so in june this year i celebrated
20 years from the date at which i opened
my betfair account it seems remarkable
that i've been going for 20 years
there's lots that's happened to me in
that 20 years i've achieved a lot of the
things that i wanted to do
and then some met some really
interesting people
so what are the key lessons that i've
learned in that
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so it's been over two decades since i
opened my betfair account
and when bettingexchanges came along i
saw an
opportunity it was the first time in
history that you'd actually being able
to
bet into a market on a level playing
field you stood a really good
chance of potentially winning didn't
mean that you're guaranteed to but i
just thought well you know what
um i think that i can achieve that and
i'm going to give it a go
i had no idea where it was going to lead
i've had a fascinating journey over
those 20 years i met loads of
interesting people
and it's changed the way that i think
not only about what you do in a market
but also the way
that i live my life so
i thought it was worth sort of
expressing some of that in a video
to give you sort of some key hints and
tips about
the sort of stuff that i've learned and
things that i feel are important
but not only should you look at these as
things that you should
see in the market but you should also
reflect on these as things that could
probably change the way that you think
about life
because it certainly changed the way
that i think about all those things
as well and it's the sort of advice that
i talk to and give to my children
on their journey wherever their journey
leads them
so without further ado let's find out
what some of those key lessons are that
i've learned
over the last 20 years
so i think the first one and the most
obvious one is that impossible
is just a word there have been so many
things that i've done
in the last 20 years that seemed just
completely impossible to me
certainly when i was younger and even at
the start of this journey
it just seemed completely off the scale
of what was imaginable
however the thing that you need to be
aware of is that everybody's going to
stop you
when i quit my conventional job with a
wife and three children
20 years ago everybody thought i was
completely mad and you could imagine the
reaction that i got when they said what
you're going to do and i said
oh i've got this idea about betting on
horses you can imagine
the reaction that i got and there are
only really two people that gave me any
level of encouragement and both of them
were along the same lines of well
you've always seemed to do okay so far
so i don't see what you've got to lose
and it's probably worth giving it a shot
anyway
and i think the best bit of advice that
i had was you'll only ever regret the
things that you didn't do
and that's what sort of spurred me on
and gave me that final bit of motivation
to go forward
you begin to realize that if you're
going to do something special there are
a couple of characteristics that come
out of the woodwork one is that
most people won't do it most people
won't think that it's possible which is
why it's special
but also people won't want you to
succeed
and um you know i'm grateful for the
support that i get on this channel
because you obviously do get it
but uh you're a small minority of a much
bigger
uh slice of the pie as it were and um
the problem is that most people do not
get it and i thought sort of you know
ten years into my journey
when i proved beyond all doubt that what
i was doing was viable
that um you know that that would change
but it never did and right up until this
day
every week somebody is trying to pull
you down or stop you or
throw a spanner in the works somehow and
um
you realize that in in fact one of the
key aspects of
being successful at anything is
passion drive perseverance belligerence
you're really going to have to go
through a lot to get to what you want to
achieve
and you must not be deflected off of
that path you just have to keep on going
and sometimes that can be a little bit
difficult but ultimately if you
doing something for the right reason and
you have those characteristics
then there's no reason why you couldn't
achieve something that most people
consider
completely impossible
thinking positively will bring you
opportunities
now when i was young i always thought
that the think positive brigade
um was a bit naff really it was a bit of
psychobabble
and all of that sort of garbage but
actually i learned over time there was
actually
a really positive trait to all of this
and that is
if you uh let me use a metaphor here
if you go up to um a door
you know do you stand at the door and
just sort of think oh it's a door
or do you open the door and have a quick
look around inside figure out what's
um what's going on in there and maybe
you open that door and you will find
other doors which you then open
that sort of exemplifies um
and it shows you what a positive
attitude is it's opening doors it's
looking for opportunities
because there were problems everywhere
um if you had to wake up every morning
and think i'm not going to do anything
if i have a problem
you would halt almost immediately it's
not the fact that there are problems
it's how you overcome them
that is critically important but you'll
be surprised how
opportunities sort of come out of
nowhere so
i was in the us once catching catching a
cab i was going to say a taxi i could
have said a taxi cab
and three of us all went for it at the
same time
and we decided to share and those two
guys that i shared that cab with
are great friends of mine now and we've
all shared some wonderful journeys
together
but also you know just being open and
you know
looking for that that sort of mindset
will allow you to discover opportunities
where most people will ignore or not
even know that they exist
so i'm inquisitive um generally positive
not afraid of making mistakes looking
for
things that could occur just putting
myself out there and if you adopt that
sort of positive attitude to everything
that happens
in your life you'll begin to uncover all
sorts of wonderful
opportunities so if there's one thing
that i've learned it's do simple things
very effectively focus on
getting it right practicing it improving
