General Advice for all newbies

[Dinkydid1]

Well trying to figure of if I am an old fool at almost 70 years old I know there is no quick and easy way to make money. But thought I would have a bash at Bet Angel. I have viewed numerous videos and read reams of material but I still can’t make a few bob out of it.
I understand that you have to win some and loose some lost about £50.00 a week for the last 4 weeks don’t get me wrong I have totally enjoyed my experience. Am I just the unlucky one?
I must say I have tried all sorts of betting seem to have most luck at football but still I seem to always manage to get that 40% looser and end up losing all I have gained. Had the racing odds downloaded spent a few bob on that.
Wonder if it’s worth sending a few bob on going to one of Bet Angels courses or am I throwing good money after bad?
Well going to try another £50.00 and see if things change.
Believe me it’s not the money I am losing that bothers me

(just means the landlord of my local pub not getting my money he’s going bust and Betfair is booming) HA HA)

It’s can I really make a few bob out of it

[spreadbetting]

Believe me it’s not the money I am losing that bothers me

Only time I really started making money consistently was when I needed to. It's too easy to leak money all over the place when you have another income to cover you. I think for part timers seeing it as some hobby it's always going to be hard cos hobbies are meant to be fun so you'll subconsciously try to inject excitement into what you're doing otherwise what's the point.I know everyone's different but for me it was only when it became a full time job I upped the focus and profits I could hold onto dramatically.

[Bluesky]

Am I just the unlucky one?

I don't think so, the vast majority of people lose when they first start, unfortunately the vast majority of people lose full stop.

Wonder if it’s worth sending a few bob on going to one of Bet Angels courses or am I throwing good money after bad?

Well you have already lost half the price of what a course would cost you, so it might be worth considering. A couple of thing you might want to think about though before you look at taking some training. Its a lot to take in, over just one day, the more experience you have before you go there, the more likely you are to absorb most of it. PeterLee (very experienced trader and over all good egg) recommended having around a years trading experience if you want to get the most out of the course.

The other thing to think about though, is that virtually no one takes one of these courses and is profitable from the very next day onwards. You still have an awful lot of work in front of you if you want to make money out of trading.

Well going to try another £50.00 and see if things change.

Do you need to be trading at a level that loses £50 per week? Can you reduce your stakes to around the minimum level, or would that be too boring?

Believe me it’s not the money I am losing that bothers me

Losing £50 per week on a consistent basis even though I can easily afford it would certainly bother me.

If you can reduced your stakes so that your not losing too much, try and focus on just trading and not worrying about the money side of things. Do this for a few months and then think about taking a course.

[ShaunWhite]

It's generally accepted it takes a year(ish) to learn, but there's little acceptance of the fact that it means you'll spend the best part of that year losing.

What's important is how you lose. Mistakes happen, they cost money, that's called learning.

The aim for most of year 1 is just to lose in an orderly manner. If it's an exponential dive to disaster then quit, or quit and regroup.

I'm sure ruthlessimon won't mind me reproducing this ...

Screenshot at Jun 26 16-18-05.png

Learning will cost you money. Minimum cost varies (maybe ~ a grand-ish incl subs & tv etc), and the maximum cost is completely your choice.

Anyone starting will also know that you might never get that money back, as few succeed. It's no different to paying to go to Uni, and then maybe never getting that well paid job.

..bottom line is, why are so many learners moaning about losing? Losing is what you signed up for when you chose to give it a go.

[Dinkydid1]

Thanks for coments Chaps.
perhaps need to get my head in gear before i decide to one click.

think before i act
Back to the drawing board

[JPK65]

Speak for yourself, Shaun, losing is NOT what I signed up for. Constantly losing is soul destroying. I would advise anyone who is serious about learning this to NEVER accept losing as a way of life. Sure I accept that there will be some losing trades, but surely if I (or any other relatively new trader) just blindly accept that we are going to lose consistently for a number of years we are just making a difficult task more difficult. Although I am a loser at this stage, I think that it is of great importance that we learn from each and every losing trade. We have to fight to change our bad habits and strive to turn things around as quickly as possible. After a little experience, we can all spot trends that can make us a little money. The hard thing to learn is when to spot a trend that looks similar to our winning opportunities but is likely to turn quickly and cost us our day’s winnings (and more). Hence we need to scrutinise each and every losing trade so hopefully we can avoid falling into the same trap again (or in my case due to a gambling spirit time and time again).

