Nightmare
I have a little diary next to my desk. In it I scribble notes on the markets and what happened and any mitigating circumstances. I also keep a spreadsheet where I track what sort of activity I have been up to.
Both are key pointers for me to look at and to set expectations from. If I look on the spreadsheet and see a really good, or really poor day. I’ll flip to the diary to see what actually happened. I would recommend doing exactly the same thing. Otherwise you find it’s really easy to lose track of progress or to spot where you are going right, or wrong. Both are simple to update, store and act as great reference points.
When I looked up on my spreadsheet today for the same day last year, it was blank. I immediately dug out the diary, on it was one big word scrawled in deeply pressed pen, ‘Nightmare’.
It shows you how easy it is to forget things. It was on this day last year, just a few days before Cheltenham that Betfair had a major site outage. As a result I hardly did a thing on this day last year. Despite this mare of a Saturday it turned out Cheltenham week went just fine and there were no further outages. But it just goes to show you how easy it is to forget these major events without accurate notes. I am looking forward to not seeing a repeat today!
Putting that aside, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a useful guide for your trading in general anyhow, which is why I recommend it. Putting things into context is a useful and beneficial habit whatever you are doing in the market.
Category: Betfair, General, Trading strategies
