Centre Court Trading

In a recent post I talked about limiting beliefs which hold us back subconsciously from behaving in ways that will make us more successful. I recently came across an article (sorry, can't find the source to reference it) which shows how cutting edge research is now showing that our subconscious beliefs can even cause molecular changes in our genes. Here's a quote from the article:

“The study investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities.
After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences… which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation."

As I've mentioned recently, I attribute much of my success to a daily practice of meditation, visualisation and self-hypnosis. Part of the reason I do this is because of the health benefits which are now becoming widely known - the above quote showing just one of the many advantages. As I've also said before, the average person doesn't change without making a conscious effort to shift their thought patterns and beliefs. The old adage "A leopard doesn't change its spots" is only true to an extent though. People don't inherently change at all unless they take significant action to break the repeating patterns and cycles of their ingrained habits and beliefs. I would say only a tiny percentage of people ever do that. At this time of year, most of us have made our resolutions but how many actually succeed with them?

If you look around online you'll find various stats on New Year's resolutions but although the numbers vary, the general theme is consistent: most people fail. And fail very quickly! I read that the AVERAGE length of time before failure is 3-4 weeks. 24 days is the figure I saw in one piece of research. So TODAY is the day that the average person will be giving up on their 2017 resolution! And overall, less than 10% of people ever succeed. There's all sorts of explanations as to why this might be but it's one definitive answer in my opinion: change will only happen long term if it occurs at a subconscious level. Biologist and expert on subconscious beliefs, Dr. Bruce Lipton, offers a more profound insight, which will give you a clear idea of why changes in our beliefs need to happen at a subconscious level for it to have any meaningful and lasting effect in our day-to-day lives:

"The major problem is that people are aware of their conscious beliefs and behaviors, but not of subconscious beliefs and behaviors. Most people don’t even acknowledge that their subconscious mind is at play, when the fact is that the subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind and that we operate 95 to 99 percent of our lives from subconscious programs.

Your subconscious beliefs are working either for you or against you, but the truth is that you are not controlling your life, because your subconscious mind supersedes all conscious control. So when you are trying to heal from a conscious level –citing affirmations and telling yourself you’re healthy– there may be an invisible subconscious program that’s sabotaging you.”

So there you have it! Unless you put some deeper level of work in, the chances of you truly changing are slim. Not saying it CAN'T happen but willpower is not enough on its own. That will get you started but unless you keep repeating the new good habit every day for months, it's almost impossible to create a new habit at a deep level. And as the stats show, most people don't have the willpower to do that. You will eventually revert back to whatever message is hidden in your subconscious, telling you to eat that Big Mac or that you'll never be good enough to get a better job or that you'd rather jack-off to Ana Ivanovic pics than go to the gym or that you will just let this trade run past your exit point this one last time...........Your subconscious ALWAYS wins! With things like meditation and hypnosis, you can actually change your DNA, change the record spinning in your mind so that you literally become a different person!

"She's retired, there may never be any more!" - a poor excuse for jacking off to this instead of improving your life.

I highly recommend Bruce Lipton's "The Biology of Belief" which is a groundbreaking book about the relatively new science of Epigenetics, which has been proven to show that environmental factors have a greater effect on our body than our genes. Our DNA is NOT set in concrete and does NOT 100% control our destiny. In fact, DNA can be altered by outside influences and that includes our own minds. If you learn to think in the correct manner, you can essentially change who you are. I can vouch for this first hand because the mental practices that I put in, day in, day out over a period of years, have given me strong, good habits which have changed my life forever. Once your subconscious mind is sending you the right messages, it becomes easier to ingrain good habits and once a habit is ingrained, it will normally stay for life.

That's how I'm able to maintain discipline when I trade. It's why I am never anything less than 100% thorough in my analysis. It's why I warm up before I even start trading. It's why I NEVER place straight bets. It's why I meditate every morning and twice a day if possible. It's why I cut out all the sugary crap (bye bye Ben and Jerrys, you will be missed!) and processed junk and started eating kale and drinking matcha tea. It's why I make sure I learn some Spanish every single day, even if it's just a couple of words because the habit is more important than the intensity. It's why I try to read at least one chapter of a book every day. It's why I'm healthier, wealthier and most importantly, happier than I've ever been. So if you're really struggling to make lasting change in your life, just remember this: your subconscious ALWAYS wins!

My recent posts have had the strong theme of self improvement and in particular, taking control of your own life; realising that we can achieve great things if we make a bigger effort. We live in an age where it's never been easier to make money, become successful and do whatever we want with our lives. Most of you reading this will be living in a democratic (roughly), developed nation with freedom for its citizens and access to the internet and so there is no excuse for not being able to attain what you desire. If you read that and thought "You can't say that, you don't know me, you don't know my circumstances, you don't know how hard that is for me" then I urge you to watch the film "The Pursuit of Happyness" starring Will Smith.

I'm not a film buff and very rarely will I sit through an entire two hour movie, as the vast majority that come out of Hollywood are, in my opinion, terrible. But occasionally, once every year or two, I see something that resonates with me on a deep level and none more so than "The Pursuit of Happyness". Yeah I know, it's 10 years old and you've probably already seen it - as I said, hardly ever watch them! But for those of you thinking that what I have said about having "no excuse" is bullshit, I suggest you re-visit this film and re-evaluate your life.

The film is based on the real life story of American Chris Gardner, who decided to give up his job as a struggling salesman to train to become a stock-broker at one of America's biggest stock-brokerage firms, Dean Witter (which eventually merged into Morgan Stanley). I won't spoil the story for you but basically, he trained for no pay in the hope he'd be taken on, whilst at the same time having to look after his toddler son by himself. They ended up homeless yet he still went to work for no pay every day. You can guess what eventually happened - it's Hollywood, it's a happy ending! But more than was shown in the film, he became a multi-millionaire, building his own brokerage empire and is now a world re-knowned speaker and philanthropist. What Chris had to go through with his son and the effort he put in to get what he wanted are a lesson in what can be achieved when you want something badly enough and take action.

I was recommended this film by a guy I barely know who, having heard about my trading experiences, thought I would enjoy it. Little did I realise what an effect it would have on me. I don't mind admitting that I was blubbing my eyes out! I occasionally get a little wet around the eyes during emotional dramas but this was NEXT LEVEL water-works! Once the tears started, I couldn't shut them off, no matter how hard I tried! Luckily, I was watching alone, it was quite an embarrassing sight. Something about this movie really got to me, really struck a chord. I think the fact Chris was a stock-broker (so a similar line of work to trading) and that we both were struggling financially but just took a chance, knowing we might fail - well, you can see the similarities. Knowing that we had to take a risk and that we could be in more trouble but believing that we would succeed. Working over and above what the average person would do and then to be rewarded in excess of what we ever expected. Of course, I'm not trying to say I'm anywhere near to the level of distress Chris was in, having a child to take care of and being out on the street, but it still resonated with me. It bought up a lot of memories of my own struggle to pay bills and the sincere threat that I might not be able to pay the rent and those emotions needed to come out, I think.

What this man showed, and what he talks about in his speeches around the world, is that no matter what your current circumstances, there is always a way out. If you take responsibility and stop blaming others or feeling sorry for yourself or complaining that you don't have enough time or enough money or resources to get the life you want, then you can achieve anything. "The Pursuit of Happyness" shows what it means to be a REAL man. And besides the grim reality of homelessness and how sad it is that even in the richest nation on Earth, so many people have no roof over their head, the film has a message of hope at its core. I wish I'd seen it years ago when I was almost down and out. What I take from it now is that I can achieve even more with my life, which is why this year, I'm really stepping it up with my non-trading projects to create multiple income streams. Long term readers will know that trading has never been a passion of mine but I'm now venturing into areas which genuinely make me smile when I get up in the morning. None of them would have been possible if it weren't for me taking that chance on tennis trading though - just as Chris Gardner took a chance with stock-brokering.

