Well It’s been a while since my last post, 6 months to be precise. The current bad weather and abandoned race cards have given me a chance to reflect on things in and outside of trading this year.
When I first started writing this blog, I wanted it to assist my trading and be a reference point for my progression as a trader. I do believe that writing about your experiences and goals is a great way of keeping on track but for me, deciding to share those thoughts became less fulfilling overtime and with much more screen time dedicated to tuition and other trading activity, writing about it all was the last thing on my mind. I’ve now started writing in a Journal instead; it’s much better for me personally. I think it really helps me to let everything out after a days trading. It also doubles up to be like a scrap book of thoughts, ideas and emotion’s. I will often revisit certain post’s to draw on the emotions of that day and use the positive/negative comments to set goals and remember clearly the feelings involved at the time. These kinds of practices are pretty new to me and over the last few months I’ve looked much more in depth at the subject of trading psychology. If I am to make more posts here in the future I imagine they will be tilted more towards psychology and self coaching and how to apply them to sports trading. At the moment I feel like I’m only scraping the edges of a fascinating subject that’s changing the way I think about myself and the markets.
Balance
A trader’s lifestyle should be a balanced one. When I set up the Betting Exchange Tutor site I knew that balancing tuition with my own trading could lead to fatigue so I kept course bookings to a max per week. Looking back at the year now that wasn’t enough, I really enjoyed teaching people about the markets and I witnessed many a“light bulb” moment from clients but by the end of the day I was always extremely tired. Talking about the markets is much more tiring than participating in them and it started to affect my performance especially in the evening racing, some days I wouldn’t even bother trading past 5pm as I knew my mind and body couldn’t compete. I will start teaching again next year but need to strike a balance where it won’t affect my own progression. I like the idea of getting out and teaching people, be it in their homes or offices, even on a laptop In Hyde park if the weathers good. I should be located more centrally in London by early next year so the idea of “mobile betting exchange tutor” is the biggest scribble on a post it note at the moment.
The current “big freeze” has also given me a chance to go back and review my figures from this year. Profit & loss wise it’s been a disappointing end to the year. I always expect to beat previous years and it’s frustrating to know that this wont happened in 2010. I shouldn’t be too hard on myself though, the markets were more competitive than ever and I hadn’t done enough early on in the year with regards to reinvention and setting new targets. I have discovered that finding a balance between scaling down old strategies whilst reinventing new ones is a challenge and in the future I need to be aware of my performance statistically to assist these changes. I didn’t set any long term goals at the beginning of the year either but probably had too higher expectations. That in itself is bad combination and with that kind of mindset I wasn’t trading defensively enough on weaker cards leading to unnecessary losses and stops in momentum.
I’ve learn t a lot about myself and my trading this year, much more than any other and I hope that the physical and mental changes I’ve made to my game will boost my trading in 2011. I’m looking forward to a fresh challenge and for the first time will have goals and targets aim for….. But For now I’m just going to enjoy the Snow, Christmas and New Year.
Have a good one!
Sam
