I've lost my trading bank!

As the title states, I’ve lost my trading bank. Everyone can breathe easily though. I haven’t gambled it away!

Denise and I have been discussing whether we could afford to have a holiday this year. As I’ve said previously, my overdraft had become my trading bank on Betfair and therefore, a holiday seemed impossible. Therefore, I had a decision to make…..

I’m sure this is linked to the fact I’ve just finished reading ‘Reminiscences of a Stock Operator’ but I’ve decided to withdraw my whole balance from Betfair and spend it on a holiday for us!

For anyone who’s interested, we’re having a week’s break in Alcudia (Majorca) all inclusive at a 4 star hotel! We leave in 3 weeks time.

Now, this is obviously going to cause a bit of a problem for me on Betfair. I haven’t heard of many gamblers who can win money without having a bank to start with! However, I have a plan……….

This is probably becoming a bit bemusing to anyone who reads this blog but I’m changing strategy again! I’m even laughing myself now as I said I was sticking to my previous plan only last week but I’ve changed my mind (again!).

As I hinted at above, I’ve finished reading my first trading book. Before I started The Experiment, I’d read lots of material on trading but being honest, I was wasting my time. I’ve learnt more from reading Reminiscences of a Stock Operator than from anything else I’ve read. Thanks to Matt, Nick and Steve for recommending the book to me. I’d therefore recommend the book to everyone else who trades or is starting to trade.

You can maybe guess where this is going…..

I want to learn to trade properly! We all know how much difficulty I have had with reading the markets and I always end up in arguments since I find it hard to ignore the fact that certain horses are the wrong price on Betfair. However, one point I have made on numerous occasions is that if you were to build a trader from scratch, you would choose most attributes that I have!

Obviously, the one attribute I don’t have enough of is discipline but as I’ve read so many times now, this can be learned over time. I have much more discipline now than I had 5 months ago. I admit I’m still not totally disciplined but that’s just a part of me!

If we ignore the discipline point, my full-time job is a pricing analyst. I have a very analytical brain and I am better at mathematics than most people who trade. I also have a good knowledge of how markets work and how to look for trends and how trends on graphs work. I have a first class degree in financial economics and one of my courses was financial economic analysis which was based on the stock market. Lastly, I have a great knowledge of horse-racing.

On paper, I must be a dream trader! However, as I’ve shown so many times in the past though, I can’t trade. I’ve admitted it on here many times and lots of people have commented likewise over the months.

What’s changed now?

Basically, I want to learn. I remember saying during some of my early posts that I hated the fact that Betfair trading was just numbers. This is bullshit. My 9-5 job is just numbers and I love it. I sit and analyse numbers and trends everyday of my working life. It’s what I enjoy doing.

What I didn’t like at the start was that I couldn’t understand why the numbers move the way they do. After 5 months of watching the Betfair, I can safely say that no one knows why the numbers move as they do. Traders don’t need to understand why the numbers move. They just need to follow them.

Reading the book has brought back lots of things I learnt in my final year at university and it’s got my competitiveness drive going within me again. I haven’t spoken too much about my education on here but I’ve never failed an exam in my life. I had the best grades at my school, I won the prize for the best economics student in my 4 years at university and I was the only one in my class to get a first class honours degree. Since I started work, I’ve passed every one of my professional qualification exams and I’ve achieved an outperforming rating at work for the last 2 years.

Basically, I’ve never failed anything in my life. I’ve always been the best at everything I do. However, for some reason, I gave up on learning to trade very quickly when I started on Betfair.

Looking back now, it’s easy to see why I gave up so quickly. When I started The Experiment, I was desperate to win some money. After a few weeks of trying to scalp and losing, I was forced to find another way to win money. My natural reaction was to use my horse-racing knowledge and make some money from my knowledge. This has worked great and has given me some great highs and lows over the past few months. I’ve also had an amazing amount of fun bouncing ideas around with Andrew but when I started out on this adventure, I wanted to learn to trade.

After reading that book, something inside me has clicked and I now want to learn to trade again. I obviously know much more about Betfair now and how it works. When I was scalping before, I was trying to use BA Pro but only using the one click function. For example, I didn’t even try to use the laddering function or graphs function since I was still really trying to learn how Betfair worked.

I now want to get back to using BA Pro and trying to learn to use the laddering function to trade and learning how the graphs work etc. For example, I want to look for lines of least resistance to exploit like I learnt about at university and which I have read about in the book. I should be using my degree and analytical skills to my advantage.

I’ll do a post during the week concerning the book and some things I’ve learnt.

Obviously, if I’m learning to trade from scratch, I don’t need a large trading bank. I don’t have to win money at the moment so much, so I can relax and just learn to trade. I can play with £2 stakes and build up from there as my trading experience grows. Hence, I don’t need a large trading bank, so I can afford the holiday and still trade on Betfair.

That’s what you call a plan!