Lessons Getting Harsher

After nearly a month on the $50 stakes, I felt confident enough to enter this Saturday's trading with $100 stakes. But, as I have repeated enough, it is the mistakes you learn from, and there were more than enough of them and, at the higher stakes, they hurt.

After a couple of unspectacular profits to start the day, it all went pear shaped in races 3, 4 and 5, which meant I would be in damage limitation mode the rest of the day.

In race 3, I got caught out trying to place scatter bets and lost track of my position, ending up chasing three lay bets in the last 30 seconds to cut my loss, which ended up at $21.12. Predictably, the horse won, so I would have made over $150 had I not traded out. Things got worse in the next with a record trading loss of $38.70, which is more than 3 times my best profit. In fairness I think I should be philosophical about this as I had been reading the market well generally, but a back bet was over-run with a $5,000 lay bet that came from out of nowhere that sent the market up six or seven ticks. As I tried to chase the lay bet to cut the loss, the market responded by keeping on going up and I was left to lament my failure to embrace stop-losses. It was a harsh lesson.

I stuffed up the next race as well, losing $13.27 without any real excuses, just getting caught on the wrong end of a sudden steam, then again moments later by an equally dramatic drift.

I really started to think at this point that I had lost it, but I kept at it nonetheless and was rewarded with 9 wins out of 10, including my second $10 green-up, without trying anything spectacular.

So, although my initial thoughts of today were negative, mainly because I ended up with an overall loss of $31.56, I now believe I can keep going with some confidence as I ended up with 13 wins from 19 races.
I need to seriously look at employing stop losses, which I have avoided as Australian markets do have a tendancy to bounce around a bit. I also have to consider reducing my bets when trading on higher odd horses as I don't have enough in there yet to submit lay bets in some markets, which mean I have to revise my style to seek out steamers in those races, where I can comfortably place back bets first in order to then lay it off.