If there's one thing I want to leave this blog with, it's the knowledge that if you want something badly enough, if you take a risk and go for it, if you have faith that it will work out and if you push yourself to the limit of your capabilities, you have the power within you to achieve an incredible life. The universe has a strange way of providing you with what you want when you really apply yourself. More and more people are waking up to this now (just have a search around YouTube if you don't believe me), particularly the younger generation. If someone had told me 6 years ago when I started this blog that I would have the life I have now, I would have spat my Ben and Jerrys right back in their face! But I kept going, mostly through fear and trial and error! It doesn't have to be that way though. Fear motivates you like nothing else but it's much better to start from a good place and don't do it alone; get help any way you can (books, videos, guides, mentors), be patient, create good habits, work on yourself and NEVER GIVE UP. Then true happiness won't be too far away.

Last year, I had my first 4 figure win on a single match. I was ecstatic at the time. It felt as though I'd reached an important milestone and that I was now on the edge of turning my trading into something major. As time continued onwards and into 2014, that feeling of ecstasy dissolved. After a few dozen 4 figure wins, although still satisfying and enough to raise a smile, it had become an expected result. As the months rolled on, the joy almost entirely seeped out of those wins and my goals had shifted - I wanted to achieve even bigger wins. I suppose that is only natural, although it's weird because I can still remember how my heart used to pound furiously 5 years ago when I was close to greening up for less than £2 (I started on the Betfair minimum stake)!

But then the guilt appeared. This is a very unusual sensation to feel about your work and one I never expected. I started to think about what I was doing and whether I really deserved to be making such sums of money. If I can make 4 figure sums, often in as little as just a few minutes, for basically gambling, for doing something that doesn't contribute to society in any way whatsoever, is that OK? I'm sure this is not something that crosses every trader's mind but it does for me and I find it hard to just ignore.

Of course, it would be unbalanced to say it was just me making big wins every trade. I have plenty of losses too. It's not as though I'm Wayne Rooney, earning literally thousands of pounds per hour even when he's sitting on his arse by some 5 star hotel's private swimming pool having a sneaky fag and a sangria in the off-season. Footballers and other highly paid sports stars do get it in the neck from people for earning such bloated wages, out of proportion most would agree, with their actual contribution to society. I think most of us are in agreement that those kind of wages are obscene but hardly immoral. You can also argue that if it weren't for us, the paying public and football consumer, he wouldn't be able to command those fees anyway. If Rooney scores a goal for Manchester United but there is no one there to see it, does it really mean anything?

Heidi El Tabakh

People also tend to forget the hard work that Rooney has put in to get where he is. Just as I sometimes forget just how much graft I put in for years to get to where I am. I admit I did things the hard way and I didn't need to make it such a painful ride but nonetheless, very few successful traders reach the top without some sort of sacrifice. So why do I still feel guilty? Maybe it's because at least Rooney brings some joy to fans lives (not England fans but you get what I;m saying) and the entertainment he and his peers provide could be considered a valuable contribution to society, if we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. What does my trading do for anyone other than me? True, I've probably provided a good few mortgage downpayments, designer suits, snazzy watches or cocaine and whore evenings (depending on how you want to look at it - I prefer the latter) for Betfair directors but other than that? Not a jot. Maybe that is what pains me a little. Or maybe I just feel bad because I think about what someone doing something meaningful, like a nurse (which is usually the first profession brought up in these kind of discussions) earns in the same amount of time it takes me to green up my totally self-centred tennis trade completed in less than the time it takes to change a bed-pan.

It just doesn't feel right sometimes. Maybe if Rooney could actually see the money he earns on a screen as it comes in like in the link above, he would also feel guilty. Hell, perhaps he DOES feel guilty! Having that big all-green figure staring at you is something no other profession I can think of actually has. You can see your wages as you get them and so it magnifies the emotions involved. Rooney probably never even looks at his bank account. I certainly do and I feel good about it these days. I guess that's all that really matters. Isn't it?

The two traders who I have most looked up to since I began learning how to trade, are Mark Iverson and Matt "Jolly Green Giant" Punt.com (I also have a great deal of respect for Tradeshark but his journey is not as well documented). Mark is a genuinely nice bloke who seems very down to earth and the few personal dealings I've had with him have left me in no doubt about that. His online story is the most compelling because it's one of the few that cover the entire process of going from that initial Betfair deposit to making a quarter of a million. Matt is the guy who pretty much all of us tennis traders aspire to be. He built up from scratch and is still going strong a decade later, both as a trader and retailer of quality tinned sweetcorn. He shares much of what he does online and it's a constant reminder of what is there to be achieved if you really want it. He's also proved a generous guy in the conversations I've had with him.

My goal was initially to just make as much money per month as I did in my old job (and I really didn't make much either as a writer or before that as a teacher). I felt that I didn't want to get greedy and would be more than happy to just make enough to live off per month. I didn't even really think it was possible for a normal guy like myself, to make huge sums from trading. But when I saw what these two were doing, I gradually began to change my thinking and started to believe that I could aim for that too. There came a point last year, when things started to really take off for me, that I was convinced that I could be up there alongside these most revered of traders.

I personally don't like to talk about exactly how much I'm making and I don't tell anyone, not even my friends. I was brought up to think it is distasteful to do so and I think you'll find the same with many British people. You'll notice Mark never puts monetary figures on his graphs and I stopped showing my P&L a while back. But it's interesting to see exactly what the potential is within the markets, to know what is possible to strive for. Both Mark and Matt have liabilities in the 5 figure range, which is pretty scary territory from where I'm sitting! I'm not there yet and I don't actually need to be. So it becomes a case of, do I want to be? I'm not sure I want the added stress or the added guilt (as I mention in a recent post). I can't truly consider myself in their league unless I do push on again to that level but then, do I really want to be considered in their league? Would I get satisfaction from that? I don't spend much time on Twitter, unlike the aforementioned, who clearly both love to chat away during their trading hours. I do too but personally find it too distracting and detrimental to my trading and eyesight! But I'd probably need to do more Twitter-based activity in order to gain that same status. I thought about tweeting this little beauty from earlier this week but I couldn't quite bring myself to. Felt too much like showing-off. Besides, it's not quite £29,000! But what the hell, it's my biggest ever win so why not!

Someone recently tweeted me joking that I needed to go through the cocaine and strippers phase. It made me laugh but I think there is a grain of truth in what he said (and I'm sure he was only half joking!). I deciphered the meaning behind the tweet as being that instead of all the worrying and introspection I've been going through of late, I should just forget it by enjoying my new found monetary gains and splashing out in opulent fashion on a few vices. Maybe he's right. Maybe I need to just spend, spend, spend for a short while, get it out my system instead of over-thinking and remaining a tight-wad. Not on cocaine and strippers though. Cocaine isn't for me and never seen the point in giving away money just to be teased. Ben and Jerry's and strippers is more up my alley, though don't for one minute think I would waste the delicious ice-cream by letting it melt onto anyone's body. A friend of mine wants us to go to Las Vegas - the perfect place to splurge on pointless crap. Weird thing about that is, he's a failed gambler who would spend all night there throwing his dollars at the house and I'm a successful gambler who wouldn't even stick a quarter in a one-armed bandit!

