£200K 2012 Blog

[Shaun]

How much money did you make last year?
How much money did you make the year before that?

If the answer to this is not at least 50k i think you will struggle big time and may be in over your head.

[custard]

I lost £ 52 overall yesterday so that's a help towards the £200,000. I promise that I will do my best to lose again today.



Merry Christmas !

[ron]

Nice to read that the "challenge" is via InRunning i assume that you will be withdrawing winnings Monthly or even Weekly and placing them in a bank account, i ask this because the temptation to chuck bigger and bigger stakes in the rush to reach the target will be immense, i firmly believe it can be done,
In November bearing in mind i am somewhat part-time i only trade Thursdays and everyother Saturday(due to football) and Sundays, I was averaging £70+ an hour using modest stakes and that includes losses.
I have taken the month of December off, except for the odd race or 2 i took £x cash out for Christmas, you need to be in control and not your betfair account.

Your 4 biggest enemys will be

Boredom(believe me it sets in)
Complacency
Greed
Yourself (i say this because you will be hard on yourself when you make a mistake)

[CanaryDwarf]

hi ron - yep I normally withdraw my winnings whenever I get to £3K+ as I only really need £2K at most in my account at any one time. I have pretty much stayed with the same staking plan over the last 3 years or so, but I think now that this may have been wrong. Looking at my results I really should have pressed on as my bank grew, but it's hard to move out of your comfort zone sometimes. Next year I'll be raising my stakes in line with my bank.

If anything I am more 'overcontrolled' when it comes to my trading and I'm working on being more relaxed and positive. I'm reading 'The Daily Trading Coach' and it's superb and really makes you look at how you approach and perform trading, and it gives you great ways in which you can improve your mindset and performance.

It's great to hear of your success. As you say it shows that it can be done.

Boredom - that's a good point. I usually look forward to my days trading, but recently I have found my mind wandering during racing, especially on small field, low liquidity races on SIS. This is one of the reasons that I decided to set a target and start a blog. It's given me a much needed kick up the bum and now I'm really immersing myself in reading, studying form and consciously making efforts to make changes in the way I approach each day.

Complacency - yep I think that this comes hand-in-hand with boredom. I think that I'll only ever feel either of these emotions if things are going so well that I'm easily exceeding my targets each month.

Greed - I've never really suffered from this. If anything I could do with a small injection of 'greed' because, as mentioned above, my normal style of playing errs on the side of caution. Playing this way tends to give regular steady profits, which I prefer to the highs and lows of big wins and big losses as this also puts you on the rollercoaster of emotions.

Myself - agreed. If I make a genuine silly mistake, like looking at the wrong horse or pressing the wrong button then I go home and smack myself around the face with a wet fish. However, if I think that I make a good trade and it doesn't go my way, well then I'm usually pretty OK with that. As we all know, in order to win you're going to have days where you lose.

Thanks for that feedback ron. Much appreciated and here's wishing you, and all Geeks Toy players, a happy and profitable 2012.

Cheers - Dave.

[CanaryDwarf]

portman - yeah I've analyzed the the breakdown of races per month next year. I'm not saying that I'll be looking for the £9K/£10K split of loss/profit, just noting that some of the guys that I work with never come close to paying the premium charge as their style is to turn over a lot of cash in order to win (effectively having already paid the equivalent of the PC in their daily trading). I will, however, have to play more aggressively in order to move a little towards this style. Hope this makes sense.

Cheers - Dave.

[CanaryDwarf]

shaun - yes I did

Cheers - Dave.

[CanaryDwarf]

custard - thanks mate! All donations are welcome

PS I'm sure you'll get it back today ...

Cheers - Dave.

[Shaun]

shaun - yes I did

Cheers - Dave.

The only reason i asked that is i see these threads on the betfair forum with the same lines and the people have never made more than a few grand and think it is easy to just increase the stakes to increase the profits.

They don't understand the mental side of things with lager stakes as i think you need to build up to it to get the right feel and understanding.

[CanaryDwarf]

shaun - I agree. I think that we all get comfortable playing with certain stakes. I don't think that it's that easy to increase your stakes as that also means that you expose yourself to more risk. This is an interesting issue and I'm going to continually monitor the point at which the level of my stakes effects my ability to clearly analyze a race and more importantly press the button. At this point in time I'm fairly happy to expose myself to losses of between £200-£300 per race with a daily limit of £600. My intention is to gradually increase these figures as my bank grows. I'll probably delve a bit deeper into this at some point on my blog.

Cheers - Dave.

[Temujin]

The only reason i asked that is i see these threads on the betfair forum with the same lines and the people have never made more than a few grand and think it is easy to just increase the stakes to increase the profits.

They don't understand the mental side of things with lager stakes as i think you need to build up to it to get the right feel and understanding.

Risking money on the nags is one thing, but risking your beer? You can't be serious. What person in their right mind would part with their pint to bet it on a horse race? What are you going to drink while watching the race? Hmmm..