and then when you've mastered something
you can move on
to the next thing people spend too much
time
and effort um endlessly qualifying what
they're planning to do this is another
weird trait that you often see in the
market
i took pity on somebody once and said to
him uh here's something give this a try
and then he just kept coming back with
one question after another and another
and it's like i'm really regretting
trying to help this person out
because like well have you tried it and
it's like well i was thinking about this
and i was a bit worried and it's like
well just try it
um but he couldn't even step over that
first line
and the fact is that when he did
eventually step over
the first line he was overthinking it
and it's like no no you're not gonna win
every time you know
just it's a sequence of events uh just
go in there practice
work on making slightly better decisions
do all of these things
um but he was unable to do it and i
think that you know it's very underrated
that you take something that's quite
simple and then you just become good at
it
that works perfectly well there's a
tendency to over qualify
over complicate look at a few things
use that to make your judgment and then
practice becoming better
sometimes it really is that simple
so if you're trading any market whether
it's financial
betting exchanges you're doing anything
that involves taking risk and
potentially getting a payoff and a
reward and there are three pillars
to trading that are critically important
maybe worth me doing a video entirely on
this subject i think it's
um a key aspect but basically
most people approach trading from a
strategy
viewpoint they will go into it and they
will sort of say oh you know what makes
money
uh what what can i buy who can tell me
uh what makes money
um but that's actually only a tiny
slither of what you need to be looking
at
you have to be looking at money
management you need to be looking at
strategies and tactics
and you need to be looking at psychology
as well and all of those three things
are key components if you're missing one
of those
out of the mix then you've potentially
going to run into problems
so money management is about stake size
how you increase your stake the sort of
stakes you're using
um what your profit you're potentially
aiming for
um this strategies and tactics side you
notice i've split it into most people
are sort of saying oh you know i want to
lay the drawer for example
but nobody seems to talk about any of
the depth behind that
um okay you've got market selection um
which is a tactic it's not part of the
strategy
but you've also got how are you going to
do it when are you going to do it
um how you're going to put the order
into the market why do you think that
you're going to do better than other
people
so you've seen me produce material and
stuff giving you clearer and clearer
direction on what you should be looking
for
and within potential as a product you
can actually see that we're
giving you that the framework in which
to produce the trade
so it's the execution of that trade that
is quite important as well and that's
why i say strategies and tactics because
the two go together
but they are separate things and if you
just have a strategy
how are you going to be other people
using the same strategy that's where the
tactical side
comes in but also psychology
your own internal psychology one thing
i've learned is people are very
different from each other
they all have different life experiences
which
give them different sort of
interpretations of how they should
behave and act
and that manifests itself in the market
so understanding how that influences you
and how you participate in the market is
very critical
but also the market is a mass psychology
type experiment and also if you're into
sports and
you know obviously looking at betting
exchanges bet engine all that stuff
that's primarily the market that we're
interested in
um you look at that and you realize that
it takes place on the field of play as
well there's the psychology going on
there
so it's critically important to
understand that if you have all three of
these things
you will do incredibly well if you learn
and work hard to understand of them you
will do incredibly well two of them
you'll probably do okay one of them
you're doomed
so it's important to have all of those
three things in place
if you're going to be an effective
trader
so picking up on the psychology of
things i think there are many facets
from here
that you can delve into this is probably
one of the biggest things that
has changed in me in 20 years is that
the
my the way i approach everything has has
completely changed
because i've studied psychology when i
first started trading i knew what i was
doing i
i could press up markets i knew how the
markets are likely to behave and
from a mathematical perspective um how
that influenced what i could see on the
screen and stuff like that
that was where i started not where i
finished that was where i started
and then i would gradually build on that
improve and refine models do all of
those things
but there were certain things that were
just bugging me consistently
um you know things that didn't seem to
make sense that i could see in 2005 i
could see in 2010 2015 and they're still
there in 2020 and i'm thinking
why is that um but the answer came to me
um about sort of 10 years ago when i
started getting really interested in the
psychology
of trading and of markets and all of
those things i'd always had an interest
in it
but it was only about 10 years ago that
i started to dive
deep into all of the literature
available and
listening to lectures and books and
buying stuff and
you know all of a sudden that really
began to form a really strong
part of the value system that i use in
life and in trading
and it just opened up a whole new world
to me
because suddenly i realized that the way
that you think
is an edge but also the the world
doesn't work the way that you think
and the way that markets work are deeply
character intuitive and by understanding
psychology you can begin to come to
terms with that
because you're going to have to unravel
all of those bad habits in order to put
them back again
in the right order and sometimes when i
actively trade a market people go well
how did you know that
