JollyGreen wrote: Once your position is open you assess constantly and if it goes your way you take as much profit as possible. If it goes wrong then you close out and regroup. Simples!!
If only it were indeed 'simples!!' Jolly, but as me and no doubt hundreds of others have discovered after trying and losing for months on end, it's anything but 'simples!!'
After 3 years of trying, I find that about the only races I can win on trading are big feature races. All the rest are just too hard. It seems I simply don't have the skill to assess when a position has 'gone wrong', and after 3 years of trying and failing, I'm unlikely to ever be able to acquire these skills.
All the low grade races exhibit big price spikes and 'whip-saw' effects, where the price gets pushed in and out by a big number of ticks. As an example, on the last race I traded (which was way back in Dec, '12!), I placed a back bet on something and the price spiked out by an amazing 24 ticks! (Yes, the price literally doubled!). At this point I was simply ignoring this nonsense, and sure enough, soon the price crashed all the way back down by a huge number of ticks. I gave up trading in disgust at that point, because I had lost thousands stopping-out on these price spikes. In Dec, '12 this was happening nearly every day!
Forgive me for saying so, but it certainly looks to me that traders are deliberately batting the price back and forth to generate artificial volatility - in my view, these constant 'whip-saws' and 'price spikes' would make it near impossible for most people to judge whether a position has really 'gone wrong' or not, except for a very few races where everyone can clearly see what's happening (i.e., big feature races).