[ShaunWhite]

Speak for yourself, Shaun, losing is NOT what I signed up for. Constantly losing is soul destroying. I would advise anyone who is serious about learning this to NEVER accept losing as a way of life. Sure I accept that there will be some losing trades, but surely if I (or any other relatively new trader) just blindly accept that we are going to lose consistently for a number of years we are just making a difficult task more difficult.

I'm obviously not saying that you should accept a reducing balance as a way of life long term, and yes you should obviously look at each unusually big loss (and just as importantly each unusually big win) and learn from it ideally.

But I don't understand how losing while you're learning is soul destroying? Let's say you're a 5 star pupil and learn to trade a consistant profit after just 6 months....what are you doing for that 6 months? You're trading unprofitably. ie losing or at the very very best breaking even. Making those occasional mistakes that cost you a day or more's winnings, less and less often.

Until you can trade, you can't. You can't defy logic. If you won regularly before you've learnt to win regularly, you'll rip a hole in the space/time continium or something. Like I said it's how you lose that counts, hopefully a nice steady curve that goes from losing, to breaking even, to being in profit, to being Peter.

How long did you think it was going to take to learn to trade profitably JPK? Your predicted balance curve from start date until that date, must by definition have been a downward trending one? It can't be anything but that. Your only target is to stay above that line and ideally lessen it's gradient too.

Losing is only soul destroying if you constantly lose more than you expected to lose, but if you lose less in a month than you've planned, it's a reason to celebrate as the tipping point moves closer. You certainly don't get all stressed, destroyed and distracted by it, that would be illogical and futile.

[Bluesky]

I'm obviously not saying that you should accept a reducing balance as a way of life long term, and yes you should obviously look at each unusually big loss (and just as importantly each unusually big win) and learn from it ideally.

But I don't understand how losing while you're learning is soul destroying? Let's say you're a 5 star pupil and learn to trade a consistant profit after just 6 months....what are you doing for that 6 months? You're trading unprofitably. ie losing or at the very very best breaking even. Making those occasional mistakes that cost you a day or more's winnings, less and less often.

Until you can trade, you can't. You can't defy logic. If you won regularly before you've learnt to win regularly, you'll rip a hole in the space/time continium or something. Like I said it's how you lose that counts, hopefully a nice steady curve that goes from losing, to breaking even, to being in profit, to being Peter.

How long did you think it was going to take to learn to trade profitably JPK? Your predicted balance curve from start date until that date, must by definition have been a downward trending one? It can't be anything but that. Your only target is to stay above that line and ideally lessen it's gradient too.

Losing is only soul destroying if you constantly lose more than you expected to lose, but if you lose less in a month than you've planned, it's a reason to celebrate as the tipping point moves closer. You certainly don't get all stressed, destroyed and distracted by it, that would be illogical and futile.

Absolutely excellent post and is the way I look at learning to trade too. No one is going to be profitable from day one manually trading. Might be different if they are using automation and have done a lot of testing before going live with real money.

[Dinkydid1]

Yes I am a newbie I admit I make mistakes. what to me is soul destroying is example last night I thought I would have a little flutter on a football match odds lay bet done and sent the greening at 25 ticks labiality bet £17.00 on a £7.00 bet. all to 2mins from start of match only about £2000.00 in volume then guess what Betfair suspended it from start to the end of game even at half time so all I did was loose me £17.00 was not able to cut my losses now that is real Dog muck.
See what I mean am I just a sore looser.

[spreadbetting]

You need to make yourself aware of the rules of the markets you're playing, £2000 matched seems very low so I'd guess it's minor league stuff that was never going to go inplay anyway. If you want to make money at this you need to cut out the random markets and oh fuck it type bets just because your balance is low may as well platy the lot etc. There's no point picking up pounds when you do things right if you're going to thow it away ten fold by doing things wrong.

[dt888]

Believe me it’s not the money I am losing that bothers me

Only time I really started making money consistently was when I needed to. It's too easy to leak money all over the place when you have another income to cover you. I think for part timers seeing it as some hobby it's always going to be hard cos hobbies are meant to be fun so you'll subconsciously try to inject excitement into what you're doing otherwise what's the point.I know everyone's different but for me it was only when it became a full time job I upped the focus and profits I could hold onto dramatically.

+1

[Alpha322]

If you're new to this you need to understand the following truths.