it's like it's like magic and um
the fact is that what i'm looking at is
not only the way that the market's
working from a quantitative
perspective but i'm also looking at it
from a psychological perspective i'm
thinking about
what happens here why is this going to
happen how's it going to influence it
where do i expect it to be
but more importantly what are people
going to do about it
so yeah when you get to that level you
learn that thinking is an edge
all on itself so if you understand or
make an effort to really truly
understand what's going on in your head
and those of the market
and of the sports that you're watching
and you'll learn that thinking
is an edge in itself lots of people
spend a lot of time
data mining they're trying to get
themselves to the point where they start
participating in a market
and in order to do that they spend hours
days weeks months
years decades perhaps um trying to
qualify exactly what they should be
doing
so they work on tons of data they
eventually come up with something that
they feel
is going to work and then they launch
themselves into the market
and it's a complete disaster so what
critical thing have they missed off
well market participation of a strategy
affects the outcome of that strategy
some of the best things that i've ever
discovered have not come through data
mining
if you mine data you look at information
that can give you an opinion on what you
should be doing within the market the
way
that the market works and your tolerance
to certain points for them
it's a variety of different things you
can gather from that i
data mine i model and it's designed to
give me something to play around with to
understand the way that the market works
but the most critical thing for me is
active participation
if you put something into the market
even on small stakes you may discover
something that you were completely
unaware of
and a lot of the best opportunities that
i've created have come around through
that process or sometimes
completely by accident i remember taking
the kids
to the beach one day when they were
young i quickly knocked up a piece of
automation
um i modified it quickly before we go
and my wife was going come on you know
we're gonna we need to get down there i
need to beat the traffic
and it was like oh don't um and when i
was at the beach i
had a quick flick on my phone and i'm
thinking well that balance doesn't look
right
quickly bring up the pll and i was like
oh no i've completely
cocked that i forgot to do this process
within there and it's like oh no
but it made money so i stopped it um so
i could enjoy the rest of the day at the
beach
and um i went back that night and
analyzed it and out of that came a
completely new strategy that i had never
ever thought of before so yeah active
market participation
is key to everything that you do if
you're mining a bit of data
start up a piece of automation or
something just to test your assumptions
to make sure you're not heading down the
right path
or making a false assumption and there
are lots of things that data mining can
throw up that you may not find
in the market in terms of a direction
but equally in the other direction
there are lots of things that act
participation will show you that you
will never ever see
in data mining so yeah it's okay to look
at spreadsheets the other day to do all
of that stuff
but market participation is the key
be restless it's amazing actually you
know
when i was in a conventional job one of
the things i feared was living the rest
of my life
with the same role doing the same thing
every year for the
rest of my life i just thought what a
terrible situation that would be
um so i decided and that was one of the
reasons that i broke out and did my own
thing
was to do something new but you should
be restless and looking for
opportunities looking to expand what you
do
um and you know fueling that
that spirit with inside you because
there are always endless opportunities
that are sort of sitting
just in front of you but also you know
i'm very self-critical in what i do as
well i don't believe
that i have it sussed at any particular
point i'm looking at what i do
and i'm sort of saying well is there a
way to improve that have i missed
something sometimes i'll do experiments
that are the complete opposite of what
i'm currently doing just to test
that something isn't happening there
that somehow i've
particularly missed but one of the
things that i've always been keen on
doing is not having the same year
every year or not doing the same thing
i'm always constantly searching and
looking
for an opportunity or a way to vary what
i do
or to explore a new field and i'll very
often just
dive into an individual um
market situation or area that i've never
discovered before
it doesn't have to be trading it could
just be you know looking at some
particular
uh new area of something that i've never
discovered or looked at before
but that sense of restlessness and
continuous improvement
is something that's been a key part of
everything we do over 20 years i don't
want to live the same year every year
for the rest of my life so i actively
look at ways
of not doing that and you'll be amazed
at sort of what pops out at the other
end
when you head down that particular
mindset
so i hope that some of those thoughts
have been useful for you you'll probably
find that not only are they useful
in a particular market but you may find
them useful in life
as well i've learned a lot over the last
20 years i've learned so much
i've done so much it's been an
incredible journey for me
and i think that there is still plenty
more to do
it's difficult to do each one of them
justice with just a couple of minutes
talking about them
they almost require their own 30-minute
video which probably wouldn't be very
popular
um but you know if there's something
that you're interested
in me talking about a little bit deeper
then
leave me a comment and i'll see if i can
add it to the list of videos that i
could do or perhaps ask me whenever i do
my next live stream to elaborate
on particular concepts but yeah these
are things that i've learnt over 20
years
hopefully you'll be able to find some
use for them either in your trading or
in general on your life
but whatever you do i hope that you
found some of those points
very useful
you
