How much of your bank do you risk?

[Insibibious]

Hey guys. We all know about Betfair's pathetic API performance recently and this leaves us open to large losses if we are in the market at the time of an outage. With this in mind, how much of your total bank are you risking per trade? i.e. 5%, 10% etc.

[shadowninja]

25% of a small account. Plus I can make it back in a week.

[1/4 of a millionaire fund]

I guess alot depends on what you consider your bank to be, I'll usually only be exposed to 25% of my balance but do sometimes go to 40%. My main reasoning for 25% is so I won't have to top up the account if things go tits up. But I wouldn't consider my balance to be my bank so could always call upon more money if needed.

[mr beard]

5% for me. I trade exclusively on soccer at the moment so a goal can mean anything from a 30% loss to 100% loss of stake depending on the market so I like to keep risk at a manageable level.

Also, I haven't been doing this for that long so I personally believe it has helped my discipline keeping to 5% and seeing the value of that percentage grow as my bank grows. Bounding in early in the learning process with 25% of my bank in a soccer market could have been a catastrophe.

[Insibibious]

I guess alot depends on what you consider your bank to be, I'll usually only be exposed to 25% of my balance but do sometimes go to 40%. My main reasoning for 25% is so I won't have to top up the account if things go tits up. But I wouldn't consider my balance to be my bank so could always call upon more money if needed.

That's what I'm trying to figure out! What is my bank? The amount in my Betfair account or my overall trading fund/winnings which incidentally don't exist yet! What's the best way to go about building my bank?

[westerner]

For me, my bank is he total money that I could call upon to bet with.

If this money ever started to dwindle I probably wouldn't wait until it was all gone and only about 30% of it is tied up in betting accounts.

[1/4 of a millionaire fund]

Your bank should really be whatever you've set aside for betting and can afford to lose not neccessarily what's in your account. As for building up a bank if you do things properly that'll build itself thru winning. Just start small and learn how to trade before worrying about banks, it;s the money management that counts rather than the size of your bank.

[XXXXtrader]

During busy day I`m exposed 100% of my bank.I just can`t afford not entry market because the betfair can go down.It`s can cost me money in long term.I use max 5% of bankroll per market.Today I was trading 3 footbal matches on 3 markets each.That`s was 45% of my bankroll exposed.My stop is 3 market per match.I trade only in pre KO fotball.

[Temujin]

Exactly. My bankroll is basically every cent I have to my name. I would happily tie all that up in the right trade, but obviously wouldn't enter it all to start a trade off.
My BF trades use a liability of around 4% of my total bankroll, but when I started out I was using 20-25% on opening a trade simply because I didn't have as much money.
There is always an opportunity to tie up money in a trade, so I don't see why I shouldn't make available every cent I can scrounge up for a trade. The bankroll I have now (well, a little under it at the moment) is more than I have been able to utilise in 1 trade though, so I think it is at a nice level.

Bankroll means different things to different people. I don't understand why having idle money is better than having money to trade with, meaning that if you are making money trading, your bankroll should be growing, and as such using a smaller % of it with each passing trade.
At any 1 time every cent I have is tied up in either betting accounts, or is available to be put straight into my account to utilise.

[shadowninja]

As it stands, I won't risk the final £50 of my account... which is my original deposit. It's come close but if I am back to £50, it's the best indication that I haven't a clue and have been very lucky so far. (Balance is currently £120.19; profit built over hundreds of trades rather than one lucky punt. I'm pleased with my progress so far but I'm no Keefter!!!)

[LuckyYou]

My initial stake is based on the liability. Usually I use 35% of my bank for trade (I decide - I will trade with X bank, i'm excluding the winings), sometimes higher.

[The Ocho]

I currently have only a relatively small bank and was using virtually 100% of it on trading the Aussie races. I lost about 90%+ of it in one trade, not because of the API, but because I committed the traders cardinal sin of not accepting the early loss.

The race was just about to go in running when I put a back bet on the 3rd fav which was matched but the odds kept going up instead of down and could of reded up (if that's the term) for a small loss but I thought I was right and waited for the odds to come back down. They didn't, the race went in running, and with hardly any liquidity couldn't get matched. I finally got matched much much higher for what would have been a 33% loss if I had of hedged but I didn't have time. In the end the horse frickin won and if I hadn't off placed the lay bet would of won a bloody fortune.

It's much easier to catch up if you lose 5%, 10%, 20% of your bank than it is to make up 90% of your bank.

Green up if you want to but DEFINITELY RED UP and don't think your right and the market isn't (you'd think I should know this by now having traded on and off for well over 2 years but sometimes trying to force the issue makes you do stupid things).

[joneyyy1981]

can you only set bank % from the ladder interface, as on the steaking and tools when useng the grid you cant see the back % option? am i doing something wrong?

[scratchtrader]

I dont mind, I will lay 10% of my bank @11's for a tick, on the whole betfair is pretty stable, but as my bank roll grows I am decreasing it by not increase my stakes inline with bank growth, so that kind says I'm risking more than I should be, time to re-evaluate

[joneyyy1981]

you only lay @ 11's? that all you do?