Tuesday 14 February 2012

Mistakes, Mistakes and More Mistakes

The more you think about the more you realise that gambling and trading is predominately about mistakes. The more mistakes you make the more likely you are to lose money, whether that be backing or laying something at unfavourable or your more classic mistake in placing a bet you didn't intend to. The saying goes Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Although in betting and trading you can afford to make hundreds and thousands of mistakes, basically as many mistakes as your bankroll will allow you. Sure all people make mistakes, it is often said the most successful people in the world have made big mistakes in the early career but have overcome them. But that fails to notice all the people who make big mistakes who didn't overcome and become routed down by a mistake they've made.

I know that last passage was somewhat vague but my point is that different people react differently to mistakes. The way you react to mistakes and losses in gambling/trading is one of the most important things. It fails under the all important D word again, but is deserving of a category of it's own in my view. I know from experience when I make mistakes I don't like it, it annoys me, it frustrates me, it angers me. I'm the guy banging my head on the wall after my horse is beaten by a nose. I do my best to try not get frustrated in this way, but it's almost inherent human nature that we don't like it when we are wrong, we don't like knowing that we aren't as clever as we think we are. I know I'm some steps ahead of the regular punter who simply thinks he can predict with certainty what's going to happen in a given sporting event. I know what value is. I may or may not have edge when it comes to betting and trading these days. But I know for certain that somewhat primal instinct part of my brain gets frustrated and angry far to easy. I have taken up poker recently but even in that I drifted into the same mode, I was playing my usually game and got a couple of bad beats I proceeded to go "on tilt" and play hands I would never even usually look at playing which of course resulted in further losses. Decided to take the rest of the week off after a very poor week upto Wednesday.

What I'm saying after all this time is that I realise I don't have the mindset for betting or trading. After reading up about trading in particular, it seems there is the possibility that you can train your own mind to get out of this problem. Although old habits die hard as the saying goes.

This week was another loss of £161.95 of which $11.85 (roughly £8) can be attributed to poker, the rest was simply me being a lemon trying to trade, hence the mistakes, mistakes rant. I'm not saying I'm giving up on this pursuit of mine. But I do admit to losing a bit of interest in betting and trading recently. Twinned with the realisation that my mindset is still all over the place, I've decided to take this week off largely to try and think things over and do a little more reading on trading psychology. Reading and applying are two completely different matters though, although despite all this I'm determined to remain positive.

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