Saturday, February 19, 2011

Meditation and trading

It's very important to stay fully focused, emotional calm and stay "in the now moment" then trading. Meditation actually do this, it trains your brain to stay concentrated in the now moment., it breaks negative past associations, puts you in more objective mindset. When meditation is practiced regularly  it helps you to reach new levels of awareness, improves your health, cleans your mind from never ending random thoughts. After some time your memory improves, your thinking process becomes more accurate and clear. After meditation you sometimes get A-HA moments about your problems, you gonna get more insights too.

I can talk and talk about positive meditation effects. I read few books about it, and I was practicing it for some time, but never got it in my habits, so after time I just forgot to do that or I became too lazy bastard to practice it. Furthermore I read somewhere in Brett N.Steenberg book that some traders practice meditation for better trading results and it's very recommended for us traders. 


So my next step for improving my traders mindset is to start meditate regularly. I will try every day to sit down for 10-30 minutes and clean my head before markets starts. I believe its gonna improve my ability to stay in the now moment. So if you are interested in this practice your best friend is google, find a guide to help you with this stuff and try it.

Friday, February 18, 2011

So disgusted by trading errors and self-sabotage

Hello there! How are you today?

Yesterday was I nice day with lots of opportunities, made by big backer on the favorite. However my self sabotage mechanism found a way to creep in to my trading... Was up about +70eu but in the last market I got in play and lost in that one -84eu ... What a heck? All day I was confident, calm and did not any trading error, and somehow in that last market I was not able to take small -2eu loss and "decided" to get inplay! What a fool! :) So I made my best day of few weeks to the worst one, by this one minute trading error. Probably this kind of error has happened to you too? And you know that sick angry feeling on yourself? What I was thinking at that moment? Actually nothing, my head was empty, was doing this error subconsciously without any conscious thinking. And of course after loss hit me I woke up and got so disgusted by this trading error and self sabotage that I decided never ever go in play again! Written down few sticky papers and added in front of me on my monitor: "Trading errors: NO IN-PLAY PLEASE!!! TAKE A LOSS AND MOVE ON!!!" I hope that seeing this all the time will help me to stay away from making this error again.
All this week was strange for me, markets was strange, moving so fast and in most of them I couldn't see a pattern or a trend. It looks like that I lost my edge, but I believe that it will get better getting closer to the summer and extra liquidity comes. But somehow in all days I managed to finish little up.

Here you can see few charts, I call them "spaghetti", very hard to trade, because you never know when it gonna make big swing in any direction. And if you are gonna chase price you surely will get the worst one and almost every time you will get in pullback or reversal again, what means loss again.






So my plans remain almost the same, practice practice and practice, just gonna add one more thing: to monitor myself for potential to make trading error, and catch myself thinking about it or in the worst case doing it.

I have few ideas to write some interesting post: "Are we really alone in trading?" ; "It's obsession of becoming successful traders or just plain addiction to random events?" ; "Maintain your physical and mental health: gym, meditation and brain synchronization with your headphones." Probably gonna write something in the near future then I will take day off from trading.

So that's it folks, have a nice day!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Mondays results and horse race markets similarity to forex

Hello everybody,

What I am going to do every day from now is to analyze yesterday markets, I mean yesterday charts :) I will be doing that every next days morning. Yesterday was moderate day to my PL. Was using 68 liability, according to my money management plan. Actually I use two divided stakes, make double clicks, and take some profit with one them then market makes money available to lock some profits. I saw so big swings in a lots of markets but was not able to take a lot from them, just few ticks up, or down. So my plan for today is to analyze these charts and always ask myself: Why you make an entry here? Why you make a partial exit here? Why you make complete exit here? Why you put your stop loss here? Probably by doing this, I will help to integrate objectivity from a markets perspective to a functional level in my brains.


Here I put some yesterday charts. I used 7 secs charts. In some charts you can see blue lines, it's mine analysis :) Actually when you look to them after market is over, it's looks so obvious and self explaining, but trading in live, things happens so fast, and of course with some bad psyche stuff it's very hard to trade. But what I can say, I am still learning.






And here you can see Forex charts, with similar charting setup. If you are not familiar with technical analysis, probably it's seems for you like "LEGOLAND" with too much things that you can't understand anything, but actually after a lot of work and learning, it's become easy, and self explaining. Actually bf charts and forex charts in the someway looks very similar, because the same human beings are moving both, same psyche, same psychological stuff in both, fear and greed. In other hand they got a lot difference too,  pre race horses ends in ten minutes, and forex lasts for ever. For this reasons in horses is hard to notice any working divergences and momentum indicators don't work so good....



So that's it for today. I will be doing the same things, practice practice and practice. And trying to build a trader's mindset. Have a nice day!

Sunday, February 13, 2011

My trading story from a beggining and yesterdays trading results

Hey guys! How are you today?

Yesterdays results
Almost finished to read "Trading in the Zone" by Mark Douglas, what I can say about it? It's a MUST for all traders, especially for beginners. I can remember very accurate comment in amazon.com: "The Book You Must Read Before Making Your Next Trade!". I feel that it helped me to get back in a traders mindset. I hope that it will gonna last for unlimited time :) So here you can see my yesterday trading results on horses. It's finally looks like consistent trader's results, what I am dreaming about a long time :) Used 40eu liability, traded only favorites. And how you can see these small profits adds up very nicely in the end of the day.





