Tuesday 15 April 2014

It's hard to trade (tennis)...

Peter Webb, one of the more famous trader, wrote a year ago:
"This match (he was talking about Djokovic against Wawrinka at Aussie Open 2013) exhibited perfect trading characteristics again. It was another match, where if you were trading, you couldn’t lose. If you backed the outsider his price shortened considerably. If you backed the favourite he won!"
There was a big debate at Sultan's blog about this statement. In the end it was quiet obvious that Peter overreacted with above mentioned sentence. http://www.centrecourttrading.blogspot.ch/2013/01/tennis-trading-fallacy.html

I saw it today with my own trading. I layed Dimitrov after he was a break up against Granollers (4:2 in first set) for 1.15. The value was looking good at this moment. Actually I thought the loss of the first set is already priced more or less in. Unfortunately Granollers really struggled the upcoming games and the odd tanked to 1.05. So I lost at least five ticks just because a market over reaction...

Bad luck or bad trading, I could wait until the end of first set to lay Dimitrov. The value was even better after the first set for sure. You can discuss if my early entry was a mistake or not (aftertiming it's always easy), but afterwards I definitely made a mistake. I reduced my stake at an odd of 1.02. How stupid you can be?! It doesn't matter if you lose 100% of the stake or 95% in every case the back bet of Dimitrov was a ridicilous value. The (part) exit of this trade was a back fall in old terrible times. Thanks the comeback of Granollers I could manage a small green out of this trade. I should be big green, but that's the difference between a novice and advanced trader.

Back to Peter Webb... if you trade bad or the swings doesn't fit in your strategy, you can even lose with a good looking chart and that was the one of Dimitrov vs. Granollers for sure:


Once more I didn't do a great job. Beside the described trade, I missed to enter at the Tsonga vs. Kohlschreiber match. I was quiet sure that the German will give hard bread for the French man which is still in poor form after his injury. The value was definitely there after the first set, but I was too much focused on the H2H (6:1 for Tsonga). Stats are not useless, but I think they are overrated concerning the trading. Form and things in general are changing during months and years.

To take the good things out my start at Monaco, I didn't lose money despite poor trading. It's definitely a step forward. I can concentrate the next 1 1/2 weeks on my trading skills. I decided to take one day of holiday and thanks to my part time job and easter I have off until the 24th of April!

To have more real time information of the tennis players I joined Twitter. You can follow me @Brulati.

4 comments:

  1. "Actually I thought the loss of the first set is already priced more or less in. Unfortunately Granollers really struggled the upcoming games and the odd tanked to 1.05. So I lost at least five ticks just because a market over reaction..."

    "The value was even better after the first set for sure. You can discuss if my early entry was a mistake or not (aftertiming it's always easy), but afterwards I definitely made a mistake"

    The thing is Brutali, you don't know the value is going to be even better in the 2nd set at that time, when your placed your initial trade. You also were not expecting the market to over-react so much. If you believe an entry/trade was value, then the trade was a good one. Just because a trade goes worse then you expected, doesn't mean it was bad.

    Seems as if you are letting market overreaction cloud your judgement.

    I think you are unsure of yourself because the price dropped a lot more than you were expecting, it can happen, the question is, how are you going to prepare yourself in the future for when it does happen again (and it will).

    You are saying one moment you believe it was value, then your not sure if it's bad luck or bad trading. How can it be bad trading if in your thought process you believe it was value to lay at this price?

    What you should do is evaluate the trade and break it down into steps, did I believe it was a value entry point? What went wrong? Is there anything I could of done better? Would I do the same trade again with the same scoreline/circumstances?

    Not that I'm someone who should be preaching, but it sounds like at times you are either unsure of yourself when a trade goes wrong or self doubt is creeping in.

    You don't seem to be losing money for the past few posts I read, you just need to cut out your errors it seems and have confidence in the trades you place!

    Stop focusing on if it won or loss but on whether or not it was the right decision.

    You seem to be heading in the right direction :)

    Keep up the good blogging.

    TA

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Thanks Alchemist! I am more or less breakeven since I started with proper money management, more discipline and focussing at tennis. I think it's quiet normal in the beginning. If you believe the cycles of trading, it needs around half a year to go from breakeven to serious profits.

      My confidence is a lot bigger now... this trade it's just an example that I still make costly mistakes. Without them I would probably slightly in profit.

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  2. The market overreaction was due to injury time out, also if you thought value was 1.15 why did you not lay again at 1.05 as this to you was surely even better value.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your posting. Yes, would be a possibility to enter again. It's advanced trading concerning the guide of Sultan. At the moment I like to hold the stakes small and not put me more in pressure with going bigger when I am in the red zone.

      Concerning the value trading you are completely right, the value was even bigger at 1.05... I talked some days about gut feeling and staying in a trade. Even if 1.05 it's value (and it definitely was!), it needs really balls to go in bigger. I mean you are going against a big probability (1.05 = 95.2%), even when you think there is a 20% chance to win it's a tough bet.

      I don't blame myself for the entry at 1.15, it was okay. You will almost never hit the lowest point. I was just a bit shocked about the tanking to 1.05. My mistake was not the missing reentry (I don't do this), but redding a big part of the bet at 1.02. That was just stupid, because there was no value at all doing this. It was just because my rules say that I have to red... but the right point for doing this came before (thanks the overreaction of the market). I would take a small loss at 1.08 to 1.10, but after the very bad 7th and 8th game of Granollers and the MTO the odd tanked.

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