No, I'm just not the kind of guy who is going to gleefully waste hard-earned cash on trivial shit. I've never been into material possessions and money just doesn't get me wet, so to speak. I'd much rather stay in hostels and cheap backpacker hotels, making new friends and mixing with locals, than stay in some plush 5 star palace. I love driving but I genuinely don't care about cars and know next to nothing about make and models, so shiny motor-vehicles with massive horse-power are wasted on me. I prefer a cosy flat to a big house. I do love clubbing but I go for the music, to dance and for a friendly atmosphere, not expensive bottles of champagne at exclusive table service bars where you hang out just to be seen.

I just want security and freedom, two things I never had in either of my previous jobs, which is what drove me to look for alternatives such as trading. That's what drives me to make money. Now that I have that (for the time-being at least), I'm not sure I have the ambition to move into Matt and Mark territory. They both have families to look after, which is obviously a huge motivational factor. I don't. I'm sure having that extra responsibility brings a greater focus and intensity to your trading and these guys have fingers in pies other than their own individual trading. I don't. So I need much more to keep me interested. Exactly what that is, I'm not sure yet.

They say that talking to oneself is the first sign of madness. If that's the case, I'm ready for the men in white coats and have been for quite a while. 5 years of solitary trading has turned me into a jabbering idiot - at least, that is how I'd appear if anyone spied through my keyhole. Most of the conversation (and we are talking full blown conversations, often with me taking the role of two people with opposing views) would be deathly dull stuff about whether I should lay some 16 year old Croatian prodigy who should still be in school (that really doesn't sound right, does it) rather than hitting the cover off a yellow ball in 100 degree heat in some Asian backwater. But increasingly, it is becoming more conversations about life in general.

Just the fact I'm having these conversations out loud with myself is enough to concern me (especially when I start to vary up the accents) but perhaps it's a sign I am in need of more human contact? I've always been the kind of person who is fine working alone and I enjoy my own company (I really am delightful companionship) but for the first time in a long time, I have started to crave some real-life interaction. I guess I was so deep within the trading bubble for so long, whilst I was learning and desperate to succeed, that I didn't even have time to miss other people. I was too intensely busy and highly motivated to have conversations about last night's episode of Breaking Bad, anyway. But now I have lost much of that intensity, due to the simple fact I'm doing quite well now. I'm almost on cruise-control in a sense. Auto-pilot has been activated and that has taken much of the hard focus out of my days.

Twitter would be the answer to this but I had to ban myself from using it so much because I just became too addicted. Whilst I'd love nothing more than to shoot the breeze about tennis with extremely knowledgeable tennis folk such as @hotdog6969 @theoverrule @tennisratings @darkdyson @sportdw @seancalvert1 @duckdablackswan @forcederrors (and many others I've forgotten) I just find myself getting so engrossed that my concentration wanes and I make silly mistakes on the ladders. As I have no one to chat to around the water cooler at work, this has freed up areas of my mind to go wandering absently through the great wonders of life. This can be a dangerous thing, not only because it's very easy to lose focus whilst daydreaming and it only takes a split second for that to ruin a trade but also because it means you ponder over things and start to build up worries.

Ajla Tomljanovic

What seems like another life-time ago, I was a teacher. This is about as sociable a job as you can get. No two days are the same and I was guaranteed varied conversations with many people from all kinds of backgrounds. It's the complete opposite of trading, where I literally never chat to anyone face to face and the the days all meld into one. I know other tennis traders can and do chat on Twitter or in chatrooms whilst they trade, so maybe it's only me who struggles with this aspect. I've never found a way around this and so now, I just talk to myself. Although ironically, this is an excellent technique for keeping focus and being thorough with your analysis as you trade in-play. So it's not all bad!

But I think I am now reaching the stage where perhaps solo trading is actually starting to turn me a tad insane. I have started to wonder what it would be like to have a trading partner; someone to discuss trades with in private and perhaps work together as a team. Potentially it could make a whole world of difference, providing a bit of companionship, sharing the work-load and having a second opinion on tap. Could that even work? Would that person need to physically be in the same room for it to be of any use? Would that mean I couldn't trade in my pants whilst scratching my balls, blasting house music and eating whole tubs of Ben and Jerry's anymore? Probably. Ah well.

Today, my internet went down, taking my trading software and Betfair with it. I immediately logged off, closed the laptop and headed out for a stroll and to collect that 2 for 1 offer on Ben and Jerry's Half Baked (that's the cookie dough and chocolate fudge brownie combo that I've become scarily addicted to).

Doesn't sound like much, does it. But going back less than a couple of years, I would have reacted far differently. Neck muscles would have pulled, furniture dented, doors smashed, cakes thrown at walls (once), obscenities rained down and screams pierced the air. I couldn't handle anything that went against me and the valuable time required to get back those accumulated losses. It got me thinking about what else has changed about me since I began trading (and blogging). I'm definitely stronger. I care less about what others think. My self belief is higher. I probably have a harder exterior. I worry less (though it won't seem like that from my recent posts!). I look at the challenges and obstacles of life in a much calmer and resilient manner. Overall, I'm a more relaxed, confident individual.

I don't trade as much as I did in those early years. It was a 7 day a week obsession for me but I now try not to trade on weekends - though I do occasionally get suckered into a big final or a"sure thing" on a Sunday! I take more days off during the week too. I have two holidays planned for this year and one of them is during the tennis season - this is unheard of for me! I'm still acutely aware that I should make hay whilst the sun shines and so still treat it as an +8 hour a day job but I'm just a lot more relaxed about my time off now. It used to play on my mind and I'd worry about whether I was doing the right thing by socialising instead of trading but these days, it doesn't register. If I feel like going out, I go out. I could just as easily stay in and end up losing money, which only makes the whole situation even worse - a double whammy of cash down the plughole and a missed date with a fully-loaded chick (and yes, I have actually cancelled dates just to stay in and trade before!).

I'd say this year has been the first when I've been truly content with my trading life and the work-life balance. There's no coincidence that I also am more profitable and financially stable for the first time. Once those worries about how much you have to survive on for the foreseeable future dissipate, it makes it very easy to relax and just go with the flow. Then all of a sudden, lesser worries (such as which ISA should I put my savings into?, am I talking to myself too much?, am I eating too much Ben and Jerry's? and what the hell is an ISA anyway?) start taking the place of the older, serious ones (like can I pay the rent this month?, have I dislocated my shoulder from punching the door too hard? and is this really worth me staying up till 5am after another 16 hour day hunched over a laptop sweating on some 17 year old Serbian girl as she pumps yet another forehand into the net costing me a month's worth of groceries in the process?). I believe the former worries are known as "First world problems" (with a hashtag stuck to the front of course). If those are the only worries you've got, then life must be pretty sweet. But I'm just not sure if I'm being totally fulfilled by the actual work anymore.

Katarzyna Piter

The challenge of cracking trading has gone and I never really figured how that would affect me. I guess you don't know until it happens but I didn't really think it would be an issue if the money was rolling in. I thought I wouldn't care as long as I was comfortable financially and able to facilitate an active social life. But now, I'm wondering if I need more than that. My outlook is starting to change. Don't get me wrong, trading for a living is a wonderful opportunity and has changed my life in ways I never thought were possible. I thank my lucky stars every day that I can do what I do but I also know that there's more to life than money. I have realised that I'm not a money-driven person and I think you really need to be in order to be a pro trader because you aren't really getting any satisfaction from helping others, contributing to society or creating anything interesting. Whilst I was learning how to trade, all of this didn't bother me but now, it really is causing me to re-evaluate my work.

