Psychology

Peter Webb > Betfair Trading Blog > Psychology

Get a trading edge with Probabilisitic thinking

26th June 2020

Imagine you are a caveman meandering through a landscape, you hear a rustle in the bush. “What’s that…?” Your brain kicks into action and provokes a flight or fight response. It could be lunch, or it could kill you! Your primitive brain makes a really simple judgement and decides that the payoff here for ‘kill you’ is…

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Betfair, featured, Psychology

Binary thinking

16th December 2017

Imagine you are a caveman meandering through a landscape, you hear a rustle in the bush. “What’s that…?”

Your brain kicks into action and provokes a flight or fight response. It could be lunch, or it could kill you! Your primitive brain makes a really simple judgement and decides that the payoff here for ‘kill you’ is pretty bad, -100% in fact. The pay off for food is there as well, but it can’t offset the negative. So you walk …

binary thinking, featured, Psychology, trading, Trading strategies

Why does a strategy fail the moment you use it?

11th November 2017

You know the feeling, you work hard to research and establish a new idea or strategy. You put it to use and it works, so you raise your stakes and booooooooom, it instantly reverses and losses you a shed load of money. It can sometimes feel like the market has got it in for you or like somebody is watching you.

You don’t deploy a strategy to lose money

When you set out to deploy a strategy you don’t expect …

fail, featured, Psychology, strategy, Trading strategies

Why we choke and how you can profit from it

28th October 2017

I’ve just finished reading a very good summary of the core reasons why we choke. The article is a nice clean summary and is worth a read.

Basically it comments on how information is stored in the brain and transferred from a semi autonomous region to a more thoughtful process. The semi autonomous region falls apart when it is forced to transfer back to the other part of brain. Your brain can be in the zone, then forced out of …

choke, choking, featured, Psychology, sports, Trading strategies, why we choke

Psychology in sport – Tennis

29th August 2017

I started writing a broad piece on Psychology but it got too big, so I’ve broken off chunks and will list them on the blog for your interest.

Psychology everywhere

Psychology isn’t something that is limited to the minds of traders, it’s out there on the sports field and in the associated markets as well. I’ve observed all sorts of strange biases that just don’t have any place in a rational world, but feature heavily and persistently in the markets …

featured, Psychology, serve, speed, tennis, tennis trading, Trading strategies

Seasonality in Horse Racing

1st December 2016

For some reason, I know it’s named after a horse, the Tingle Creek meeting at Sandown sounds Christmassy to me, but for sure is an early high point in December .

The meeting is joined by Aintree (The Beecher chase) and the Welsh Grand National trial on Saturday to make a decent card. It should make up for the somewhat different racing we have had during the week!

Seasonality

At this time of the year, it’s easy to slip into …

attitude, featured, Horse Racing, Psychology, racing, seasonality, Trading strategies

‘Gut feelings’ help make successful traders

13th November 2016

While browsing various papers I recently came across an academic report publish in Nature, entitled the unfriendly – ‘Interoceptive Ability Predicts Survival on a London Trading Floor’.

Basically speaking, researchers show that ‘gut feeling’ does indeed contribute to successful trades. You can read the full report here: –

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep3298

If you don’t want to wade through this, here are the key elements: –

First off, Physiologists often use the term ‘gut feeling’ as a colloquial synonym for any interoceptive sensation …

featured, gut feel, Psychology, study, traders, Trading strategies

Two books that will change the way you think

4th November 2016

In my quest for unreachable perfection, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand how people think. There are several reasons for doing this.

The first is to make better decisions myself, sometimes people make decisions or say things that just don’t make any sense.  You often also get stuck making a decision which you can’t seem to resolve.

Having thoroughly explored the markets, what to do, when and how (so far) in my career I’ve switched my main …

featured, mindset, Psychology, trading, two books

Two books that will change the way you think

4th November 2016

In my quest for unreachable perfection, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand how people think. There are several reasons for doing this.

The first is to make better decisions myself, sometimes people make decisions or say things that just don’t make any sense.  You often also get stuck making a decision which you can’t seem to resolve.

Having thoroughly explored the markets, what to do, when and how (so far) in my career I’ve switched my main …

featured, Psychology, trading, two books

A classic psychological flaw

8th October 2016

Here is something that will help you understand the way people act and what you can’t do about it! But how you can benefit from it.

I made a comment on Twitter a little while ago saying something along the lines of “if I ever think going to lose my edge all I need to do is look at social media and I know that’s not going to happen”

Entrenched views

What I was commenting on was the proliferation of …

error, featured, flaw, judement, Psychology, Trading strategies