Trading Techniques, Tips and Tricks....

[mikedmc]

Hi,

I've been trying to understand Betfair trading with very little success (the small successes I have had have been with Football and Tennis). Horse Racing has been a disaster when I try trading pre-race and a major disaster when I have stupidly allowed it go in-play!

I have tried most of the software available and have settled on Betting Assistant (I'm looking forward to the charting and hopefully the stop loss options).

So come on as this is a very helpful forum, some tips for us newbies on how to trade. I find the markets jump all over the place and is difficult to figure out. Weight of Money means very little at all, looking at the charts to see what has happened seems mean nothing about what will or could happen. So how do we catch these swings, trends or scalp the market? How far do you allow it to go against your position before you get out?

I can understand why you may not wish to share such information but i'm sure a few tips on what we should be looking at in relation to trying to understand the markets. How to read the charts and understand the information wouldn't effect the successful few. Basically and tips would be helpful. The more successful traders the more customers for Betting Assistant to.

Thank you.
Michael.

PS. Can anyone recommend any trading tutorials or better still training? If you are in a position to train someone or wish to give it a go then please get in touch. Obviously I would pay for your time.

[kiwi_kid]

Mike, if you are looking for the holy grail of trading, you aren't going to find one, because it doesn't exist. And if it did, it wouldn't last for long as everybody would be doing it. Pre-race trading on the horses is different from other forms of sports betting, because essentially nothing is actually happening before a race that can reliably "cause" price movement. I too have trawled the internet searching for the same tips/tricks you are looking for and am yet to find any, apart from the usual advice about discipline and rule setting. To that end, my advice to you is to develop your own style from your observations, set some rules about how you will trade at stick to them. You mention how you stupidly carry trades inplay and get burned. Rule number 1 for you then should be never do it again. Inplay vs. pre race trading are two totally different animals and you should never use the same strategies for both. For myself the biggest mistake I still make is to let a losing trade go to far against me before getting out and cutting my losses. All to often, lack of discipline in this way can wipe out all your previous hard-won gains.

Set your rules by recording in some way the outcome of each race traded, any trends, any cues that preceded a trend, how you traded that market, your profit/loss and what you could have done to reduce any losses (eg closed the trade sooner or whatever). Do all this with small stakes and eventually you will have a clear picture of where you are doing things right and more importantly, where you are going wrong. Reducing your losses in this way is the key to trading success.

Don't take your losses personally or be put off by them. Losing trades/days happen to everyone. Successful traders take it on the chin, learn from them and move on.

Hope some of this helps.

[mikedmc]

Thank you for the reply Kiwi.

I'm trying not to let my mistakes continue, I've started to close out a little earlier but sometimes I go for that little more profit (or more often loss!) and find that the time has run out without warning.