Don’t Chase Losses

I’m trying to be more professional with my approach to trading, looking at the longer term picture and not necessarily the current net profit scenario.

This would have worked out reasonably well for yesterday had I not made an error and also gave me an absolutely fantastic lesson too, one I’ve already learnt as I didn’t compound the error further. Let me explain…

A bit disappointed I traded out of the 14:50 Brighton at a loss of £0.73, not too damaging on its own but at the time I didn’t realise that I’d clicked twice in the back column on the ladder interface.

By the time I’d noticed, which was no more than 30 seconds later, then checked the Bet Angel log for what I had done, a further £2.30 had been lost. I immediately traded out to a £3.11 loss and was kicking myself for the mistake. Within seconds the race went in play and on the one click screen I was showing a £3.09 – £3.12 red across the card.

This is when my mind went to work, ok I can lay a selection at £3.12 making a net zero, which selection?, I know towards the end of the race any of the runners that achieve odds greater than 8.0 but less than 15.0, it’s got to be worth a try.

So towards the end of the race here I am with finger poised to lay this selection at 10. This is when my sense took over and I realised what I was doing. I leaned back in my chair and took the £3.09 on the chin and moved on. You’ve already guessed it, the selection went on to win, so instead of a £3.11 loss I’d have been looking at a £28 loss, good decision there then!

So whilst a bit erratic in a couple of races in the main my trading was relatively stable, although I made a loss of £1.32 on the day. The picture shows a £1.12 loss as I’ve included the single race I managed to trade the day before. Just before my boss rang and ruined the afternoons trading with a 90 minute phone call.

I turned over £550 including Tuesday but made a loss of 0.20% or £1.12. Thank god I didn’t turn over that £1,000,000!

I have Thursday and Friday off this week but currently have plans for Friday. So I expect to get a full afternoon trading in on Thursday and then probably won’t be back until next week. I’ll update later anyway.

Cheers