But yes, I have been pondering the same thing. I have been pretty set with my stakes for the last 3 years, made about the same every year. The markets I bet in are more liquid now, but I still find it hard to increase mentally. I find when I do I am more likely to get scared and have just been hovering.
Going to use this as a little inspiration to increase my turnover in the coming year and try to pump up my own profits a little. 200k seems a nice number, but certainly not 200k pounds for me. I think I could do it without mental issues, but there is always a risk line that is hard to cross and hard to retrain your brain.

Either way, I wish you all the best, might even take a look at your blog at some point. Certainly keep an eye on this thread anyway.

[lcredd]

Good luck mate! 200k in a year would be very impressive. I have only ever found targets to be negative to my trading though.

[custard]

Going to use this as a little inspiration to increase my turnover in the coming year and try to pump up my own profits a little. 200k seems a nice number, but certainly not 200k pounds for me. I think I could do it without mental issues, but there is always a risk line that is hard to cross and hard to retrain your brain.

I was doing very well given the level of my stakes up until about a month ago. I have increased my stakes significantly but find it difficult to adjust to the new amounts of money which appear on my screen.

I find that I have been closing profitable trades too early. I make more money in absolute terms but my profit in terms of percentage return has gone down. I am not as efficient as I was and I will have to get used to the "new money".

It's difficult to treat real money as just being "numbers on a screen".

[Temujin]

My main problem is that no matter how well I have done in the last few years, I have managed to spend pretty much the lot. So even though my "income" is high (high enough, nothing special), I still have the same money to work with. So any increase is an increase in the ratio of bankroll, so certainly hard to come to terms with.
I have to concentrate this year (from now on, not just this year) in building my bankroll and calming my spending down, so that big losses don't hurt so much.

Make 100k in a year and lose 5k in a day doesn't hurt as much as making 200k in a year and losing 10k in a day if your gambling account is the same. May sound silly to some, but that is where I am at.

TBH, I raised the stakes at the start of the year and hit those freakish losses of 42k over 6 different days in the first 2-3 weeks of the year, but that is still at the front of my mind in regards to raising the stakes. Those results averaged out as they should have, who knows where I would be at this year. Really bad timing.

Certainly the biggest issue with trading, and aiming higher, is the scare factor of losing money. Something we can't get away from, risking money, but overcome that and the world is your oyster.

That is now my main focus, and tbh, reading this thread has drilled it into me. I knew I had to do it, but haven't been proactive in making it happen. Now I will, and I think I will use the same figure for next years goal target, although will call it Aus dollars rather than pounds..
I don't want to dull my emotions down completely, it isn't how I work, but certainly need to dull them down a bit.

[custard]

Temujin, you seem to be uncannily like me in your attitude to life. Having a wife and a daughter who is about to go to university, slows me down amazingly. I have responsibilities which prevent me from cutting loose. It would be nice to know what would have happened to me as a trader if I was single and carefree. I only see two options for trading unfettered : very rich or skint

[CanaryDwarf]

Temujin - it's funny how some of us get scared when increasing our stakes. If you told a random person that you were a sports trader and showed them your P&L for the last few years then the most likely question they would ask is 'why don't you bet more?'. All of the traders that I know suffer from the same problem. So many of the guys that I know reach a certain level and then stay there, earning just enough to maintain a decent lifestyle, pretty much in line with a 'regular' job. I think that the only way to step out of this mode is to really focus on what you want to achieve. I really want to move to the coast, relax, enjoy myself, spend more time with my wife, etc. I'm 50 next year and in this financial climate no lender will give me a second mortgage, so the only way that is going to happen is if I make the cash myself. So that's what spurs me on. I know that I'm very good at what I do and I know that with hard work I can get even better. So at this point in time I'm thinking 'well **** you Mr bank manager, stick your mortgage up your arse, I don't need it 'cos I'm going to make it myself'. I'm really immersed in the thought process of smashing into it next year and being right on top of my game. Nothing is going to stop me, and the guys I work with are going to be saying '**** me, Dave's smashing the bollox off it'. A bit extreme maybe, especially as I'm normally a pretty reserved guy, but even over the last few days I've noticed that I'm not even flinching after doubling my stakes because I've put myself in this patient yet aggressive state of mind.

As for spending your cash, well that's what its there for! For my goal it means that I need to be as frugal as I can in 2012 so that my bank can grow. I suppose that's another thing to deal with, having to work on those lovely days during the Summer!

As you mention, despite your initial freakish losses, your results averaged out over the year as they should have. We're all going to experience that losing run to some extent in the future, but we tend to forget those days where it seems that everything we touch turns to gold. As we all know, when we're doing the right thing but results are going against us then stick with the plan.

It's easy to tell whether your trading with too much exposure - when I'm trading in-running I want to be completely focused in what is happening in the race. If I'm hovering over a button and thinking about how much I could possibly lose then the stake is too high. So the only thing that I'm concentrating on when watching a race is the race itself.

Have a great 2012 and keep me up-to-date with how things are progressing.

Many thanks - Dave.