Do You Do This?

This week I seem to have gone full-circle once more… *frustration*

If you drop your guard even for a short time trading the markets you’re bound to get tripped up! In fact it’s exactly what makes it so hard to grasp for beginners in my opinion…

It’s so easy to have a few bad results and feel pretty bad about things when actually all that’s needed is a few small changes as, your general outlook on the markets wasn’t that bad at all.

Recent Problems…

This week I’ve had a few problems ‘outside’ of the markets to deal with resulting in a lot of stress. It doesn’t take all that long at all for it to creep into your game as any full-timer would tell you I’m sure.
Many that are getting into trading Betfair and learning their way around the markets often find themselves in this position one time or another. How you deal with it is extremely important and, can quite literally be the difference between longer term success and failure.

You don’t often see people posting up when they’ve had a hard time of things but I think its pretty important to keep things realistic, it happens to all of us at some point or another.

Earlier in the week I had a crazy day trading the markets. My attitude was bad, I was stressed out and my mind in other places. I should have had the day off but despite all this I carried on! First mistake… however the end result wasn’t that bad but it was a real roller-coaster of a day just making it to the end as you can see from some of the results below!!

So with that in mind I specifically targeted today as a smooth day. With all the outside stress and influences shut out I started to plug away on slightly reduced stakes to usual (lowering stakes and expectations really can help consistency). By about an hour in I was shocked to see I hadn’t even dropped a profit on a race, to me this is an indicator I could have made more from some of these races but to be honest having a stress free afternoon was priority!

A couple of hours later, it wasn’t the biggest result but still… fair enough and the weather outside is great! I can hear the beer garden calling…

Tunnel Vision!

You’re probably wondering what the ‘tunnel vision’ bits all about by now, let me explain how it all ties in with this…

Earlier in the week when I had my roller-coaster day I noticed something towards the end which, I have noticed before and if you’ve read back through the blog was something I used to go on about maybe two years ago.

When we become emotional in any way – stressed, upset, angry, frustrated, fearful etc. It seems to me as part of a natural defence mechanism maybe we tend to start developing this ‘tunnel vision’ where by we end up fixated on what we are doing. When we are in the markets its very important to bear in mind lots of different influences as Guide readers will know, and you can’t be looking and re-assessing everything continuously if you’re staring transfixed at the ladder of one runner between several ticks.

This is exactly what I used to do and just about everyone who attempts to trade the markets starts off doing! The end result being you missed the important bit of info on a different runner or the market overview meaning you didn’t exit when you should have or even worse didn’t let that profit run further! This seems to be even worse while you actually have a trade open, probably because of the fear factor of losing some money. This in my opinion is why using stakes your comfortable with is actually quite important as well as not having too higher expectations, the great thing being once you start to get going and build confidence the results just flow in any way… a little like they did for me today.

So if you can make sure you know what you’re looking at, lower stakes to a level your comfortable with and do your best to force yourself to look at the bigger picture even if its hard. Even more-so when you have a trade open in the market!!

Also just as a reminder the ‘green book’ competition Betfair are hosting is now underway. Upload your green books to twitter with the #betfairtraders to be in with a chance each week of winning some cash, a guide and a video pack.