I know I have a lot to offer the world in some capacity but at the same time, I'd be stupid to throw away the incredible income stream I have fought so hard to generate. It's a real conundrum................just like wondering whether I should eat a full tub of Ben and Jerry's in one day (I should).

There's nothing more damning or shameful in the betting world than to be labelled a mug. I've seen arguments on forums between traders where this one, 3 letter word, is thrown around liberally as the ultimate derogatory term. It seems to bring the very worst out in people! You could put a gambler down by slagging off their Mum or questioning their sexual orientation but it means NOTHING compared to the assertion that you just might be gullible when it comes to placing money on sporting outcomes. That you've been suckered in somehow; perhaps by the lure of a big name playing a "no-hoper" or that FREE money lying around the tennis markets. It suggests that we are stupid when it comes to money, lacking capability when it comes to sporting knowledge - a double whammy for most men in this testosterone fuelled world!

We all want to believe we are not the stereotypical mug trader, right? It's not as simple as just looking at your P&L. We all know of the trader who does all the wrong things, yet still flukes himself some profit - in the short term. No, what makes a true shrewdie, is one who does the right things, day in, day out, trade after trade, rain or shine, hangover or no hangover. It's all about the process......though of course, if there's still no profit after the correct processes, then you're still a mug!

Well now is your chance to put the argument to bed once and for all. The following list of 20 things that your typical shrewd trader will almost certainly do and 20 things your mug punter will usually do, will give you some idea as to where you are on the sliding scale of Shrewd to Mug. For every Shrewd thing that you can honestly agree with that you do (and 1 time doesn't count!) you gain 5 points. But for every Mug thing you do, you lose 5 points. The max score is 100, lowest is -100. Let's see just how good a trader you really are.........

A shrewd choice of Eugenie Bouchard photo, I think you'll agree

SHREWD TRADER

Takes detailed notes on EVERY trade
Warms up before every session (i.e. no firing up the ladder and going straight into the market, cold)
Does research before every match
Cools down after every session (i.e. analyses notes and/or prepares for next session)
Does statistical analysis of P&L results (every day, week or month)
Does self development or psychological work to strengthen mindset
Never, ever chases losses
Looks for value on EVERY trade
Is constantly reading, learning and looking to improve
Knows his strategy inside out and never strays from it
Always re-invests some profit into the trading bank
Is not concerned with following the market/money or picking the winner of the match
Has a solid staking plan that he knows by heart
Knows their strike rate and how often they need to win (at least roughly) to be profitable
Has been consistently profitable for at least one year
Never gets distracted by anything whilst trading (family, friends, internet, phone, TV)
Uses the bank primarily as a safeguard against a bad run of losses, not as funding for trades
Does not allow losses to affect them personally / put them in a bad mood
Has a back up plan in case internet and/or betting exchange goes down
Learns or has learned, from other successful traders, rather than just trial and error

MUG TRADER

Never takes notes or only writes down numbers, with no explanations
Goes in cold to every trade, never or rarely with any prep work
Zero research or just a quick look at H2H or one simple stat
Never does specific work away from the ladders, on mindset, psychology or self development
Never reads trading-related books or stopped a while back
Chases losses, even if just on the odd occasion
Cannot quickly and confidently say what his bank management strategy is
Messes around online or on his phone at same time as trading
Does not feel secure with strategy and often experiments with new ones (especially during a bad run)
Does not understand the concept of value or understands it but never looks for it
Places trades based purely on the action in the match, rather than the price
Takes out all profit and never leaves it in trading bank to re-invest
Mostly looks to follow the market/money and get on the winner
Randomly chooses stakes sizes with little or no thought behind the decision
Never analyses P&L results to find trends and see what is working or not
Does not know their strike rate
Regularly risks large portions of their bank on one trade (over 50%)
Lets a losing trade dictate how they feel emotionally e.g. makes them angry, sad, frustrated
Blames other people or the market for losses
Tries to trade several matches at once, despite never being consistently profitable with just one match

RESULTS ANALYSIS

100 = You are the very definition of SHREWD. If you are not a very profitable trader, then I'm afraid you need to be more honest with your answers......

50 = You're probably a half-decent trader......but you can still improve with a few tweaks here and there. Or you have been quite successful but only short term. If you don't up your game though, it won't last.

0 = Borderline mugage. You haven't worked out how to trade effectively yet. You're not a total lost cause though. Unless you've been doing this for years. Then you really should consider giving up.....

-50 = You're a MUG. Sorry but you need to be told the truth. Accept this fact and you might just be able to learn, change and become shrewd in time.

-100 = How are you even able to afford the internet access required to read this blog post?! Try crochet or something with less risk involved, because trading isn't for you. Careful with that needle though......

OK, that was all just a bit of fun! However, there may be some truth in your results.......if you haven't quite made it as a bonafide shrewdie yet, maybe I can help? Check out my Sultan Tennis Trading Guide for more details.

Two years ago I wrote a post called "Guilty", where I explained how making large sums of money had triggered a guilty conscience within me. I began to ask myself the question "Is it morally OK for me to earn such huge amounts of money, when millions of people across the globe are living in poverty or working long, back-breaking hours whilst often contributing far more to society than I am?". It seemed at the time that I was pretty much answering my own question. There was no way I could justify what I was doing in the context of how valuable it was to society as a whole. I was struggling to find any kind of personal solace from my work as a trader. It bugged me enough to consider giving up trading altogether.

Since then, I've had a complete u-turn on this belief. In fact, I now realise that this was a limiting belief that was stopping me from being even more successful financially. I went through a period of deep introspection, where I basically pulled apart all of my views about the world: from perceptions of myself and other individuals and groups of society, to my views on major topics such as religion, race, science, politics and history to deeper views about the very nature of humans and our role in the universe. You see, I thought I pretty much had it all sussed. I considered myself to be well educated and had a staunch view on almost every subject that was fairly unlikely to shift without very strong evidence to the contrary. Yet at the same time considered myself to be extremely open-minded and non-judgmental. But once I started to dive deep into my thought processes and belief systems, I soon discovered that I was not as open-minded or non-judgmental as I thought. In fact, I found out that I had dozens and dozens of beliefs that were not totally my own but appropriated from other people and were often totally misguided, downright wrong or worse still, limiting my capacity for growth i.e. they were screwing up my life!

Most of what we believe doesn't come from any objective research, where we actively study both sides of an argument and come to an unbiased conclusion. It comes from snippets of info here and there, often from biased or misinformed sources or from the same people (friends, family, work-colleagues, media outlets) who often have the exact same outlook as we do. Or they were forced upon us as impressionable children and become "fact" because that's all we know or because we automatically trust those closest to us. This is how religion is passed down from generation to generation. Very little to do with choice. Religion is almost always an unchallenged belief passed down automatically from parent to child. Pull apart all your beliefs that you have about the world and yourself and you'll no doubt discover most of them began in your childhood. You'll also discover that many of them have little reasoning or logic behind them and are actually damaging you.

One of my biggest limiting beliefs was around money. As an adult, I saw that occasionally I was getting labelled as stingy (usually by women!) and whilst I would always deny it and go to great lengths to argue that I had to be careful with my money because I didn't have much, I knew that deep down, I was always very conscious about how much money I had. I would obsess over silly little things, such as searching around for hours online just to get a product a few extra pennies cheaper, or timing my round on a night out to make sure that I had bought at least the same number of drinks (or less!) as everyone else. I didn't want to be like this - it wasn't fun and any satisfaction I got from saving a couple of quid soon evaporated. And I never seemed to have much in my bank account no matter how much I scrimped and saved. But I now realise that I acted this way because I had a belief that I had to be cautious with money.

