Well this is frustrating

[Bartlby37]

Thanks for the replies and apologies for not responding - I've got COVID so stringing coherent sentences together has seemed a bit challenging the past few days.

Interesting ideas Micheal and while I've been lying about feeling sorry for myself I came across Artemus Paint on YouTube suggesting looking for those sort of fundamental ideas to base trades on. I guess what puts me off is I have very little fundamental knowledge of horses so it feels like another curve I'd be behind. The other reason I like Peter's order flow trading is that it fits with my day - I usually have a couple of hours free in the afternoon when I can trade but I don't have much time in the day prior to that to read form, news etc.

Really interesting chart Shaun. I usually end up in trouble when I set out to scalp something but if an attempted swing trade goes against me I can often grab a few tics to reduce or remove the red - I should probably have a look at that discrepancy

Mostly I'm pretty good at setting some sort of frame around what I'm doing - be that time i.e. trading between X and y minutes pre off or taking a move from a to b and not worrying to much what happens next - I've given back lots of tics trying to have a second bite of the cherry.

Back to my original title - part of the frustration is the feeling that one has almost all the parts almost all put together to push ones trading into being solidly profitable - that may just be Dunning - Kruger messing with me but.... I've been beating commission over a couple of months, with consistent win rate etc - I've been reading Kahneman on base rates and optimism bias (I'm not a natural optimist - been anticipating the end of the world for a while ) and I'm wondering if I need to put some limits around what I'm doing - like how long do you pursue something at which most people fail before it's time to move on - everything I've read about racing markets suggests you'd want to do a year at least - but I think it's a question I should be asking myself.

[Bartlby37]

Crept into profit for September despite making a mess of things mid month - my win rate was slightly down but so was my average loss even though my largest loss was bigger - so that seems positive.

First day trading in October - consistently on the wrong side of the market, over traded - back to feeling frustrated - I think its over-confidence - every time I feel like I'm making progress I immediately undo that progress - will rewatch today's video in the morning and see what I can see - I was shaken out of a few good trades and then I think frustration led me to try and find things that weren't there.

[Bartlby37]

Been a bad week and I'm wondering if I'm getting caught by the change to jumps - what I'd been doing and slowly moving toward profitability seems to suddenly not work - there's an element of confidence playing a part here - less confidence seems to lead to more mistakes, second guessing myself etc. But it also feels like there are less trends in the movement of prices and I'm getting chopped up as moves reverse - I can't explain to myself why these markets should be behaving differently - I like to be able to explain things to myself - it gives me a hypothesis to work from.

So far today a couple of losses which are large relative to the amounts I'm playing with and a few small wins - trying to change how I'm approaching things - trying to trade the edges of ranges rather than looking for strong moves - not sure if that's going to improve things but hopefully I'll learn something

[ShaunWhite]

Been a bad week and I'm wondering if I'm getting caught by the change to jumps - what I'd been doing and slowly moving toward profitability seems to suddenly not work -

It can also be a coincidence and it's not related to the change to NH. It will depend on what you do but personally I treat every market as the same (incl dogs actually). A market is a market as far as I'm concerned and they all behave the same way in relation to supply and demand. I know I lot of the manual guys will say there's a difference but I'm yet to find anyone who can tell the difference between market types from data alone with the race type obscured.

I'd say don't try to overthink it, finding differences between flat jumps all weather time of the year blah blah blah is fine but might not be as useful as looking at what they have in common instead when you're starting out. Nuance is a luxury only highly experienced people can see so quite a good example of 'pro' advice from people who've been doing it so long they've forgotten what it's like to be inexperienced.

[Bobajob]

Been a bad week and I'm wondering if I'm getting caught by the change to jumps - what I'd been doing and slowly moving toward profitability seems to suddenly not work -

It can also be a coincidence and it's not related to the change to NH. It will depend on what you do but personally I treat every market as the same (incl dogs actually). A market is a market as far as I'm concerned and they all behave the same way in relation to supply and demand. I know I lot of the manual guys will say there's a difference but I'm yet to find anyone who can tell the difference between market types from data alone with the race type obscured.

I'd say don't try to overthink it, finding differences between flat jumps all weather time of the year blah blah blah is fine but might not be as useful as looking at what they have in common instead when you're starting out. Nuance is a luxury only highly experienced people can see so quite a good example of 'pro' advice from people who've been doing it so long they've forgotten what it's like to be inexperienced.

Absolutely spot on
+1

[Bartlby37]

Thanks for the reply Shaun - really interesting - as I said I can't explain to myself why things should be different - same people involved, same sport etc but I also know Peter says there's a difference and I've read a few people on here who seem to have been thrown by the change in format.

The past 3 months all I've been doing is looking to identify the weak horse in the top 3 or 4 runners and lay that (normally trading between 5 and 2 minutes from the off or after 2 minutes if I feel I haven't completely missed the opportunity) and over the past couple of months my win rate has been pretty consistent and my average win has been edging up and my average loss edging down such that I'd just pushed myself into profit last month - so it seemed I had something that was working and had potential for improvement. This week that is all out the window - I'm aware that some of that might be to do with my head - a few losses and everything looks different and that can change what I'm doing without my really being aware of it. This afternoon my sense was that things were more volatile - so maybe I'm going to wait for the price to come back a bit before getting in but then I find myself washed out the market by a much bigger move than I anticipated - previously I'd been staying out the market around the 2 minute mark to avoid those big swings I don't understand but this afternoon I couldn't see them coming - it might be with longer races money is coming into the market later - but back to minimum stakes while I try and work out what's going on.