Whats your best pre-race advice when looking at the market?

[ShaunWhite]

Back to something for the OP though.... Probably to look first for the ways you could lose money rather than make it. It's easy to get tunnel vision on opportunities without seeing pitfalls like lack of money changing hands or the clock being near zero.

[ruthlessimon]

Probably to look first for the ways you could lose money rather than make it. It's easy to get tunnel vision on opportunities without seeing pitfalls like lack of money changing hands or the clock being near zero.

Yah I agree

Rather than mull on the loser (i.e. backing @ 1.5), we generate 10 different ways we could've won on this race

Backtest each on a dataset, & what you might find is a strategy has always worked on that market (a mixture of annoyance/rage/joy when this happens btw!!)

What do the variables I've used to win on this race imply? Do I need all those variables?

That's what I do.

I am still on baked beans though

[elecotop]

Back to something for the OP though.... Probably to look first for the ways you could lose money rather than make it. It's easy to get tunnel vision on opportunities without seeing pitfalls like lack of money changing hands or the clock being near zero.

Its about knowing when to get in, whether that is just last 15 seconds trade, when the market ripe to enter

[ShaunWhite]

Back to something for the OP though.... Probably to look first for the ways you could lose money rather than make it. It's easy to get tunnel vision on opportunities without seeing pitfalls like lack of money changing hands or the clock being near zero.

Its about knowing when to get in, whether that is just last 15 seconds trade, when the market ripe to enter

...and about when not to get in.

The clock zero I was refering to was the notional 'time zero' when the market expires. It was just one example from many. My point was simply that some people try to rob a bank by running in and starting shooting, others case the joint for guards and cctv first. Any fool can make money, it's not losing more that's important. There's situations when it's unwise to enter even if it's as you say 'ripe', just like there's times you should fold pocket aces pre-flop.

[stueytrader]

Good point earlier about knowing what type of trader you want to be.

I also took a while to realise that doing what some experts were doing was totally not for me in trading. It has to fit with all your plans and aims in trading in a wider sense, including how you like spending your days, weeks, months every year.

As for reading the pre-market, I actually love the fact that there are literally thousands of different ways to play markets - means there's never a monopoly on winning at trading.

[stueytrader]

My own personal advice would currently be opposite to some earlier on this post.

Don't hesitate too much on entering markets. Chances often move and are gone, and hesitation makes you too slow to take them, often.

But, I realise others may give exactly the opposite advice. The beauty of this game.

[iambic_pentameter]

Focus on the bigger picture - accept that you need to go through multiple market cycles before you will fully understand what is happening and why.

A significant part of my knowledge has come from reading the posts of others on this forum.

Iambic

I find that JollyGreen's post a very informative. Which posts do you find most helpful?

Hi Elecotop,

The users who posts I've found helpful are - in no particular order, I might add!

JollyGreen
Euiler
Dallas
PeterLe
Gazuty
LinusP
Spreadbetting
Halliday
LeTiss
Mugsgame
To7ne
AndyFuller

Have a read through their posts and you will pick up a lot of good information.

Iambic

[stueytrader]

JollyGreen
Euiler
Dallas
PeterLe
Gazuty
LinusP
Spreadbetting
Halliday
LeTiss
Mugsgame
To7ne
AndyFuller

Have a read through their posts and you will pick up a lot of good information.

Iambic

Might need to be slightly selective in trying to read all of those posts though, only the odd few thousand to get through.....

[iambic_pentameter]

Stuey

[mobius]

Flashback Express - it's free (my favourite price) will record forever and can playback multiple monitors at 4x speed.
Hang on a mo' I 'll fire up and show.

[mobius]

Sorry for delay won't upload without saving as .gif . Thats 3 monitors - one-click and overview (LEFT Screen) Ladder (RS) Admin(guardian and watchlist) (Bottom)(Laptop)- the clocks show the times and countdown. The brill factor is you can replay/record at 4x and then replay the replay at 16x so a four hour afternoon can be reviewed in 4hrs/4=1hr/4=15mins

Downside - filesizes in GIGABYTES
Processor fan makes funny noises
It's taken me longer to cobble this message together than record that lot check out the clocks/countdown/timestamp!

