Mistakes and annoyance

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

One thing that is possibly the most annoying things to happen during trading - making a stupid mistake.
I don't mean anything deliberate like overstaking or going inplay, but when you do something stupid completely by accident. Possibly careless of course if not deliberate.

I think I need to start a list, because of recent it's happened to me twice, and it's seeping away some profits.

Forgetting to select a 'Take SP' button which left me inplay with a full stake, course the flamin thing tailed off straight away in the race so nothing back.
Accidentally backing a wrong selection and only realising too late on when it's gone the opposite direction - had that a couple of recent.

Apols, if this is not relevant to you, but just venting!

(I'm also working on not feeling so annoyed so as to affect later trades - no chasing for me these days, but not pleasant trading when steaming).
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Euler
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Everybody makes mistakes, but it's how you get over them that matters. My tolerance for total cock-ups has improved over the years and I'm over it in a few minutes, but it still hurts when you screw up.
stueytrader
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Thanks Euler, yes you are totally right, it is how you respond that matters - though wouldn't mind removing my mistakes also.
Concentration probably to blame at times.
spreadbetting
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For every accidental mistake that goes wrong there's probably one that goes right but you don't register those. After a while, and plenty of mistakes, you just come to accept them as part of the game and brush them aside quickly. Dwelling on mistakes usually leads to chasing for alot of people so it's worth getting a coping strategy in place as you'll never eliminate those mistakes fully. Usually occur for me when I get too complacent and lose focus either because I'm bored or winning is coming too easy.
stueytrader
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Certainly agree with those points SB - in the past making a bad mistake would have put me in a barrel-roll for sure, as I tried to chase back the cost of the mistake.
I'm well over all that rubbish these days - have some very tight rules of operation that I will never break.

However, it still rankles to make basic errors at times. Especially as non-deliberate errors can often be extremely costly in relation to trading profits (full stakes for example). Dwelling isn't good as you say, though looking over my actions that made me forget or error in some way, seems a useful idea.
spreadbetting
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It's annoying they generally occur with big stakes and for me alot of that is just complacency when I'm on a roll I take my eye off the ball. Last biggy I did was about a month a go when I'd closed an Under 0.5 bet in the correct score market forgetting I'd already closed it in the goal lines market . Cost me about £2K :oops:

I used to keep a log of how much silly mistakes cost me weekly but it never stopped them and was embarassing to see how much it was. When I made a concerted effort to stop them and log every trade it didn't have any large positive effect on the pnl so I figured I must benefit from some mistakes also and preferred to trade in a less constricted way. I think sometimes all that striving for a high pnl/strike rate can hinder the natural flow of trading just by piling on unneccesary pressure.
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ruthlessimon
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Let's say I go up against Peter in a swing trading competition (2weeks long). With exactly the same staking technique etc - therefore the only way the end p&l can be different - is down to the edge

If I end the competition +£200 (I never went inplay, always got my intended entry, always got my intended exit)

Peter ends the competition +£5000 (That p&l includes a -£1000 inplay loss, & a -£1500 internet down loss)

Who made more mistakes? & who made worse mistakes
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ruthlessimon
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Interesting that "inaccuracy" is classed as a mistake (1st word!), which highlights my point above nicely.

There's a huge bias towards - pure errors (i.e. inplay); but not "inaccuracies" (i.e. bad edge)

Image

.. & oversight, that's a huge one!!

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stueytrader
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Fair point there are different categories of 'mistakes' that's true.

I think my original post was aimed solely at those most basic kinds, e.g. forgetting to do something that you do for every trade.

Though I get the point that sometimes being less restricted in activity can be a positive. I'm not really there yet, I don't trust myself that much.... ;)
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ShaunWhite
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ruthlessimon wrote:
Mon Nov 26, 2018 7:56 pm
If I end the competition +£200 (I never went inplay, always got my intended entry, always got my intended exit)
Peter ends the competition +£5000 (That p&l includes a -£1000 inplay loss, & a -£1500 internet down loss)

Who made more mistakes? & who made worse mistakes
Insufficient info, a mistake is an unintentional deviation from your plan. Where's the plans?

btw you can't call having a weaker edge a 'mistake'. It's the best you have at the time and you can maybe refine it later or get lucky and find a better one in the future. I say lucky because if you need to look at 100 things to find 1 that works, you could find at that '1' first or at the 100th attempt, or 200th. I think you might be straying into 'if an edge aint perfect it's not worth doing' again.

--------------

stuey, manual trading is a whole load of things to juggle in realtime, 100s of things see and think about every few seconds. It's like when you first started to learn to drive, did you ever forget to put your foot on the clutch and stalled it, or did you forget to look in the mirror on your test? .....do you ever even have to think about those now? Nope. Now you can even drive for miles and not even remember having done it sometimes. Soon you'll be clicking on 'TakeSp' even when you don't intend to it will be so much part of your style, like reaching for the clutch when you have to drive an automatic hire car, or not doing when it's a manual and you drive an auto. (done that one, got the embarassment t-shirt)
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ruthlessimon
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ShaunWhite wrote:
Tue Nov 27, 2018 1:36 am
btw you can't call having a weaker edge a 'mistake'. It's the best you have at the time and you can maybe refine it later or get lucky and find a better one in the future. I say lucky because if you need to look at 100 things to find 1 that works, you could find at that '1' first or at the 100th attempt, or 200th. I think you might be straying into 'if an edge aint perfect it's not worth doing' again.


Maybe subconsciously I'm just bored of seeing "I didn't take SP, I didn't have any spare batteries" as mistakes. They are such easy fixes, imo!!

Hah yes I remember that thread ;)
stueytrader
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I did realise (when I posted) these were essentially easy things to avoid, most of the time.

I've probably made a couple of these mistakes recently due to carelessness. Maybe that's the simplest way to define this problem - stop letting careless approaches creep into my trading.

I'm largely a manual trader, so don't have all the automated safeguards in place - that can allow the odd mistake to happen. However, I'm loathe to have overly restrictive automation (e.g. nanny bots), as I don't feel I trade well that way either.
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jimibt
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stueytrader wrote:
Thu Nov 29, 2018 12:41 pm
I'm largely a manual trader, so don't have all the automated safeguards in place - that can allow the odd mistake to happen. However, I'm loathe to have overly restrictive automation (e.g. nanny bots), as I don't feel I trade well that way either.
at a bare minimum, you probably should (even if not automated by a bot) Take SP with any bets that are sitting in the market just in case of outages etc. it also prevents you from HOPING to recover any losses by going wildly IP with no exit planned.
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Dallas
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jimibt wrote:
Thu Nov 29, 2018 1:08 pm
stueytrader wrote:
Thu Nov 29, 2018 12:41 pm
I'm largely a manual trader, so don't have all the automated safeguards in place - that can allow the odd mistake to happen. However, I'm loathe to have overly restrictive automation (e.g. nanny bots), as I don't feel I trade well that way either.
at a bare minimum, you probably should (even if not automated by a bot) Take SP with any bets that are sitting in the market just in case of outages etc. it also prevents you from HOPING to recover any losses by going wildly IP with no exit planned.
I agree with Jim and use a safety servant similar to the one below not so much against careless mistakes but to cover me against BF and outages at my own end
viewtopic.php?f=58&t=15199
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PDC
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Do you submit both your back and lay orders into the market at the same time? If not don't you risk having TakeSP on just one side of your order should Betfair go down etc leaving you potentially massively exposed.
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