Accepting when a trade goes wrong

Daily Result: £1,308.55

Hmm. Maybe I should take a few days off and come back fresh more often! Great result today. Well pleased with it and adds a nice chunk towards the monthly profit and honeymoon funds.

Made the money on the Friends Provident Trophy cricket match between Hampshire and Surrey. The game was a great example of how as a trader it's fine to suddenly change your mind, admit you were you wrong and, being as fickle as they come, change allegiances. It also helps to answer a question I get asked a lot - the why don't you give more tips one.

Today was the perfect example why. Because my opening plays were a £1k lay of Hampshire in the 1.7x range and a £250 back of Surrey in the 2.2x range. When a wicket came within 2 balls of the Surrey innings I managed to get out of around half of that at nearly the price I got in at (Someone was too slow cancelling) and very shortly after, when another wicket went with the ball moving all over the place, I was piling into Hampshire after taking into account the match conditions.

By the time Surrey were 32/6 my earlier fancying of them was a distant memory. By reassessing, taking note of the conditions, accepting I'd got things wrong and taking a loss to start with I'd set up a nice win instead of facing what would very have quickly become a maximum loss. It might well open you up to accusations of aftertiming (hence the no tips thing) but the flexibility afforded by trading and not getting married to your positions can save you a lot of needless losses.

A trader I respect once gave me a great piece of advice. To paraphrase it was never be afraid to accept you got a trading call wrong. And don't compound that mistake by refusing to do anything about it. In other words don't be too bloody minded to just let it go hoping everything will sort itself out. Act decisively. Recognise the mistake. And take a loss if you have too.

Today was the perfect example. I'd convinced myself to open my original positions despite the Rosebowl pitch and Hampshire bowling line up of Clarke, Warne, Mascerenhas, Tremlett and others. I thought Benning and Brown would get Surrey off to a quick start giving me a nice green book to start with. And thinking further ahead I also thought with the in form Ramprakash glueing the innings together Surrey would dip well below odds on as their innings progressed. Boy did I get that spectacularly wrong! Clarke showed his class taking 6 for 27 while Mascerenhas delivered a beauty to smash Ramprakash's off stump first ball.

In the end the only real suprise was the that from 32/6 the match lasted so long. That was largely due to a fantastic 122 7th wicket partnership between Clarke and Schofield. Surrey's final score of 181 was never likely to be enough though and, despite a light flurry of wickets in Hampshire's innings, the Hawks still wrapped the match up with 3 wickets in hand with 10 balls left.

Looking forward the news isn't so good on Friday's 4th and final test match between England and West Indies. When taking a break I decided not to really look at the market or get involved until nearer the time as I knew weather would be a big factor and I didn't want to get tied down monitoring it too much. The result is I've missed out on an enormous plunge on the draw (it's 1.43-1.44 now!!). I'm going to have a good look at the weather tomorrow and see if I can convince myself to lay that. And if I can't I'll be building an ark because if that price is right we're all in danger of drowning!