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Don’t Have Time To Trade? Then Switch Off The TV For 15 Minutes!

Risk Management

From observing and talking to a lot of traders, the really successful ones are incredibly disciplined and have two or three base rules that they live by

• Stake according to your bank (E.g. 1%) – bettor or trader, this is just smart advice and I hope you are doing this already
• Set realistic profit targets (10 points a month, that’s just a third of a point per day) is a good and realistic target – those profits soon start to add up, even if you are just compounding your bank
• Keep accurate records – again, this should be standard for you already, but I’ll cover more on this below)
• Target scratch – often I see traders ensuring that they can at least get to scratch (E.g. you’re trading over 2.5 goals – the first goal goes in, they may lay some of their profit off to remove their liability, the rest is the pure profit if the goals continue) – 

DON’T THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU COULD WIN – REMOVE THE CHANCE TO LOSE AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY – THE PROFITS WILL FOLLOW ANYWAY

• Focus on odds on markets – this is a great place to start for new traders to focus, it keeps liabilities low and manageable – there are many opportunities for this when looking at micro and mini-moments in-play – e.g. correct scores in the last 15 mins)

Tick Sizes

The last point suggest focusing on ‘odds on’ markets and want to explain that further.

If a price moves from 1.98 to 1.97 that is one tick, or 1%

However, if you enter a trade at 3.05 and it moves to 3.00, that is still one tick, but the percentage is now 5% (e.g. you could make or lose 5% on just that one small odds movement)

This means it is often much easier (and less risky) to focus on odds ranges of 1.01 to 1.99, particularly when starting out because even if you make the wrong move, the tick ranges are 1% and won’t hurt as much if you enter a trade at the wrong time.

Don’t have enough time to trade? I bet you do!

One of the things that are often said (and I include my old self in this) is that trading is time-consuming and I simply don’t have the time do it. Or I am in the wrong time zone, therefore it is impossible for me to do.

Wrong!

Firstly, you always have a choice and it comes down to your own priorities. You CHOOSE to sit and watch TV for a couple of hours in an evening or you can CHOOSE to trade. It just depends on how much you want it.

Not only that, it DOES NOT even need to take you two or more hours of an evening. 

Now that I have developed my own strategies, I can often sit down on a Sunday afternoon and pick out most of my planned trades, or at least the games I am interested in, in an hour or two for the WHOLE week ahead.

Also, most of my trades do not require me to be at the computer for the WHOLE game, if at all (some are set and forget). A lot of the time I will join a game (for example) when it is already underway, look at the live stats and if the in-play stats are telling me what I want to see, I will place my opening trade. I can then go back to whatever I was doing (E.g. watching TV) and wait for my phone to bleep to announce a goal or whatever it is that I am looking for – I can then jump back on, spend a few minutes setting up my second part of the trade and – its job done.

15 minutes in total and I have done most of my trading for the day.

So not having enough time is never an excuse. 

But don’t do it from the pub AND definitely don’t do it when your mindset Is not right.

This may seem an obvious one but it’s worth telling you all the same, as I’ve fallen into both traps in recent months.

For those that don’t know, earlier this year I spent a month back in the UK caring for my mother who has been facing some serious health issues. 

One day was particularly stressful and I came home to the place I was staying in with the desire to switch off and take my mind off things – there was some football on and I had previously ear-marked some trades, so I dived in.

But you know what, if I was honest with myself, my mind was really not in it. I staked wrongly, entered trades I would not normally of done and then tried to double down later on – all told I made a complete fist of it and lost about 5% in one evening. 

Not proud of that and I really should know better – but if you can’t learn from your mistakes then you are never going to progress and it was a useful reality check and reminder.

A couple of weeks later, it was a Saturday lunchtime and there were a few games I was really interested in trading but I also really fancied a pint and watching the six nations down the road.

I made some notes on my phone, set up the relevant alerts and off I went. It all started reasonably well and worked fine BUT I entered a couple of early evening trades, got chatting, missed the alert and didn’t close out one of my trades – I got lucky as one won and the other lost, leaving me scratch overall – but I should have profited and I could have actually lost the full stake on both matches.

If you need some R&R then absolutely take it – but don’t think you can do that and trade (and that applies to all forms of betting). Make time for each, but don’t let them overlap.

Next week I'll be looking at how I keep my records and how they've helped me to progress even further. Stay tuned 😉