It is time for one of my regular moaning sessions. It has been a while. Does someone out there have the ability to see stop loss orders and gobble up your money? Today I was using Stop Losses, about 4 or 5 ticks away from my entry points. Every time the orders were filled within seconds regardless of the overall direction of the trend. This just feels like I am giving my money away. Any advice on when to use stop losses and where to place them. Seven months and counting, still losing. I feel like an absolute tool. Pre-off trading on the horses (especially on the evening meetings) is dangerous to your self-esteem. Thankfully I don’t have a cat to kick because he would be dead by now.
One day I am going to brag on this forum that I am winning regularly, I KNOW I AM…I think I am…I hope I am…I’m kidding myself…I am a f**king loser!
Why Do Stop Loss Orders Get Filled So Quickly
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spreadbetting
- Posts: 3140
- Joined: Sun Jan 31, 2010 8:06 pm
Befair have been having problems today and also the markets are never too liquid at the start of the week so I'm not surprised your stop loss is triggering when it's only 4/5 ticks away from your entry. These are low grade races on a Tuesday, prices will always jump around especially as many people will be taking the day off because of the problems with the site today.
I've never been a fan of stop losses at the best of times especially when they're set so tight. You should try to close out manually or if you do need the at least set them so they'll trigger outside of normal 'noise' within the markets.
I've never been a fan of stop losses at the best of times especially when they're set so tight. You should try to close out manually or if you do need the at least set them so they'll trigger outside of normal 'noise' within the markets.
Thanks for the reply, Spreadbetting. I normally close out manually, but I have a bad habit of letting things slip too far. I was trying something different today to try and limit the likelihood of one big loss wiping out a number of smaller wins. Maybe I picked a bad day to try this. I don’t think I will use stop losses again as I think they will just lead to a high number of losing trades. But you know what they say ‘If at first you don’t succeed try, try and try again’. I will just try again to be man enough to get out when a trade is going against me and the WOM situation doesn’t look good.
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ShaunWhite
- Posts: 9731
- Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am
I never set them at a certain number of ticks. I place them where I think my original assessment has broken down. Eg if I'm laying at 2.1 I'll stop at 1.99 or 1.98. Or I'f I'm backing at 5/4 I'll put my stop a shade over 6/4 etc.
Like SB says, it depends a lot on how noisy the market is too and they usually cost you because of unexpected spikes. They also stop you from assessing whether or not the exit is the right thing to do in that moment. Early on, I also used to let the stop close me out when I could see things looked bad on the way to it, they made me lazy about assessing exits.
If I use them now, it's only when I need to take my eye off the ball to look at something else or I need to leave my desk for a min or two.
Like SB says, it depends a lot on how noisy the market is too and they usually cost you because of unexpected spikes. They also stop you from assessing whether or not the exit is the right thing to do in that moment. Early on, I also used to let the stop close me out when I could see things looked bad on the way to it, they made me lazy about assessing exits.
If I use them now, it's only when I need to take my eye off the ball to look at something else or I need to leave my desk for a min or two.
Don't feel down on yourself JPK everyone struggles with this problem when they first start I know I still do. I think PW and Dallas have said on these boards several times that a problem they see with a lot of new traders is that they get shaken out of their positions too easily.
An essential skill but one that is very difficult to learn is to recognise when to take a loss as things are very likely to get worse for you if you stay in, and when to give the trade some breathing room ie. the small losing position your in at the moment is very likely to turn around soon and put you into profit.
I think you can get clues from looking at things like order flow, amounts of money stacked up, whats happening to the other runners, support and resistance levels, book percentages etc. This is not easy for new people to do in real time and when your under pressure. I think intuition also plays a part, but can only be developed for most people after watching thousands of pre off races on the ladders and charts.
Lots of people think they are failures if they don't achieve great results within a few months of trying. Manually trading pre off horse racing is an extremely difficult thing to do. There is no shame if you find at the end of the day you cant do it, the vast majority of people who try it cant do it either.
An essential skill but one that is very difficult to learn is to recognise when to take a loss as things are very likely to get worse for you if you stay in, and when to give the trade some breathing room ie. the small losing position your in at the moment is very likely to turn around soon and put you into profit.
I think you can get clues from looking at things like order flow, amounts of money stacked up, whats happening to the other runners, support and resistance levels, book percentages etc. This is not easy for new people to do in real time and when your under pressure. I think intuition also plays a part, but can only be developed for most people after watching thousands of pre off races on the ladders and charts.
Lots of people think they are failures if they don't achieve great results within a few months of trying. Manually trading pre off horse racing is an extremely difficult thing to do. There is no shame if you find at the end of the day you cant do it, the vast majority of people who try it cant do it either.
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iambic_pentameter
- Posts: 443
- Joined: Wed May 18, 2016 1:24 pm
There is no substitute for experience - a case in point being:
When I started out, I'd see a huge spike in the market, soil myself, trade out and think "How on earth can I do this?"
Now when I see the same huge spike, I think - "Ok, that's interesting - most of the time there will be a correction but if there isn't and it carries on against me, I'll cut the position"
The market is the same but my response is different.
I've used this example before, but in Market Wizards, legendary T-Bond Pit Trader, Tom Baldwin, tells how when he started out, he just stood there watching the markets for 6 hours a day. Over time, the patterns repeated themselves and he was able to profit from that.
If you are staking correctly - by which I mean you are using amounts that don't hurt you - you should be relaxed in the market and open to absorbing everything that is happening.
Keep going and I'll share a picture that illustrates why it's important to never give up:
When I started out, I'd see a huge spike in the market, soil myself, trade out and think "How on earth can I do this?"
Now when I see the same huge spike, I think - "Ok, that's interesting - most of the time there will be a correction but if there isn't and it carries on against me, I'll cut the position"
The market is the same but my response is different.
I've used this example before, but in Market Wizards, legendary T-Bond Pit Trader, Tom Baldwin, tells how when he started out, he just stood there watching the markets for 6 hours a day. Over time, the patterns repeated themselves and he was able to profit from that.
If you are staking correctly - by which I mean you are using amounts that don't hurt you - you should be relaxed in the market and open to absorbing everything that is happening.
Keep going and I'll share a picture that illustrates why it's important to never give up:
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
The amount of noise is what will get you thrown out of a market at any one point. In the case of pre-off racing, I would suggest the noise is a minimum of 5 ticks. So if you use that as your stop you will get thrown out by just the noise in the market.
Pretty sure using signals would be better than placing actual stops in the market. Problem comes as I don't think there is any way to set a signal on random (random as you cant always know what odds the bet is) back or lay and then track the current odds?? Other than the clunky historic relative odds condition??
yes, the next version of BA should definitely (as per this thread: http://www.betangel.com/forum/viewtopic ... 20&t=14168) extend the functionality of signals, allowing them to behave more as variables (capturing ltp, book% at selection and market level etc) and be able to compare one signal value to another... that would be a dream scenario.Niko wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2017 11:51 amPretty sure using signals would be better than placing actual stops in the market. Problem comes as I don't think there is any way to set a signal on random (random as you cant always know what odds the bet is) back or lay and then track the current odds?? Other than the clunky historic relative odds condition??