DEMO FLASHBACK gif.GIF

[mobius]

oops that was a notification from yesterday

[ruthlessimon]

JollyGreen
Euiler
Dallas
PeterLe
Gazuty
LinusP
Spreadbetting
Halliday
LeTiss
Mugsgame
To7ne
AndyFuller

Have a read through their posts and you will pick up a lot of good information.

Iambic

Might need to be slightly selective in trying to read all of those posts though, only the odd few thousand to get through.....

Couple to get ya started

1. Euler (market analogy)

viewtopic.php?p=157286#p157286

"If I was in a bike race I'd train hard, understand the course and also look at how I think it would be ridden and if I can gain a few seconds here or there. But if the market were a bike race you would have loads of people who didn't know how to ride, some not knowing that you needed a bike. Others who had not ridden the course. Some are terribly unfit. You only need to finish in the top 50% to 'win' in this race. To try and be the outright winner is really a major ask as it would be like competing to win a gold at the Olympics.

Curiously, I use an app to do virtual racing against other mountain bikers. There is a three-mile loop through the forest nearby that I've held the best time for the last four years, it resets each year. I know what ground conditions give me the best time over the course so if the ground conditions are poor I'll do another course and practice stamina, speed or climbing. When the ground conditions are good I'll switch to that course and do a timed run. There are several points on the course that are 50/50 if I can pull them off, each will shave a few seconds off my time. If I get all of them and my body is up for it, then a clean run will be right up there.

But the nasty bit is the ridge overlooking the forest. In the middle, there is an oak. If I dive right and get it just right I can just squeeze through at full pelt. If I clip the Oak I will crash and tumble off the ridge. Whether I attempt it all depends on how confident I feel that day and if my time is good enough to have a shot at the best time. That's more or less how I trade the big races."

2. Xitian (backtesting/backend dev)

viewtopic.php?p=173695#p173695

"Writing a backtesting simulation system might take a couple months depending how much time you spend on it? Imagine how many years you could use it in future though, and how many ideas you can trial. Just make sure you keep some out of sample data, and make sure you know what assumptions you’re making when you backtest/simulate."

3. Dallas (why edges/opportunities work - PC justification)

viewtopic.php?p=135451#p135451

"Its the steady stream of new ppl entering the market replacing those that have given up (traders and punters) that keeps the volatility and opportunities there"

4. Euler (edge development)

viewtopic.php?p=158044#p158044

"I think the answer is quite simple really.

When I first started trading I went for the one fits all approached and just tried a generic strategy across all markets. I then started cutting out errors, basically where my biggest losses were, and that led me to a selective approach for that strategy.

I would then try another strategy on just the markets that didn't seem to work and repeat the process until solved.

I now have hundreds of variations of individual strategies aligned to specific markets and scenarios.

I would recommend focusing on one problem until you solve it then branch that to new variations."

[Emmson]

You have to be open minded when taking in advice on here as false trails have probably been set, Euler imo far and away the most insightful. and consistent in their advice.

I also found that contributor called ferru/iron/jeff and his inquisitive mind rather helpful. All the juiciest threads seemed to have him in them when he is drawing out responses from others.

Switesh. James1st have made some good contributions on here imo

[arbitrage16]

"It's good to learn from your mistakes, it's better to learn from other people's mistakes."

So says Warren Buffett. And he's absolutely god damn right. There is a weird dynamic on this forum that believes the idea of paying someone to teach you how to trade is somehow cheating, as if it's the more honourable way to slog for an extra couple of years in order to figure it out yourself.

Bullshit!

Part of that reticence is no doubt due to the number of shysters and snake oil salesman that abound wherever there is (seemingly) easy money to be made. Find the people who purport to be experts, do thorough due diligence and find the guy - believe me they are out there - who knows what he's talking about and go and learn from him.

I did precisely that and I know I would never have figured out in 5 years what they were able to tell me in an afternoon. To be frank, I now see established people on this forum pontificating about how to trade and given what I have learned from established traders it is very simple to see through their shaky veneer of 'knowledge'.

When you start mixing with these established traders and come to understand the sheer graft that they had to go through to attain the knowledge they are now passing on - for a fee - you realise that the smartest back bet you ever placed was on finding someone who understands the market and soaking up everything they are willing to pass on.

To answer the question of the post in another way - screen record every single trade you do.