You think this money cares what you think?! Hell no!!

When I delved into where that came from, it didn't take long to settle at my father. He's one of those people who'd pick empty toothpaste tubes out of the bin that you'd thrown away because, if you struggled for 10 minutes squeezing the flattened tube with every fibre of your being till your fingers bled, you could probably still get out a pea-sized amount of paste for one last brush. But then, he is part of a generation that grew up believing that we live in a world of lack and that it is noble to save and not waste anything no matter how small. I was always acutely aware that my family didn't have much money growing up and so was super conscious not to ask for any expensive labels or demand much for birthdays. This stayed with me right up to the years when I began trading and I believe were a key reason that I struggled for so long accepting losses. But even more so, I believe that when I did start becoming successful, they placed a ceiling on what I could accrue because I started to feel guilty. Once my limiting self beliefs about money were eradicated, I no longer felt guilty and my trading hit new levels of prosperity after that.

You see, money doesn't care what you think of it! Too many of us are too heavily invested emotionally with money. We don't understand what money really is, which is a piece of paper with a number written on it that serves a function. That's it! But when most of us think about money, we think about what we can buy with it: a house, a car, a smartphone, a holiday, a month's rent, pay off debt etc. So we are invested emotionally in the money. When you see that trading bank decreasing, that red figure getting larger on your screen, you are more than likely thinking about the things you wanted (or worse, NEEDED) to spend that money on. You have too much emotion invested in it. But it stems from a limiting belief about money, which is that money is more than just a piece of paper serving a function (to eliminate the need for a barter system).

Many people see money as the be all and end all of life. They treat it as a commodity, which it isn't; it's a tool which can help you to get commodities. They see it as the answer to all their problems, the one thing that will make them happy (which it definitely won't on it's own, although it can help get you closer towards happiness). Then there's the opposite end of the spectrum: those who see money as negative. They see it as something which you have to be ultra careful with because it's scarce, finite and tough to get (none of which is true). They may think they don't deserve to earn large sums or even fear having the responsibility of looking after it. They use sayings which are ubiquitous in society such as "Money is the root of all evil" and "Money doesn't grow on trees" and what they build is a self-limiting mindset which becomes stuck in their subconscious. And that controls +95% of what you do, so you are pretty much screwed! The sooner you realise money doesn't care what you think about it, the sooner you'll acquire more of it.

Once I realised that money isn't scarce (in fact, it's abundant), I started to change my beliefs. Once I realised that being stingy and scrimping and saving were not as necessary as I was making it out to be, my habits started to slowly evolve. Once I realised that rich people are not all morally bankrupt scammers and being wealthy is a blessing, I began to believe that I could make large sums of money. Once I realised that the more money you have, the more you can help others by giving to charity, being more generous with friends or building a business based on philanthropy (which is what I'm going to be doing in future) it got rid of all my guilt and opened up the flood-gates in terms of the amount of money I was making. Without those limiting beliefs, my subconscious was no longer holding me back and so my trading actually improved. And without that, I couldn't now be working towards something that is truly rewarding and gives me greater pleasure than any material thing I can buy.

Perhaps the biggest turning point for me as a trader was when I read the book "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. For those not familiar, this book was written way back in the 1930s following the American depression and was really one of the world's first "self help" books, going on to sell millions of copies worldwide. Originally intended to help Americans find a way out of the appalling economic mess caused by the Wall Street crash, which left millions of Americans homeless, penniless or in dire straights, it has become the grand-daddy of all self development books and is touted by all the big names in the self development field today as one of the key aids in their success. I know it was in turning me from a good trader into a wealthy trader.

The over-riding principle of this book is that the power lies within any person, no matter what their circumstances, to build the life that they want and achieve absolutely anything they put their mind too. In essence, by thinking in the right manner, you can become rich. Rich doesn't necessarily mean in monetary terms (although that is possible and a top reason why people are attracted to the book) but also rich in terms of every aspect in life: relationships, health, work etc. Most people attempt to find success by looking outwardly: to external factors such as other people and circumstances.Or they believe that they cannot change their own circumstances and use this is an excuse not to. I've written about this in recent posts but I believe that the main factor in how successful someone is as a trader has nothing to do with talent. It's about how much the person is willing to do to become successful. "Think and Grow Rich" really backs this up with a series of anecdotes about famous as well as ordinary, unknown people, who found success using the basic principles outlined by Napoleon Hill. Every one of them, whether consciously or unconsciously, adhere to the 4 main principles of success: Desire, Faith, Action and Persistence.

Hill states that you must possess not just desire for what you want to achieve but a BURNING desire. That might seem like a trivial difference but in reality there is a crucial difference. I think almost everyone who gets into trading has a desire to make a lot of money, be successful and/or do it professionally. But I can guarantee you that it is only the ones who have a BURNING desire who actually succeed. We all know the success rate in trading. The 5%. If we go by this figure, 95% of traders have desire to succeed. Which means the desire isn't strong enough. If it was, they WOULD be successful. No ifs, ands or buts. Well, that's not quite true actually. Because you also need to believe you can be successful.

I know traders who have that burning desire, usually because they are driven by their current circumstances not being good and really want to improve their life but deep down, they don't really believe they will succeed. They have a negative mindset. When that is the case, it usually means that the first sign of failure (and in trading, that is a 100% certainty to happen at some point) they give up. "Well, I didn't think I would be successful anyway and this loss just reinforces that, so why bother?". Every successful trader at first had to have faith that they would succeed. Not "might" or "maybe" but "definitely". It's OK to have doubts, perfectly natural that you will but you still have to believe for the majority of the time, that you will ride through the rough times and definitely get there eventually. I always knew I would be a successful trader. I didn't know at what point it would happen, I knew there would be setbacks and tough moments but I always had faith in myself and that it would all work out in the end.

This faith, twinned with desire, then makes it almost a certainty that you will be driven to action. This is the real meat of it all, where you make plans and get to work on them to produce the results you want. In trading terms, this is where you'll do your research, test strategies, analyse the market, read about psychology and dive deep into learning trading inside out. This can actually be a lot of fun and most of you reading this will have got to this stage. But unfortunately, most of you will be beaten by the 4th and final stage: persistence. In other words, you will give up.

Ladyboys (yes, they are!) - absolutely nothing to do with sexual transmutation.

Once the first bank is busted, most people never go back, too burnt by the experience. A sizeable proportion will refill the bank and give it a second shot but will eventually lose it again and give up. The number of returning traders gradually decreases until only a small band are left grinding it out. They might not lose any money but the majority of them will also give up, fed up of treading water or not getting the huge returns they desire. That just leaves a small but hardy band - the 5%. The ones who refuse to give up. The ones who always find a way to build that bank again for another shot, no matter how long it takes. The ones who never blame the market, or the software, or the players or other people in the industry. The ones who only say "How can I improve? How can I learn from my mistakes?". The ones who tweak their plans till they get the desired outcome. The ones who have absolute faith in themselves. The ones who have a burning desire to succeed. The ones who understand that they control their own destiny.

Of course, it's not as simple as just applying those 4 rules. Most of us have limiting beliefs in our subconscious (which I delved into in my previous post) which make it very tough to make headway with trading. Napoleon Hill talks about how this can be overcome and uses concepts which at the time were revolutionary but that today are widely used yet still often frowned upon as being "new age" or "woo-woo". I'm talking primarily about hypnosis and meditation (which he refers to as "auto-suggestion"). I consider the two inter-changeable and that it's actually visualisation that is the most important aspect of both. It's something I do every day and I can only speak from personal experience (although if you read about pretty much every well known successful person in the modern era, they almost all meditate/visualise regularly) but it does work. Hill even talks about sexual transmutation, which does seem at first a bit out-there but really makes sense when you break it down: stop wasting your time jacking off to porn/chasing women on Tinder and use that time and energy to achieve something meaningful! Nicola Tesla remained a virgin his entire life and look what he achieved! Might be a bit too extreme for most men, granted!