1.) There is no simple automation system that will make you regular money, NONE.
2.) None of the free automation rulesets on this forum or elsewhere are profitable straight out of the box, they simply give you a framework to build your own ideas and help you learn how to use the automation in BA.
3.) Please realise that unless you are truly a genius, you are very unlikely to just stumble across a profitable idea of your own in your first few weeks.
4.) Also realise that everything you will come up with yourself during your apprenticeship has almost certainly been tried over and over again and has already been rejected by hundreds before you.
5.) NO-ONE successful can AFFORD to fully disclose how they make their money. However, there are many regular posters on here that generously give of their time and who try their best to help you lose as little as possible while you learn.
6.) Never get excited by one day of good results or even a week, remember Leicester City, good results are nearly always followed by a reversion to the mean( the bad results catch up). Once you've done something successfully over 1000 or more events, then can you start to allow a tiny chink of optimism into your life, but don't get cocky, or the markets will spank you good and proper.

Top post i have seen on here for years well done Frogmella

[Alpha322]

My advice to newbies is to PACK IT IN NOW! Pre-off trading on the horses is so difficult to master that it will almost definitely cost you money, lots of money. Yet if you are like me and have a stubborn streak, you will not want to admit defeat once you get started. You will spend your life in a foul mood and your self-esteem will take a hit, as you fail time and time again. When it comes to automation rules, I agree with Frogmella, there is no golden bullet. Any automation rule will only work for a short time under very special circumstances. Trying to find the exact circumstances where a rule will work will again cost you money. Be very careful about using WOM to trigger a rule. When you watch the markets you will see a large order appear and disappear again very quickly just before the market heads off in the opposite direction. This is a rouse used to trigger your rule and nick money from naive automation users.
I have just read over my reply and I know that it is very negative, but I still believe that it is a fair reflection of my experience. Maybe it is so negative because I am in the foul mood, that I mentioned earlier, due to being unable to overcome my gambling instincts AGAIN. Any newbies who come from a punting background, BEWARE, a trading mindset is very very different from a punting mindset.
If you are still determined to give this a go, be sure to use minimum stakes, and good luck to you.

Cant agree with you on this?? all that feeling you started off with is called fustration of wanting it now and not willing to improve and master the markets oover a period of time. Its a journey, finding a edge is flaming hard but when you do it all makes sense. No one can afford to lose money but you will, so be sure to use money you will not miss and i mean miss, bill money etc etc. I paid £6000 in all to learn pre race trading, yes £6000, but a 6 month period went by when i just said forget the Bank, just load and forget its there or it exists, each month i looked at it and i was shocked, its about doing the job at hand, getting as many consistant profits small or large and CUTTING bad trades imediatley, not hopping it will go into profit. Well worth the 6k lessons, that was in courses blown banks etc etc. Think i want to be a profitable trader rather than i have the right to make thousands because i bought this product. Good luck on everyones journey

[welshboy06]

You need to make yourself aware of the rules of the markets you're playing, £2000 matched seems very low so I'd guess it's minor league stuff that was never going to go inplay anyway. If you want to make money at this you need to cut out the random markets and oh fuck it type bets just because your balance is low may as well platy the lot etc. There's no point picking up pounds when you do things right if you're going to thow it away ten fold by doing things wrong.

Very wise words. And it's something I'm getting better at. I'd have had a +£35 day if it wasn't for the random horse races with a 7.0+ fav or some other one which I just blindly jumped in to and lost £30.

I'm assuming different people prefer different types of markets, and trading on and off for around a year is slowly showing me which ones I like and which ones I can make a couple quid on.

[Dinkydid1]

Doing things wrong
yesterday I decided to trade a football match
layed the draw sat watching it on the Betfair window though the home team was only short odds both back and lay So not sure what to do or the consequences of what I am thinking I went to bet on Betfair my £2.00 and it told me if I bet this would happen the liability would reduce
the £2.00 win on the away would increase to £4.00 and my £2.00 win on Home would reduce to a small loss. so I thought of it lets see what happens.
well after 60 odd minutes still 0-0 the odds were quite high for the away team so I thought what would happen if I backed it with the minimum wager £2.00 so did it.
well so and behold the away team scored first well to cut the story short I greened out winning £10.23 now that for me was bloody good.

The reason for me telling you this is my problem I have yet understanding the consequences of what I am trying to do wish there as a way of knowing