[Discipline] Nobody Likes It, Everyone Needs It….

[Posted – June 28, 2014]

Discipline, Nobody Likes It, Everyone Needs It….

This week I’ve spoken to a few people who, I’d say are already pretty successful.

Although I can see they are on the cusp of a BIG difference – or it appears that way from where im standing, even if they realise it or not.

The problem they have in common is quite simple. This week I fell foul of it myself – Discipline!

I’ve had a lot of interest in the ‘Back to Lay’ possibilities I’ve posted up recently, with everyone asking the same thing –

How do you manage such an effective strike rate?

The answer is really quite simple.

I’m no tipster, but if I post up 3 ‘possible’ back to lay selections. It doesn’t mean there was only 3 possible front-runners that day, it means there were only 3 that I considered of even looking at. Originally there may have been 10.

Of that three, I may only end up backing one to lead! Even if all 3 of them eventually hit the front with a big gap on the rest of the field, I’m still content. It’s all about discipline.

The common thing is to feel like you ‘missed out’ – an emotional response that in trading is quite literally a useless feeling that hinders discipline. That very same feeling is the reason that spurs you on next time, into placing that trade on something that is in fact a ‘maybe trade’.

Discipline doesn’t do ‘maybe trades’ be it ante-post, pre-race or in-play.

Many come into Betfair trading through a punting background, which is why they find it harder (possibly). Everyone seems to be in love with the idea of doing the same thing race-in, race out and it working every time. In my experience, it’s not quite like that!

Of course this is easy for me to say right now. But take a second to think each time this happens, as I said to someone else – would you rather have 5 good trades in a day and make £10 every trade OR 5 good trades making £10 and 5 more ‘maybe trades’ making £10 in two and loosing £10 in 3…

Not only would you have been £10 worse off in the second instance, but you’d of wasted some time, put yourself through stress and worse still even, damaged your trading confidence!!

It’s important to not just think about the money, self-doubt is often the worst thing to come from a bad trading experience.

Being aware of your own thoughts and feelings outside of the market is pretty key but I’ll save that for another post as I intend to add a YouTube clip about it in the near future!

Related Article: Trading Fears

3 thoughts on “[Discipline] Nobody Likes It, Everyone Needs It….

  1. Another good post. I fell foul of that lack of discipline this weekend. My trading has been going on steady making small steps forward. I traded a race at Haydock and straight away got myself into trouble and had a disastrous trade. Foolishly, the next race was at Chester (which I know well) and I thought “no problem I’ll get it back here”. I lost again and the only thing I can attach blame to is myself for chasing a loss and lacking discipline. I should have got up and had a little break and calmed down. Keep the posts coming Caan they are useful and help to make me feel I’m not alone in trading cock ups.

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