Hello peeps! I hope we’re all alright and recovered sufficiently enough from the disappointing Euro final result. It just wasn’t to be, and I feel like it was a bit of a missed opportunity for the England players to make history. Spain were the deserved winners, but I thought England could have been a bit more attacking and gone out with a bit more of a fight. Fortunately I managed to make some money on trading the Euros, so it wasn’t all doom and gloom. As previously mentioned in my last post, this was following someone called Scott who had set up a Telegraph channel where he posted his bets and trades of the day. Scott was someone that Ian Erskine (of FTS fame) recommended, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. By the way, if you’re serious about your trading, Ian is definitely someone to follow. He’s one of life’s good guys and certainly knows his stuff in relation to trading.

So, onto the task in hand – the third biggest lesson that I learnt from trading the football season 2023-24. And that was…(drum roll)…psychology! Below I’ll outline some of the major psychological issues I came across throughout last season’s football calendar, and in a large part they are related to the first 2 lessons I posted about previously.

The first major psychological issue was when a strategy I thought would be quite profitable turned out to be anything but. I found that this bad start set the tone for the rest of the season. On this point I refer back to my trading of the 2022-23 season. In this season I got off to a very good start and made a large profit in my first five months or so, reaching around the £1,200 mark. The next couple of months after this I suffered a £800 loss. Because I made the profit first and then suffered the loss, I felt that I was okay with this. But had I made a £800 loss FIRST, would I have then carried on to make a £1,200 profit??? Probably not. That’s how important it is psychologically to get off to a good start. It’s like in life – if you’ve got a good grounding with a stable family around you, then you’re more likely to make a good go of things than if you were dealt a terrible starting hand. Don’t get me wrong, I learnt an awful lot through losing money than I ever would by winning money, but getting off to a good start helps you massively from a mental side of things. Afterall, people are far more likely to quit trading losing money than they are from winning it!

So, what did I do to help me mentally? Well, I decided to ditch the new strategy as it was eating into my bank and affecting me psychologically. I decided to just stick with the type of trades that I knew had served me well in the past. This would put me in a good place mentally, using a tried and trusted method to change my mental state and also to help reduce the damage done to my bank. You see this happen in life all the time – people ditching new methodologies (or not even trying new methodologies) and going back to their tried and tested methods. Football managers for example (e.g. Gareth Southgate), will find themselves reverting to tactics that have served them so well in the past. In the Euros Gareth Southgate very often seemed to stick with his tactics of defending resolutely and not offering much in attack. Only when his team went behind did he change things up. When his team did equalise or go ahead, you then seen his team revert back to type. Frustrating but totally understandable in the circumstances. If the style of football you play gets you to finals and semi-finals, then why would you change it? This was the same for me and using the trades I knew would give me a better chance of profit. The problems arise when you stick to previously winning tactics and they no longer work, that’s when you need to adapt and change things up. Failure to do so will mean that you’ll eventually end up a loser.

I also reduced my staking to a more manageable amount (as mentioned in my previous blog post). Afterall, losing big chunks of money doesn’t help anyone psychologically. This change cost me in terms of not achieving as much profit as I could have done, which in turn really annoyed me, but it was an important required change. I just accepted that it was something that I needed to do in order to help me mentally and allow me to stay in the game longer. You hear people give up on trading due to the psychological battle they are not willing to go through on a daily basis. By changing my staking level I was determined I wasn’t going to become one of them. Yes, I might have not achieved the profit that I could have done, but long term I’ve no doubt that this approach would have benefitted me.

The last psychological issue I had was in relation to hitting a pre-determined loss amount for the season. By setting a target I did a few things that I possibly shouldn’t have, and this cost me dearly in terms of profit. Going into the last game of the season I wanted to get my losses to under £400. In setting this target, when the trades were in play I accepted profits early in those games so that I could reach the target I had previously set myself. Had I of left those trades and not cashed out early, I would have made an even bigger profit. Re-reading my blog post “Results For Week 29 – 2023-24”, I made a profit of £28 when it could have been £295. Had I have been making a profit and not trying to reduce my losses, then I would no doubt have left the trades to run rather than cashing out early. This was all about the mindset that I was in at the time. It was a very valuable lesson I learnt, and hopefully one I’ll take with me into the new season.

So, there you have it, a little glimpse into the third and final lesson learnt from the 2023-24 season. Hopefully I’ve learnt massively from these three lessons, and it’s something I’m going to take with me into the coming season. Hopefully you can also take something away from these lessons too, so you don’t have to find out the hard way. Regarding the next season, I don’t think I’m going to be doing any automation any time soon, as other pressing matters have landed on my plate. I would love to do some automation, but I have other priorities to sort out first. I’m not totally ruling it out, but it may be something that I’m going to have to put in place at some point in the season rather than before it kicks off. I’ll keep you posted.

And on that note, I’ll love you and leave you until the new season kicks off. I may post one or two updates, but my plans mainly consist of enjoying the sun and giving myself a mental break from it all before the hard work begins all over again. Enjoy your hols if you’re going away, and may the Lord be with you. Always.