My bank has been battered. 

It’s not looking nice, I was really happy last month with the profit I made, that’s gone this month and a huge chunk of the bank with it. 

A whopping 30% of the starting bank is gone, it now sits at £242.75. 

Which means the 18 points profit from the previous month is gone and it’s taken with it a further 58 points with it. 

Now I have started to write this raw without looking at the data because I wanted to try and bring my feelings in the rawest form for you. 

So you can go through the emotions with me, right now I am dejected, I am pissed off, I am actually questioning whether this was a good idea. 

This was always a risk and totally new uncharted waters for me, I have manually traded for years. I am not the best trader out there, I never proclaim to be. I knew my own mind, I knew how to find the matches that worked for my ideas. 

And boy did I lean into that to the fullest! 

This automation thing is so new to me, I feel pretty shit to be honest. Shall I just go back? 

No, it’s about forward momentum. I know that this works. I’ve seen it. Adam’s had this working for himself and has seen the upside, so what do we do? 

I took some time before writing the next part of this email. 

I wanted and well frankly needed to let the emotional element calm down. I thought about all the things I know about trading, then wrote down all the things that I knew about laying horses. 

I went back to my notes when I started. One of them said… 

‘Laying horses is great but boy when those loses come they hurt, but you’ve seen the benefit staying the course can do Ryan!’ 

This was a note to myself when I was going through a tough patch only to see it come back, laying is tough because when you go through a tough patch the liabilities hurt. So what did I do next? 

I dived into the stats. 

You see my first thought was maybe I am just in at the wrong time? Did I just turn the bot on at a time when it’s going through a tough patch. 

Variance is the worst. I know this from experience. Looking at the data it would seem this too, you see I missed out on what came before which was a huge 70 points running streak, so I asked myself if I was in for that how would I be feeling? 

Well I would be at a loss slightly still but it would be a lot less, well I would carry on because it wouldn’t be as bad and I still believe in the strategy. 

Which leads me to my next question… 

But why do I believe in the strategy? 

Well I have the back data, going all the way to Aug 22 when this has performed a total of 302 points profit over that period. 

Which gives me confidence. But I am also very much aware of how much longer I can run this for? I know right now I am at the highest losing count in the history of this strategy?

When does this become simply a failed strategy? 

I cannot answer that right now, one thing I am really fighting which is totally new to me is why don’t I just turn this off and start with another strategy. But I know that’s not the right thing to do, that’s not what manually trading Ryan would do… 

Corr this trading thing is hard!

My plan… 

One thing I always learnt from Martin was if you lose half your bank then you half your stakes. 

Which is the plan for me, I have never been in this situation before and I’ll be honest I never thought I would be. Is that arrogance? Perhaps. 

Well yes. 100% it is. Because I have seen success in my own trading that I never ever imagined. I actually stupidly thought this might be a case of ‘well I’ve been doing this over 16 years, I should be able to make it work!’ 

Which isn’t true. Because I have been doing trading for all that time yes, but that doesn’t transfer to automation trading at all. It’s a totally different animal. 

One I am still hoping to tame. 

Ryan 

PS Adam is dropping his version of events as well around the same time as me, so look out for his take.