Progress at last!

I made a steady profit for the first time since Saturday, which was a welcome relief. It almost felt strange seeing my balance increasing!

It was still a day of 2 halves. Until the 4:15 I was sticking to my strategy which I had tweaked from yesterday as I again had a losing day then (nothing major, fairly consistent but in the wrong direction!). I still defined the entry and exit points for trades but I was only looking for 3-tick profit instead of 6. This proved to work much better, but after reaching a profit of 8% of my bank by 3:30, I then gradually went into a 5% loss. At which point I returned to scalping 1-tick at a time. By the end of the day and a couple of evening races before dinner I made a 20% increase and an overall profit on the day.

I am weary of returning to a trading style much more like I used a couple of years ago (scalping 1-tick or so) because whilst it worked then, I would go on tilt occasionally and wipe-out my whole balance.

The new strategy I devised from the book I read has enabled me to be far more consistent, but I simply haven't been able to make it profit. It has been satisfying not to have gone on tilt and I haven't wiped-out my balance. But I still need a trading style that has an edge in order to profit long-term.

I have dug-out the old database I made back when I was trading in 2006. I was shocked to see that my average loss was actually 25% larger than my average win! My strike rate per race was 62.5% for wins, 12.5% scratches, 25% losses (all on horse racing). They really don't seem like very good stats to me, however I still made a decent profit on the trading.

I've thought about a revised way of doing the 1-tick scalping and I'll try it today. I will also pick the direction of the trade using the entry and exit strategy I've devised from the book. I have also printed out the main points to bear in mind when I have a losing race. The main one is that looking through my stats for 2,500 races, every time I had a large loss is was shortly after a much smaller loss (but one that was maybe double or more of my usual win amount) - basically I was on tilt from that point. I have thought about what I am going to do in future in this scenario and I will keep this printout next to my trading computer for reading at critical times!

The other points I've printed out are the stats above - if I can profit with stats that bad then I don't need to stress about a losing race. I've also thought about all the benefits that trading successfully can bring to my lifestyle outside of work - and also all the penalties for failure. Hopefully that will focus my mind!

I'd like to mention that I really started thinking about the trading v's proper job pros and cons after reading a post on The Experiment: Self-indulgent Bullshit which is an excellent blog.

That's it for now, wish me luck someone!

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