My Pet Hate when trading...and a good example today

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stueytrader
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Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2015 6:47 pm

This always particularly rankles, and just venting so sorry about the rant...

Backing to lay a selection at a big price range (e.g. 20's and upwards), horse does nothing but drift pre-race, red out....darn, another minus, move on....

Horse bolts in winning - I know, it doesn't matter, but gawd they always annoy me when that happens.

Firstly, I feel like the trade should have landed (it should have shortened), then it should have been a free-bet, or even (madly) I should have been betting on that one (of course) rather than trading.

It feels bit like a double whammy, because you lost the trade, but got the selection right. Does anyone else find these ones the worst..?

My example today just then, was Palmerston 4.50, backed to lay lower 20's drifted to over 30 so I had to red. It had the race won with almost a furlong left.
spreadbetting
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That's why with those type of set strategies I always prefer to BOT them to take any 'human' element out of them. Sod's law always comes into play when you start veering away from a profitable game plan. There's always going to be occasions where the drifter comes back to win, nothing you can do about them, that's why you keep stats to see if you're better off letting everything run to conclusion or red to save a small portion of your stake.
stueytrader
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spreadbetting wrote:That's why with those type of set strategies I always prefer to BOT them to take any 'human' element out of them. Sod's law always comes into play when you start veering away from a profitable game plan. There's always going to be occasions where the drifter comes back to win, nothing you can do about them, that's why you keep stats to see if you're better off letting everything run to conclusion or red to save a small portion of your stake.
Good point about the records in these cases, I should look at all those that lost too I know.

Funny (not really) thing is today it almost happened twice in a row - my next back to lay drifted (and I redded) and it looked like winning (traded into odds on). Some days you just seem the butt of the market's jokes.

But, if I keep records about those that lose maybe I'll feel better about the strategy yes.
spreadbetting
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Things always stick in the mind more when they don't go as we expect them too. When things go to plan we don't remember them as that's what we assumed would happen anyway. I guess that's why we get so many paranoid posts on trading forums where people start assuming someone's tracking their activity just because the market moves against them when they place their bets.
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Dallas
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Few years ago i done alot of DOBing and decided to try improve things by trading out manually for a small loss when it looked like my selection had no chance.

I split my usual stake into two and left one half automated and i manually managed the other using the same selections, I did this for a period of about a month on three separate occasions and on each one the automation made more profits.
stueytrader
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Yes, it is a form of paranoia! :lol:

In this specific case you find yourself saying 'why didn't the market shorten that one, when it was actually heading to 1.01'!!
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jimibt
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my 2 cents worth... like spreadbetting, i remove as much emotion from the process as possible by letting my bot handle the trades. the stats (for my strategy) bear out signalling a loss and triggering a red when it looks like 40-50% of the stake can be rescued. on occasion, it goes against me, but 90% of the time, the call is good. the other thing to consider also is having some sort of profit or loss figure in place on a session basis. I run a little sentinal app that calls the betfair api to poll for my current UK balance. if i hit a profit (or loss) of £x (no matter whether after 15 minutes or 2 hours), then the balance is transferred to the AUS wallet and the session is over for the day. the days when i'm out (profitably) after 40-50 minutes are a glory to behold :D.

