Learning from trading mistakes

Daily Result: £182.61

Hmmmm. It's nothing personal but Timid Tim is starting to annoy. That's three out of the last four Henman games that I've traded and lost. Now considering I traded 44 events last month and lost three of them you can see why this is starting to irratate!

Of course, frustrating as it is it's my fault. Had built up a small green on both him and Soderling and left the match as the Agassi one was looking better. But when that went through a quiet patch I switched back to Henman at the start of the last set. Having been destroyed by Soderling in the 4th set I laid Henman on Soderling's serve at the start of the 5th - and you can guess the rest. Was desperately trying to dump the position but the market was volatile, because it was the 5th, and the price was running away from me. In the end the price was so poor I hung on hoping Soderling would hold. He didn't. Which left me a loss.

My consistency this month has been down on last month. Looking through markets where I've lost I've noticed a few similarities. The most obvious and important is where I lose on an event like the Henman game from a position where I was nicely green until very near the end of the event.

It's a timely reminder that volatility nearer the end of closer tennis matches (or any sporting event) can be greatly increased as each significant point is finished as it obviously has a greater impact on the match result than something earlier in the game.

And, following on, obviously one bad trade near the end of a match that leaves you with a loss is always going to be harder to turn round than one at the start of a five set match where you have a couple of hours to try and sort your position.

It's not rocket science. All pretty straight forward and obvious really. But a lesson I need to pay more attention to as merely paying it lip service has cost me a fair few hundred pounds this month.

Of course I know the solution. It's a straight forward principle that I've used for years. It's the problem I need to address. And ultimately I think that can be put down to greed. Trying to make just that little bit more on each event than I should be.

Anyway, I'm glad I've picked up the trend. When you're trading virtually every day it's easy sometimes to concentrate too much on each event and lose sight of your overall performance. Sure, I'm still making a healthy profit this month to date. But really, instead of around £1.4k to date, it should be nearer 1.8k. That's a big leak for a few simple mistakes.

Just goes to show that it pays to sometimes take a step back, analyse results properly, run through the basics of what you should be doing and check you are really doing it. I know what I should be doing, know what I want to do, but despite that can see I started slipping occasionally into a bad habbit that has cost me.

So going forward I'll be paying particular attention to potentially volatile end of event trades. And who knows - I might even return a green on a Henman match!

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