Setting Realistic Targets

Apparently, 'in X weeks I shall be retired' is the new "This time next year, Rodney..." After you have compounded your early winnings and without regard for losing streaks, ill health or other unforseen circumstances you set yourself the bold task of retiring early.

Only you won't be retiring because you intend sports trading from now until the monarch of the day sends you a congratulatory message on your 100th birthday. Trading is not a passport to an easy life, regardless of what others might have you believe. If anything you are setting out on the highway to a harder more stressful life.

Maybe because you enjoy sports trading so much you don't count it as real work but I can assure you it will be the hardest work you have ever done and probably for less income than you could have gotten elsewhere. Again that is not a problem for you because trading is the life you want to do in your "retirement". Maybe it's also because you've only had a pension fund for less than 10 years and you could do with the cash to keep you going.

I wish I could regard sports trading as not real work then I wouldn't be so exhausted at the end of the day with my eyes seeing in double vision and my back aching from sitting in this chair all day long. Betfair is no fault resistant stock exchange and my bots need a beady eye to keep them on the straight and narrow when the exchange throws a wobbly. Other traders may have simple bots trading with low stakes. My bots are precise and use larger stakes. I use them to trade multiple markets, which I couldn't do manually. I need to monitor my bots constantly and can never walk away from them.

It is good to see that one of the blog writers I read on occasions has taken a good dose of reality and changed his mind about early retirement. Of course, he can't admit that he is not as good a trader as he think he is, which is the real reason for his change of heart. His trading statistics never match his prose. Bankrolls are split up amongst systems and asset classes and quietly forgotten when they tank. A short run of success is followed by the inevitable wipe out. Honesty is the best policy because blog readers are not mugs. A hobby that pays a small income is better than a hobby that hopes to become a money spinning business but fails because of incompetence.

I have but one target, survival. The only way I am going to be a millionaire is when the last silver bullet of our increasingly corrupt financial system fails to hit its target and we go through a period of hyperinflation. I am sure the tin of beans I shall be buying with my 1 million pound note will be very tasty.