i strongly suggest that you look at dipping your toes into some sort of disciplined money management in combination with trade management.
spreadbetting
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jimibt wrote: I run a little sentinal app that calls the betfair api to poll for my current UK balance. if i hit a profit (or loss) of £x (no matter whether after 15 minutes or 2 hours), then the balance is transferred to the AUS wallet and the session is over for the day. the days when i'm out (profitably) after 40-50 minutes are a glory to behold :D.
As a fellow 'botter' I just can't see the mentality of shutting up shop for the day because you've hit a certain target, especially if everything's running automated anyway. Why not just reset your target and let the bot resume? One of the main advantages of botting is that it won't get tired or veer off any gameplan. I'm assuming your strategy wins money overall so shutting it down early just means you're losing money. The horses don't know you've hit or missed a target so aren't going to run any different, as a 'botter' the volume of markets is your friend not enemy.
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jimibt
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spreadbetting wrote:
jimibt wrote: I run a little sentinal app that calls the betfair api to poll for my current UK balance. if i hit a profit (or loss) of £x (no matter whether after 15 minutes or 2 hours), then the balance is transferred to the AUS wallet and the session is over for the day. the days when i'm out (profitably) after 40-50 minutes are a glory to behold :D.
As a fellow 'botter' I just can't see the mentality of shutting up shop for the day because you've hit a certain target, especially if everything's running automated anyway. Why not just reset your target and let the bot resume? One of the main advantages of botting is that it won't get tired or veer off any gameplan. I'm assuming your strategy wins money overall so shutting it down early just means you're losing money. The horses don't know you've hit or missed a target so aren't going to run any different, as a 'botter' the volume of markets is your friend not enemy.
sb - you are probably correct. however having monitored 1000's of races ahead of going live, my mental p&l target always stood out as a milestone that was regularly hit. the reverse of this was that it could be hit and then fall back to 50% of the target. i guess as i get more adept, i'll form strategies that take out a %age and continue on the merry way.

in my case, it really is a case of just being a bit of a woos tbh ;)
stueytrader
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I think I'm going to start only inplay trading....

Had another 3 in a row drifting pre race then crashing in price in play after I'd redded.

Like I say, the market laughing at you sometimes... :cry:
PeterLe
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Ive tried manual trading for so many years, but always come back to automation.
If you get it right it can pay off, Ive just sat down after sitting the garden with some friends and this last race shows what I mean.
Running on auto: It only traded £320 on the last race and it returned a lovely green. If I had been trading that one manually I would have traded out when it was £8 or £9, (I had to sit on my hands), So I recon I got twice as much out of that than I would have done if I'd been trading manually. They dont all work like that but Im in for the long game.
Yesterday I checked my results and I filed and sorted by bet type (ie back or lay) and then by bet ref, I took the last traded back price and worked out what my profit would have been if I hadnt scalped but instead fired the offset 50 ticks above (ie not going to get matched); took SP and then greened 1 sec after in play. i would have almost quadrupled my P&L
Thats why I think I have a much better day if I switch the screen off and let it do its thing; plus its nicer sitting in the garden drinking! :)
Regards
Peter
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jimibt
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PeterLe wrote: Thats why I think I have a much better day if I switch the screen off and let it do its thing; plus its nicer sitting in the garden drinking! :)
Regards
Peter
i'll drink to that - and agreed 1000%, emotionless trading but always refining *offline*
stueytrader
Posts: 863
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2015 6:47 pm

Beyond my simple annoyance about these examples, my post did have a certain point (from a trading theory side).

These ones always leave me scratching my head. Why does the market drift these ones that will rapidly shorten?

Often, the ones that do this seem to me to be obvious that they should shorten, but the market refuses and drifts the selection....only to hammer it back in at a later point.

I'm puzzled, but wishing to know some underlying reasons better for these?
spreadbetting
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You have to remember not everyone playing the market is trading. You need to be looking at exploiting short term trends or a taking a long term view of where the market will go. The money will never come into the market in an orderly manner so one persistent layer may move the market the opposite direction you want for a variety of reasons. They may simply wish to oppose the horse, mainpulatng markets or be trying to lay off an earlier liability and others follow them. You may even have read the market wrong, there's plenty of reasons for graphs to go up and down, that's where we make our money ;)
andyfuller
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Spreadbetting has pretty much said it all with his comments about not quitting at some arbitrary time that is meaningless and that the market is made up of a lot of people who are approaching it with entirely different reasons to you.

The only thing I would add is that if you thought it was value back price at your initial back price if it has drifted it is likely to now be even better value so if anything you should be backing it more and not red'ding out.
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