Sunday, May 20th, 2012
The hardest thing about trading on Betfair is remembering that you are now a trader and not a gambler!
I lost 10% of my bank last week because I let my emotions get the better of me. First up was the diabolical performance by Liverpool FC in the Europa cup to SC Braga.
That’s the same SC Braga that lost 0-6 to Arsenal whilst getting dumped out of the Champions league earlier in the season.
I laid the draw but instead of bailing out once the price hit evens I let it ride convinced the Anfield roar would kick in at some point and we would see one of those famous European nights the scousers are forever telling us all about.
The goal never came and I waived good bye to my cash…..Bye Bye Cash
Second disaster was a great chance to recover from my losses but turned out to be another lesson. Federer was a set down but 0-40 up in the first game of the 2nd set so expecting him to take 1 of the 3 break points I backed him. Sure enough he broke and his price plummeted. I was just about to trade out when he went 15-0 up in his service game. That’s when the greedy gremlins kicked in and I started anticipating the further drop in price when he goes 2 games up in the set.
He lost his serve game before I could get out and the chance had gone.
Lesson learnt….I hope!
I’ve started using the stop loss feature built into Bet Angel, my software tool of choice when trading to take some of the emotion out of the process. I also now avoid any teams I might have an emototional tie to as its hard screaming for a goal when its in your teams penalty area 
These aren’t the only mistakes I’ve made in my first few months as a full time trader and as long as I learn from them then I don’t mind.
Just about everything I have read on sports trading includes a heavy selection on how to get into the right mindset, how to expect and deal with losses etc. and I’m beginning to realise just how important this side to the job is because if you can’t deal with the losses you’ll end up never going for the winners.
Tags: sports trading mindset
