, id ask something like the below and prepare answers:
What stake am i using? (5 pts to back which equals £x)
What if there is a goal after HT and before i look to get involved? (Wait 10 minutes and re-asses, if game goes quiet or another goal in those 10 minutes then move on)
What time am i looking to get involved? (Queue at HT with the aim to get matched 48-50)
What if the game is very low on action? (Place trade anyway)
What if there has been 3/4/5 goals already? (Data suggests this doesnt matter)
Are there any scores to avoid? (Data suggests this doesnt matter)
Am i judging the game on in-play stats or purely pre-match data? (Pre-match data - no need to assess in-play)
What is the minimum price am i prepared to take? (1.2 minimum, queue if necessary, if price is less than 1.15 at HT then leave trade alone)It sounds a lot but if i know these answers early on because they are generally the same for every trade on the same strategy. I really dont need to be thinking about too much in-play, just the execution of the above
