The professional trader's marathon

When I was little my grandfather taught me that a shortcut is always a dubious choice. That this shallow and shorter path shortens many essential things in learning about life and is always a dangerous choice. The longest and most arduous path, never seems to be and never is most attractive, we know that walking on this path means to fight all the time, but it takes us to where we want to go, without shortcuts and with great difficulty, but when we get there, we know that we have been shaped in the right way, because we learn what we had to learn and we will be what we had to be.

I always thought that this would apply only to our character, integrity and everything else that involves our personality, but when it comes to choices, everything seems so familiar.

In sports trading we have some choices to make, one of which would be the way that seems easiest to take things and the other choice would be the difficult way. Choosing any of these ways is no guarantee of success, not if you don't struggle to learn something. Starting from here, it is worth remembering that this is not an absolute truth, but the view of this bettor/trader in question, about the market, and its way of operating. And nobody's truth overrides that of another individual.

One thing that every trader needs to understand, is that we are not in this market to imitate punter movements and minimize our profit with early closings, this type of strategy is dangerous and needs a specialist in the sport in question, transactions operations in pure trading , does not need an exacerbated knowledge in the sport, which is already a great advantage, since it takes away precious study time.

To carry out trading operations without unnecessary exposure is an art, and needs patience and a lot of dedication. Scalping is a safer way of working, but it is still an investment and every investment has its risks, the difference is that you do not expose your stake for a long time and depending on the market, you will work in favor of time, the which guarantees you the expected profit, if nothing happens during that short period of time.

I work exclusively with two sports, football and horse racing, horse racing is a plate full, but in this market we do not work for time or against, but we foresee operations and anticipate movements based on a market analysis.

In football almost all the movement I do is in favor of the time, except when we take risks in certain dangerous movements looking for a great variation, I speak of dead balls. Dangerous tactic, but acceptable and that with a thorough study, you can reap good results, but it is not a tactic that you should do without having a previous study, feeling in this type of situation does not mean anything.

I will usually work with the extraction of 5% on the stake per operation (This would not be a value per entry, but an entire operation, this on average, because I do not have a defined goal, so it is just an example and the 5% a number figurative that does not represent reality but an illustration). I don't know if this number represents a huge or small value for other traders, the point is that I prefer to make safe movements and have short exposure time.

In favor of time, this is easier to extract without taking too many risks. In the horse market I do the simple thing, I close the transaction on the gain of a tick or on the loss of one.

I don't have a fixed number of moves to be made per day, but I do have a time limit, and during that time I work looking for opportunities with a good risk / benefit. During the day, I don't seek to double my stake, that is, make 100% profit on the stake, I just keep making the moves as opportunities arise. All without haste and without forcing anything.

I work with a fixed stake and I don't like to increase the stake as I get gains. A great enemy of every trader is haste. Impatience tends to lose us everything, we have to keep in mind that a day at work is just a battle of a war that we are fighting, we are in a marathon and we need to be aware of that.

Many think that what a professional trader does is extremely complicated and revolves around a hundred strategies, when in fact everything we do is the simplest. Don't fall for tales and promises of high earnings that some courses promise out there, as they all want to teach you how to get bookmakers' bonuses and teach you the basics of the basics.

Many will tell you about various types of strategies, it happens that in trading we will always operate in the simplest way possible. In football, going against time is something we don't do without being on a dead ball, if any trader does this, they are going to a punter/trading side, that is, you are waiting for something to happen to close a position. This type of movement is very dangerous and without an elaborate strategy and good management, things can get very complicated. Nor will I mention the level of knowledge about the sport and the acting league that this individual will have to have in order to be successful in the long run.

The type of trading that will require more knowledge and study is pre-live in football, where you will apply the same punter study and need to have information about the event in hand, in addition you need to be aware of the market opening , to be able to take the value lines as soon as the odds appear and are placed to bet.

In football live trading or even horse pre-live, where markets are more dynamic and odds move very quickly, it becomes more difficult to know if the odd is worthwhile as there are many factors to influence and vary the odd . In these cases a trader should focus on predicting the variation in the odd, rather than trying to figure out whether the odd is worthwhile or not.

A Trader will only look at the market for the profit of the odd variations, while a Punter is more concerned with the value of the odd because he seeks the result in the long run to beat the bookmakers' commission and be profitable.

I do not advise any beginner trader to do pre-live trading in football, you will have to train as a very effective and attentive punter, in which case you will have to learn many things about value concepts, fairs, lines and always have important information on hand. All of this is complicated and will take a lot of time and dedication, and if you get it all and become an expert in a league, you will see that becoming a punter will be more profitable, because as a punter you invest less and earn more.

Some will wonder if what I just mentioned is real, and believe me, yes it is true. In this case to be sure, just calculate your return on investment. But I can simplify it even more. Imagine the movements of a punter who bets 1 unit at an odd @ 1.90, if he wins this bet, he will have a 90% return on his unit in a single bet.
Now imagine a trader, investing 1 unit at an odd of @ 2.20 looking for a bunch of inflows and outflows to take 5% profit from this operation in a short period of time. He will invest 1 unit several times to extract 5%, and the odd value is irrelevant, however he made several entries of 1 unit and this needs to be remembered.
If we isolate only this example, the return on investment (ROI) of a trader is less than the ROI of a punter, but in the long run the trader in question, although he earns less each time, he will win much more, or in another way, a trader has less variance (curve) than a punter.

However, they are different markets and with different strategies, different banking managements and many other peculiarities that diverge.

At the end of this article, what I can conclude is that the simpler the movements that are executed in trading, the greater the security that the trader will have. And what we seek in trading is exactly that, greater security.

You need to be patient with this market and remember that this is a marathon and not a 100-meter dash. Work in any way, but go slowly and without haste, because haste is the enemy of perfection and in trading your movements need to be perfect and concise.

Good profits to all and a big hug!