I was initially put onto this book by Mark Iverson, who mentioned on his blog what an important factor this was in his success. Unfortunately, I only skimmed through it, believing I was doing fine and some of the concepts inside were a bit too weird for my liking. A few years later, I came back to it, read it thoroughly and crucially with an open-mind and applied the concepts with absolute faith. My profits sky-rocketed. That's all you really need to know.

I've spoken to hundreds of aspiring traders in my career as a tennis trader. These are the top reasons that most people tend to think cause traders to bomb-out:

1. Poor strategy
2. Market is too tough/against them/rigged
3. Don't have the right trading skills/natural talent/aptitude

I've come to realise that these reasons are merely symptoms of the underlying causes of failure. The reality of why most people fail at trading is this:

1. Negative mindset
2. Motivation/desire not strong enough
3. Don't work on themselves

What do all these things have in common? They are all MENTAL issues. The first 3 reasons I listed are all specific to trading itself. The second 3 not only apply to trading but ANYTHING in life. So sort out those 3 mental issues and the 3 that are specific to trading will automatically resolve themselves.

Let's look at number 1: negative mindset. This is a mental issue which has its roots in low self-esteem. If you deep down don't think you will succeed at anything, you are guaranteed to fail. You can have a bank as big as Warren Buffet and every one of his strategies and you will still end up a loser because you already view YOURSELF as a loser. In my experience, although it may seem on the surface that most people are the opposite and get into trading believing that they are going to become a millionaire in 6 months, I see far more people who aim much lower than this. It's not because they are being "realistic" or "humble", it's because they don't think they are going to succeed. My advice is always to aim high but set a goal that is believable. If you aim low, you'll never get more than low and you probably won't even get that because there's a reason you aim low - you don't have the confidence or belief in yourself to be a winner.

I've never met anyone successful in any field who isn't positive. It's that simple. People who are naturally more negative in their general outlook on life are that way for a reason. Life has knocked them around a bit. We aren't born negative. It's something drilled into us either by bad parents or by bad experiences. I should know, I used to be negative. At the time, I would've said I was just very sarcastic or just being realistic. But as I got older and was able to examine myself objectively (and with a good talking to from a friend!) I realised that I was actually cynical, depressed, morose, pessimistic and downright negative! And guess what? I was also highly unsuccessful. What I didn't realise at the time was that I was highly unsuccessful largely BECAUSE I was negative. Once I worked this out, a light-switch flicked on and everything started to change in my life. Almost instantly.

Many traders with a negative mindset will also try to learn trading entirely through trial and error and inevitably crash n burn. It's because they refuse to get help from others. Buying a book or a guide is often the last thing they do. They are more likely to scream "SCAMMER!" than to conceive of the idea that someone who has achieved what they are trying to might actually want to charge something in return for the hard graft they put in learning the ropes the hard way, and sharing that knowledge so that others don't have to. You've got no chance of making money in the trading game if you are negative because only a positive person has the willpower to keep going once the inevitable losses, bust banks and endless grind start to wear you down. Pessimists give up easily: optimists keep going for longer.

Onto number 2. I wrote in my previous post about having desire or more specifically a burning desire that will motivate you to get off your fat arse and start taking action. OK, you're still sitting on that fat arse when you trade but mentally, you are going to have to work those brain cells and fire up those neurons! Because in my honest opinion, most people fail at trading purely because they don't want it enough. Not enough to cancel that night out down the pub watching the match with the lads, to instead stay indoors and trade it alone. Not enough to cancel that date with that girl you don't even really fancy that much but think there might be a chance of getting some tonight, rather than spend quality time watching round 1, 250 level tennis, in front of 10 spectators. Not enough to bother firing up the laptop to stare at a bunch of flashing numbers looking for patterns for three hours instead of firing up the laptop to binge watch another pointless Netflix show or jerking off to MILFs whilst shovelling Cheetos down your gullet because you're "too tired" after a hard day's graft. Not enough to sit and write down goals and plans and create strategies and tweak them and analyse graphs and read books (heaven forbid, reading!!) rather than just turn up at match time after drinking six pints and hope it all just "happens". Not enough to get out of that comfort zone of repetitive habits which control their life and mean that whilst they will probably always have a standard income, live in a standard house, with a standard 9-5 job, with a standard life, it will never amount to anything exciting or adventurous or abundant or wealthy or deep down, truly happy.

Too much time staring at this and not putting the hours in. STOP LOOKING!!

What I usually see in most traders is too much focus on strategy. It's all about finding a strategy. Gotta get a good strategy! If I can just get a strategy that makes money, I'll be rich! What they don't realise is, it's not the strategy that will make you profit, it's the IMPLEMENTATION of the strategy. And most traders cannot implement a strategy properly, not matter how easy or tried and tested it is. Why? This brings us to number 3: because they do not work on themselves. I know of traders who will work ridiculously long hours day in, day out, trying to find or improve strategies. You cannot fault them for desire and effort. But they do little to no work on the one thing that might just make one of those strategies work - THEMSELVES!!

What do I mean by this? I mean deeply analysing their own thoughts, behaviours, habits and mentality. Trading is a mental game. Yes, you need a good strategy, the numbers have to add up but it's not as tough as most people seem to think to find a workable strategy. Mine is very simple. Buy low, sell high, basically. It's not hard to craft something from that. What IS hard is getting through all the crap stuck in our subconscious mind: all the limiting beliefs, the fear, the gambling mentality, the ego, the bad habits, repeating patterns. Most people try to ignore it and hope it goes away - IT WON'T!! Nothing will change unless you actively work on it. You could be sitting on a goldmine of a strategy but you'll never be able to get to the gold because you don't do any work on the thing that operates the digger - your mind!

Strategies or ideas for creating strategies are easy to find once you have the desire and the belief. Having the right trading skills (patience, discipline, numeracy, value spotting etc) are things that can be learnt. It's not about this myth of "natural talent". Some have a better aptitude for trading than others but it's nothing that can't be learnt, especially if you're willing to put the hours in and let others teach you. Work on yourself and you can be as good as the very best traders. As for blaming the market or other traders, that's a result of a negative mindset. There's always ways of making money in any liquid market. If you haven't found it, it's just because you've not persevered long enough. And that's all about mindset.

“The study investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities.
After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences… which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation."

"The major problem is that people are aware of their conscious beliefs and behaviors, but not of subconscious beliefs and behaviors. Most people don’t even acknowledge that their subconscious mind is at play, when the fact is that the subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind and that we operate 95 to 99 percent of our lives from subconscious programs.

Your subconscious beliefs are working either for you or against you, but the truth is that you are not controlling your life, because your subconscious mind supersedes all conscious control. So when you are trying to heal from a conscious level –citing affirmations and telling yourself you’re healthy– there may be an invisible subconscious program that’s sabotaging you.”

"She's retired, there may never be any more!" - a poor excuse for jacking off to this instead of improving your life.

Most people think it's a good strategy - it's not. Because a good strategy won't work in the wrong hands.

Many think you need to have certain personality traits or skills;

Numerate
Disciplined
Analytical
Strong minded

Nope. Wrong again.

