Hits - 1005 Good, 1 Not So Good

An eventful day yesterday, some good, some not so good. For the second day running, I took a big hit on my trading - one of those days when everything I tried seemed to go wrong. I ended up with (relatively) small wins on the Milan derby, the New York Giants at Green Bay Packers NFL match, and the Golden State Warriors at Detroit Pistons game, but bigger losses on Swansea City v Arsenal, the Baltimore Ravens v Houston Texans and the biggest of all on the Denver Nuggets v Utah Jazz where Denver and their tremendous home record (in part the altitude advantage) just couldn't get their act together which all means that January, and thus 2012, are now in the red. Here's a link to some good advice on taking a hit, or more specifically for bouncing back from one.

With January historically my best month, this is a situation I've not faced since 2007, when that January ended with a loss of over £9k, and it took me until August 5th to recover. At least I'm not on schedule to match that, yet, but it's a reminder that trading isn't as easy as showing up, and cashing in. I suspect I am trying to make up for the shortened NBA season and being a little less patient than I need to be, so as I have done before, the medicine seems to be to scale back on the risk, pick up a few smaller wins, and regain the confidence before stepping it up again.

With more than six years of data to look back on, I can put these losses in perspective, knowing that the money always comes back, but it's still frustrating.

I meant to comment on a post by Peter Webb from a few days ago which should get you thinking if you lose at a faster rate than commission burn:

Over the years I’ve studied the markets and a number of strategies, but all of these have been focused on winning.

Late last year I turned my attention to why people lose, the psychology behind that, but also what fundamental flaws they have with their approaches in the market.

If you mess around at random you should, over long periods, break even less the spread or commission that you pay to the service provider. However, when I look at a lot of people that lose money, they seem to constantly exceed that.

So if you have an approach, preferably a systematic approach, that constantly loses money. I’m quite interested in hearing about it. Football is a nice sport for this as it contains only a few variables and can be pigeon holed into something simple. Back before the off, lay off if this happens, sort of thing. You don’t need to go public if you don’t want to, or if you want to suggest something I am sure people wont attribute that to yourself. But good suggestions are invited, however sourced. I’ve seen some real bum systems over the years so I imagine there must be some decent suggestions out there.

I’ve put a thread on the forum, which is a little off at a tangent at the moment. But I’m happy to look at any suggestions or approaches. I’m interested in not only what you did but why. I can’t promise to respond or comment on anything immediately, just trying to see some commonalities across losing approaches. The idea is to identify the most common errors and come up with some useful ways of avoiding them!

If this applies to you, then my initial thoughts on this are that you are greening up too soon, and letting losing bets run, rather than the opposite, which is what you should be doing. As Peter says, in football, just randomly messing about with selections should see you lose slowly, but many 'succeed' in doing far worse than that.

The better news from yesterday was 1) Green All Over exceeded 1,000 hits in one day for the first time ever - just, 1,005 was the final tally, and 2) the response that my entry into Twitterland generated - I could scarcely keep up with my e-mail at one point. I hope I didn't under-sell myself in the tag line!

140 followers in a little over 10 hours was rather a shock. Now all I have to do is find something to tweet about, which I suspect may be harder than blogging. The catalyst was the Milan derby I mentioned earlier, where the Under 2.5 goals prices suggested a 20% edge. I spent most of the first half working out how to get the account set up, but next time I see a similar opportunity, I'll be prepared. For the record, I have Manchester City too short at Wigan Athletic later tonight at 1.45, and the Under 2.5 as value at 2.32 - but not such great value as the Milan derby was.

A full day of NBA action coming up too, starting early for once. It's a holiday in the USA, I believe in honour of former NBA legend Dr Martin Luther King Junior.