My trading story
I started trading betfair markets in October 2009.  Probably like most of the traders I came from betting background, which you can guess was a failure. Was doing various greyhound betting systems, in the end I came to conclusion that I am getting little smaller price than I need to be successful at this. And in the mean time of course I found some trader's blogs about big and consistent profits. So I got in and I am in till now. Was thinking if other people can do that I can do it too, why not? We are all humans, and everything can be learned. Since October 2009 learning process started. Few firsts months were so difficult and painful, almost every day I was in red, and couldn't find a way to make profit anyway. Probably I decided not to quit trading because read some motivation books, like "Think and grow rich" by Napaleon Hill, who was talking that every success demands not to give up to early. Read others books like Kiyosaki's books about financial independence. So somehow I never gave up it, and every day was dreaming about success .


So first months I was trading only favorites in horse racing, lots of time lost all my bank going inplay with my inability to take big losses, which lead me to bigger losses and painful experiences. Without any success found it easier to trade odds bigger than 10. Only from a back side, which allowed me to have small trading bank. After long time of UPs and DOWNs I decided to try other sports, like football and tennis. In tennis trading I got some help from consistent winner TradeShark, and his small trading guide. At last I got few consistent months, was so happy to make some nice profits. It looked so easy comparing with horse trading. I was thinking at last, I did it :) I reached my dream, to learn how to trade consistently, but I was wrong, I still had a bad trader's mindset. The next few months was so bad that I lost more than I earned before. Started doing bad things, crucial trading errors, like chasing losses, putting to much money then I was not confident, leaving money on the table. These things came from my inability to take small losses, which meant for me a painful experiences. So after that my self-sabotage I quit trading for six months, I needed time to finish the hardest semester in university and take a break in trading.

In that time I was very interested in FOREX trading. Got MAX trading system videos (webinars). It's very interesting learning material about technical analysis. It was so interesting that I am still thinking one day to try forex trading with this system. What I found most interesting that it was said MAX is working in every market, it means that this system works on betfair horse markets too :), of course with some minor changes. So after six months break I got a "quantsports" to have some nice charts and technical indicators to follow. But again, they was showing right things, but I was not able to act right one them. I was in bad traders mindset! No success again, so left that idea. Then I found edge in "in play racing". Got one month very profitable, and again, somehow my subconscious mind sabotages me, started to loose money in flat areas, doing stupid errors. So not much to say. Finally after tons of emotional pain I understand that I need to change my mindset, so took "trading in the zone" again. So I am here :) 

Was thinking lots about my trading carrier these days. And I hope that I will be able to build a consistent traders mindset. Here you can see my account's all time trading withdrawals and deposits chart. It shows how much inconsistent I am, and how I need to change my thinking. At this time totally I am about 2k EU down in betfair.






So my plan for next few months are - trade pre race horses with MAX edge using QuantSports-NinjaTrader charting. I will be going to use progressive staking management, 10% profit per day seems to be realistic.
And of course my main GOAL is to seek and train my mind to become consistent winner!


That's it folks :) Have a nice day

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Hello World!

Hello everybody. How are you today?

Today is about one year in my trading carrier in Betfair markets, trading pre race horse markets and some in-play tennis markets. I wish that I could say that I am successful trader, and I created this blog to show how my big profits are and talk about how cool I am. Unfortunately it's not like that, actually the situation is opposite. At this time I am in bottom, and I created this blog to help me to get out of this crisis. In that long time period I got lots of "A-HA" moments, lots of times I was on the peak, and somehow I always find the way to fall down again. Somehow I lost trader's mindset completely. I feel that I know lots about markets, and how they are moving, but for some reasons I can't become consistent. Probably my subconscious mind is sabotaging my success. And I need to get back in that state where I felt confident and calm then trading, it's for sure lack of trader's mindset.

Before starting trading in Betfair markets I swear myself that I will put as much time and efforts as needed to become successful trader and I tend to keep on this. I give myself one more year to go. After that deadline if no positive results shows I am going to quit trading and start to look for real job. In this blog I will be going to analyze my results and my psychological improvement about getting in the right trader's mindset.

Short about myself: I am 23 years old from Lithuania, probably noticed that my English is not going to be perfect, but I hope that you understand what I am speaking about. Finally finishing Information Engineering (nerd on the computer) bachelor degree this year. I love to read books, most of them self-improvement, but sometimes well known people biographies too. At this time period I am mostly interested of trading psychology books, what I am going to read again is "Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude" by Mark Douglas and "The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist" by  Brett N. Steenbarger. Probably I will comment some crucial ideas from these books in this blog. Actually Brett Steenbarger highly recommends to start trading journal :) here we go... Other hobbies: photography, travels ...

So that's all at this first post. In the next post I am going to write about my trading story from a start to this point where am I now. And probably will try to make a plan for next few months. I hope this read is going to be useful not only for me to concentrate but for betfair beginners too. Have a nice day!