They will all help, of course. You certainly need to be very disciplined. But numeracy is something that can be learnt, regardless of how bad you are at it now. So are analystical skills, particularly the ones needed in trading which mostly require a knowledge of how to analyse stats.

Strong minded? That's a subjective thing. What one person evaluates as being strong minded, another person may disagree with and have another definition. In terms of trading, what does strong minded mean? Sticking to your strategy. Not chasing losses. It's more discipline than a strong mind.

There are people out there who you might consider to be tough mentally, but when it comes to money or trading, they completely lose the plot! Different ball game to what most people are used to in their day to day lives. So no, I don't consider being strong minded the most important thing.

There are even some people who are convinced it's all rigged and you can't get anywhere without some form of major advantage over the market;

Fast pics
Courtsiding
A massive bank that only a consortium would have

I have none of that. You don't need them. Please stop listening to anyone who spouts such bilge. They are normally the conspiracy theory types, you know the ones, with unreasonable amounts of anger and a huge chip on their shoulder.

The number one thing you need to be a successful trader iiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssss.....................

Vitalia Diatchenko: Positively Gorgeous!

A POSITIVE MINDSET

Because for many people, that is much harder to develop than anything else.

Think about it.

Most people with negative mindsets, glass half-full types, pessemistic individuals, have been thinking this way for many years - since they were kids, for many.

Children aren't born negative though. It's experiences and upbringing that plaster over a child's natural optimism, inquisitiveness and exhuberance. When you have years and possibly decades of negative thinking, what that does is reinforce the neural pathways in your brain. It makes them even deeper entrenched in negative thought processes, and even harder to break what has become a bad habit that they subconsciously slip into.

The only way out then, is some serious self development, therapy and a willingness to admit they are wrong; and most negative people never do that! The old addage;

"A leopard doesn't change its spots"

or

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks,"

are false.

Wrong, wrong, wrong in every possible way!! The fairly recent discovery of neuroplasticity proves that the brain never stops developing and shifting in some way.

But it does become a lot harder to change as we get older, purely because we have years and years of limiting beliefs about who we are and what we can change. It's not because it can't be done, it's because we either THINK it can't be done or we don't WANT it to be done!

Everything I've mentioned, every skill, every personality trait, can be LEARNED. But it's much easier, in my opinion, to study and learn about strategies and numeracy and bank management and even becoming disciplined and strong minded, than it is to learn to be positive, if you are negative.

Because that's a bigger part of who you are and will probably have been an ingrained part of your personality for many years. Therefore, many negative people don't even believe that they ARE negative!

They lack the self awareness required to make that call. I know this because I was that person, when I was younger! Fortunately for me, someone actually told me I was negative (in a nice way!) and it caused me to reassess the way I was acting and what I was thinking.

It's no exaggeration to say it changed my life. I gradually became more and more positive, to the point where I am today, where I'm always positive, no matter what. And it has had an extraordinary impact on my life. It is the single most important change that has brought me success when I had relatively little before.

So if you doubt yourself.
If you always see the negative in things.
If you are always skeptical about everything.
If you treat yourself badly or hate who you are.
If you look upon the world and others with suspicion.
If you are constantly judging others and gossiping.
If you are quick to shout "scam!", run people down or mock their opinions.
If you are stingy or closed minded or selfish.
If you live with fear of life, fear of risk, fear of certain people.
I ask you to think about if it has got you where you want to be in life.

My guess is, it hasn't. You can change, if you put in the work. I guarantee, you will see good things come into your life. Including an improvement in your trading! Why?

Because only those with a positive mindset will keep going when trading gets tough (which it will!).

Only the positive thinker, doesn't blame anyone else for their failures and sees them as a neccessary stepping stone to becoming a better trader.

Only those with a positive outlook will realise how lucky they are to have such an incredible opportunity to make money and continue to put in the work required to make trading success a reality.

As Winston Churchill once said:

"The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible and acheives the impossible."

Heidi El Tabakh

I hate statistical analysis. It was one of the modules of my university course that I reluctantly had to do and it was by far my most hated one. I mostly recall trying to stay awake in lectures and taking the piss out of my tutor with a friend because he was so bloody boring - probably as you would expect from someone who was that into statistical analysis (that's a joke there, don't start crying stat fans!). Who knew it would end up the most useful part of my entire degree? So I had a good basic understanding of things like probability, variance, outliers and how to collate and interpret information well before I became a trader. It's something most traders don't pay enough attention to. It's something I didn't pay enough attention to, for too long.

Despite the knowledge I have, it is only fairly recently that I've actually bothered to store all my P&L data in graphs and charts. There's absolutely no way I would ever have bothered to do so using mathematical software but last year I discovered a fantastic website called "MyBetLog.com". This superb piece of kit is a must for all lazy gits such as myself, who can't (or can't be bothered to) use Excel. With just a few simple clicks, you can download your Betfair P&L onto your PC and then onto MyBetLog, where it is instantly turned into a variety of pie-charts, graphs and stats such as your average loss, average win and strike rate.

I've picked out the two most important/interesting graphs for you, which are my daily P&L and overall P&L (running from the start of the tennis season to July). As you can see, it's been a decent year for me so far.

December was my only losing month, though hardly counts as it was just 4 days of trading. The trend has been upwards ever since then, with April my best month and June my worst. If the trend continues, I could hit the super premium charge in roughly one year - a scary thought! As you can see, I have my fair share of losing days and my strike rate obviously shows that I'm very used to losing trades but it just goes to show that trading isn't about picking winners.

One thing I love about graphs is that they make everything seem a bit more real. When you are just looking at numbers, you don't quite get that same sense of exactly how well or how badly you are doing. Looking at these graphs (which I had updated a couple of weeks ago after 3 months of not bothering) they do put things a little into perspective for me. I think I'd taken for granted just how well I was doing and forgot to give myself a congratulatory pat on the back every so often. I've started to focus too much on the negative side of trading and not enough on the positive. Admittedly, the positive is mostly profit-related but nonetheless it's a very big positive that many people would kill for and I should remember that. But the negatives that I have written about in recent weeks are still very real. This is what I am weighing up at the moment. What's more important to me - the money and freedom or being more deeply fulfilled with a sense of purpose, challenge, enjoyment and community?

As I've said before, I feel I have a lot to offer the world in some capacity. I was thinking of becoming one of them political mediator whatsits. You know, the guys what sort out big arguments just by using their mouths. I reckon I'd be dead good at that, it's just talking sense really, innit? Take that Middle East war for example. I could get in there and sort that mess out no problem. You've got them Palestinians. Now, I know they're all pissed off cos their leader, Tony Pulis, is dead but it's really no need to start kicking off and firing rockets and shit. And the Isaralites, right, they're dropping bombs on UEFA refugee training camps and stuff - BANG out of order. I'd just go in there, to Africa or whatever, sit them down with a few pints and some pork scratchings and say "Lads, you know god doesn't even exist, right? Have you not heard of the The Big Bang Theory? No, I don't mean that pile-o-shite American sitcom that daft lasses find funny. Google it. So all this kerfuffle is a waste of time, dudes!". Out come the Ipads, job's a good 'un. I'm telling you, super premium charge in one year, Nobel Peace Prize in two.

Much introspection has littered my blog posts recently. I genuinely had no intention of ever lifting my finger to keyboard (doesn't have any of the romanticism of "pen to paper" does it?) again, back at the start of the year. I haven't missed blogging or the online trading community one little bit. It's been a restful hiatus for me and my trading has blossomed during that time but as long term readers will know, one of my passions is writing and it's what I did for a living before I was a trader. I miss it. For those less creative or who don't quite understand, sometimes you get these bursts of energy and inspiration which have to be released and this blog is my best outlet for that (140 characters on Twitter doesn't really cut it!). I've been feeling that need more and more this summer and it has finally spilled over, uncontainable no more!

Anyway, I digress. Today, I actually have come to a major decision. It's been building for a while now and you perhaps won't be surprised if you've read any of my recent blog posts but I've decided that I no longer want to be a professional tennis trader. As you'll know, I had planned a round the world trip next year which was to take place from July - December. Six months of backpacking and seeing parts of the world I'd never been to before. Afterwards, it was my intention to just pick up trading again when the tennis season began in January and carry on my usual work on the ladders. But I don't think I can.

I remember what it was like when I last travelled, which was not long before I started to learn to trade. I was gone for almost a whole year that time and settling back into normal life was extremely difficult. I'd already made up my mind that I didn't want to go back to my 9-5 career and needed a change of direction so that I could be my own boss and have greater freedom - namely so I could travel again! Little did I know at the time, that the gambling industry (something I knew next to nothing about and had never partaken in) would provide the job that would facilitate this freedom. But that's exactly what it is to me, a job. It's not a career. A damn good job if you can get it and one I really appreciate because of how hard I worked to get it. But a job nonetheless. And I need a career - one that I will truly enjoy, feel like I'm contributing to society in some way and with more human contact. I don't know what that career will be (obviously not totally ruling out political mediator just yet) but I hope to stumble across that when I'm in some foreign country next year, perhaps whilst strolling barefoot along a tropical beach!

I just feel as though I'm wasting my talents and am not being challenged mentally. The Academy has been a great help in aiding my focus and making my days more purposeful and varied but at the end of the day, I'm still sat alone at a PC talking to myself. It's not enough.

Camila Giorgi

I'm not quitting just yet. I want to hit that Super Premium Charge and my projections mean I might just reach that around the middle of 2015. The thought of giving away 50% of my profit to Betunfair turns my stomach and as much as I'd still be making a substantial sum each month, I feel as though I'd rather use my time to do something more worthwhile with my life. Returning to England with the travel-blues and then forcing myself to sit down and stare at a computer for 8 hours a day knowing that 4 of those hours are basically me lining some Betfair fat cat's pockets with cocaine and whore dollars, is chundersome (I made that word up - this is what happens when writers don't write for so long. Feel free to use it).

It feels good to have made this decision. It hasn't been that long that I've been making money on Betfair but that shows you just how quickly things can spiral when you compound your winnings, are good at saving and remain patient. Last year was a very profitable year but nothing greatly out of the ordinary. This year has exploded though and next year, I aim to hit heights that I'd only dreamed of. It might not happen but even if it doesn't, I'll be satisfied with my lot and excited about the new pathway I'm about to take in life.

I've been trading tennis since February 2010 and have been full time for the majority of that period. That's well over 10,000 hours on the ladders, one year of coaching and working with other traders and four years of blogging. I've had an amazing roller-coaster of a journey and I'm beginning to feel as though I'm ready for the final chapter and a change of scenery. One final year to go then and I feel rejuvenated just knowing that. It has given me a new injection of energy and a real challenge to aim for that super premium charge.

This time last year, I was getting ready to spend some serious time learning how to trade the stock markets. I'll be honest and say it didn't really get me excited. It was gonna be just another string to my bow and certainly not something I was going to day-trade. No thanks! I have enough on my plate with the tennis!

But I always saw it as a natural progression, to take my trading know-how onto a different platform - either FOREX or traditional stocks. My aim has always been to have multiple streams of income, the majority of which I hope would be passive. This is the way to financial freedom.

Then, around March/April time, I heard about a young upstart known as Bitcoin. Now, I'm not new to this. I first bought bitcoin 3 years ago - and unfortunately, spent it all! That was enough to prick my ears when I heard what Bitcoin was now worth and how much I would have made had I held onto it. OK, it's not like I could've done a Fifty Cent! But I'd certainly have a few grand that I didn't have before.

The important thing was that it got my appetite up for cryptos. When you've already been through the really fiddly, annoying and time consuming process of buying bitcoin (wallets, exchanges, public and private keys and all that malarky!), then it's a massive barrier to entry already dealt with. So I was ahead of most newbies to crypto - I could actually buy the damn stuff without banging my head against a wall for 3 days solid!!

I managed to get in not long after the monster bull run began last year. Unfortunately, the price has dipped almost back to where I bought in. However, I'm in this for the long run and expect to see another bull run beginning in the next few weeks - one which I believe could hit $100,000 THIS YEAR.

Haddaway................used to love that song when I was a kid!!

So here I am, getting on for a year later and cryptos are now a HUGE part of my investment portfolio. Buying and HODLing bitcoin is just one of several different strategies I have within the crypto world to build my wealth totally passively and over the past few months, every single one has proved profitable. These strategies include:

Cloud mining
Alt-coin trading
Investing in ICOs
Investing in HYIPs

It's my belief that we are still at the very early stages of adoption and not even close to where the dot com bubble burst back in the late 90s. Bitcoin and blockchain are not going anywhere - they are the future of this planet, in many more ways than just being a speculative vehicle. That being the case, those who get involved (shrewdly!) in the crypto space NOW, are going to be the millionaires and billionaires of the future.

I plan on being one of them.

So it's buh-bye to the dull, straight-laced, suit n tie, bankers and government world of stocks n shares and hello to the bright, young, crazy, exciting, volatile world of crypto! My trading style has always relied on the high volatility of the tennis markets, so the daily rollercoaster ride of cryptocurrencies suits me perfectly! In fact, the day-trading strategies I've been using are not a milllion miles away from what I do on Betfair. Which brings me nicely to my latest project............

Sultan Crypto Trading Guide!!

Now this is just a heads up because I'm still tweaking my own strategies and want to have a year's worth of results before I package them into something which other people can benefit from. But I'm hoping to get working on this guide in the next few weeks.

In the mean time, I want to let you know that I will be giving a whopping 50% discount on my Crypto Trading Guide to everyone who already purchased my Sultan Tennis Trading Guide. And this guide will not only include my day-trading methods but also detail ALL the other investment opportunities I mentioned above, which sit in my portfolio.

ALL of which are currently profitable.

And rest assured, I spotted the Bitconnect ponzi scheme a mile off - around the time I watched their Thailand Conference, funnily enough...........

Your Subconscious ALWAYS Wins!

"She's retired, there may never be any more!" - a poor excuse for jacking off to this instead of improving your life.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Guilty

Cocaine and Strippers

The First Sign of Madness

First World Problems

The Mug v Shrewd Trader Checklist: Which One Are You?

A shrewd choice of Eugenie Bouchard photo, I think you'll agree

SHREWD TRADER

MUG TRADER

RESULTS ANALYSIS

Money Doesn't Care What You Think!

You think this money cares what you think?! Hell no!!

Think and Grow Rich

Ladyboys (yes, they are!) - absolutely nothing to do with sexual transmutation.

The REAL Reasons Most Traders Fail

Too much time staring at this and not putting the hours in. STOP LOOKING!!

Your Subconscious ALWAYS Wins!

"She's retired, there may never be any more!" - a poor excuse for jacking off to this instead of improving your life.

The No. 1 Thing You Need to be a Successful Trader

Vitalia Diatchenko: Positively Gorgeous!

Guilty

Cocaine and Strippers

My Year So Far (With New Bonus Graphs!)

Trading for Betfair = Chundersome

My New Cryptocurrency Trading Guide!