A Minimal Return

I just managed to get in a little time trading this afternoon (1 hour) and I’ll have to keep the post quick as I’m working in a few hours so need to get some sleep.

My mind was not fully focussed but I managed a small profit for the day of £0.53.

I think I’m getting withdrawal symptoms from not trading often enough. I’m hoping to get some more time tomorrow so catch you soon.

Cheers

Questions From Anon

Apologies to the readers but I haven’t had the time to trade over the last few days so I haven’t updated the blog. My new job is still taking more of my time than I expected but, hopefully, it will settle down shortly.

I had a question posted on my “Mixed Strategies” post which I endeavored to answer in the reply box. But the answer started to get far longer than I anticipated so I thought it would be a good idea to answer in a new post. That gives me an excuse to update the blog and it might be a good test of my knowledge.

I would appreciate comments from anyone on how they think my answer suits and whether I have answered appropriately. The questions were…

“Having only been trading for 2 weeks now what advice could you give someone in my position who hasn’t been on Peters course. And how do you define a good or bad trade.”

My answer is…

Hi Anon

Glad you like the blog and apologies for not updating over the last few days but I haven't been able to trade since the last post.

Whether I'm the right person to ask advice from is debatable as I am at the very beginning of my journey but I am happy to comment on your queries.

For people just starting trading here are 4 points, in no particular order...

Don't run before you can walk! Start with minimum stakes to see how you get on. You won't win a great deal but you shouldn’t lose much either. As your confidence grows then increase the stakes you trade with, slowly.

Get to know the software you decide to use, I'd recommend Bet Angel but there are others so find what suits you best, most trading software comes with some kind of trial offer.

Study the markets and watch what happens at different times. In essence you could "throw in" trades at any time as very often you will learn more by a loss than a win.

Be disciplined in your approach. Discipline doesn't really need explaining, you will understand what is meant when you trade.

Now, perhaps a harder question, my take on what defines a good or bad trade…

A good trade is when you do everything right for the current conditions, whether there is a profit or loss at the end of it. If you do everything right then most of the time you will see a profit or, at worst, a very minimal loss.

A bad trade is when you break the necessary disciplines. You will find, in most cases, these will end as losses which will be bigger than your wins. If you do all the wrong things then expect your trading bank to disappear quickly.

I hope this is of some help and feel free to ask any other questions. Like I said earlier it is debatable as to whether I am really qualified to answer some questions due to the stage I am at but I am always happy to give my take on any queries.

Anyway I hope to be trading at some point this week but, as I said at the beginning of this post my trading time has been severely curtailed at the moment.

Cheers

Mixed Strategies

I read the following passage in the book provided by Peter Webb from the course…

“Good trades rarely go wrong from the start, but bad ones do. The earlier you cut out of a bad position the better”

I really should have read this before trading today, it might have reminded me in the 15:45 Hereford as I left it go a bit longer than I should, ah well.

Today I tried a few of the different strategies I’d learnt with some differing results. The most successful for me was the final race I traded where I caught and rode an upward swing, then a downward swing, then another upward swing, all on the favourite.

Unfortunately the damage to today’s profit had already been done by me leaving a few trades just a little too long and it really wasn’t more than about 5-15 seconds overdone.

Sometimes it seem like you are taking 2 steps forward and 3 back and other days 4 forward and 2 back but at least the overall gain is 1 step. Anyway, a loss of £0.63 today but, I hope, a gain in experience and knowledge. Bet Angel is quite an extensive program, I’m still learning how it reacts to various settings and occasionally it catches me out (16:40 Southwell).

The good thing about today is that, in virtually every race, I know exactly where I went wrong and what I did wrong. I think that this is the first time I have felt that confident when reviewing my days trading so I guess I’m moving forward, very slowly.

Cheers

A Couple of Races

The new job is still “harvesting” my previously free (ish) afternoons but I will get that down soon so that I can concentrate more on trading in the afternoons.

I had a nice surprise this week. I get a company car with the new job and wasn’t expecting it for a few weeks but a new Astra arrived so I took it out for a spin. Not my personal choice of car (I’m a Fix Or Repair Daily kind of guy) but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

Anyway, despite a very late session at the PC, I managed to trade a couple of the later races this afternoon. I didn’t break any records but no losses either so it went ok with a small profit of £0.86.

I’m currently re-reading Peters book “Profitable Betting Exchange Strategies”, given to us at the seminar, and I’m reading things that have already slipped my mind so here’s to “Onwards and Upwards!”

Cheers

3 Days Off

Hey, this is unheard of from me, I still haven't traded since Saturday and I'm chomping at the bit to get in there!

I started a new job this week and it has been more mentally tiring than I thought. It's also a lot of learning to do in a short space of time, even though it's the same job I left 7 years ago!

I'm hoping to be back trading tomorrow, Wednesday, and I'll see whether I've managed to control my mindset correctly.

Anyway, cheers for now.

I Must Do Better

I must achieve more if I am going to make a real go of trading. Considering I was looking forward to trading today my mental attitude was poor for most of the afternoon. I traded with little confidence, I’m not sure why, but all in all it worked out reasonably ok. Although an interruption from a mate during the afternoon put me off my stroke and I did little afterwards.

I was quite pleased with the 14:40 Haydock as I jumped on a swing trade but, with my confidence low, I got out far too early. The main drawback with my low confidence level was I missed so many opportunities. There were too many times I didn’t trade despite the signals being ok for me.

By the time I did throw in a trade in one of these instances it went against me and resulted in the only loss of the day. So I guess profit is profit and ended the day £3.15 up, a bank increase of 1.30%

I have to work on my confidence on the days that it seems lower than I expect. At his seminar Peter suggests that a 10% bank increase daily should be easily achievable. I seriously have to examine my mental attitude to help achieve this, or anywhere near it.

I’m not about tomorrow as I’ve got a family gathering with two birthdays, mine and my Dad and, of course, Mothers Day. Have a good weekend.

Cheers

My Testing Time

Today I played around with a few of the Bet Angel features so it’s been a bit of a mixed day and would have been profitable except that I made another mistake in the 15:05 Lingfield.

I used the “Manual Bet” screen to green up instead of the normal methods I’ve been using but I guess I didn’t fully understand the way it works. I do now though and had Fly In Johnny come in first I would have been £2,031.60 up but I had to settle for a £2.15 loss instead, never mind. What I actually did to green up was the reverse of what I should have done.

Another mistake, of my own making, in the 17:20 Lingfield cost me £1.73. I just didn’t get out of the trade early enough and let it run about 30 seconds too long. Anyway, these two combined caused me to turn in net loss for the day of £1.20. Mind you my mistakes used to cost me significantly more so I’m not too unhappy with today, perhaps just a little disappointed.

I managed to get more trades through but I found trading a bit tough today. I will have a look at the results to see why. However, I’m looking forward to trading tomorrow as I expect it’ll be a busy day in the markets.

Cheers

A New Day

Following my attendance at Peter’s seminar on Monday I have spent a couple of days reading the literature provided and watching the markets but not actually trading. In my mind I have been applying the strategies learnt and watching for the “what if” scenario had I physically traded.

It was pleasing to see, on paper, that the key methods and strategies seem to bear out as I’ve been taught this week and that the markets react, in general, as Peter and his team described (although, I am sure that it will not always be the case). You cannot test it on paper but managing the exit strategy is as important as, if not more than, profitability so this would be the real test.

So today, a first attempt at trading under my new “rules and regulations” and I have to say that I am very pleased with how it went. I was very tentative but there was a major difference in my mental attitude and confidence towards making the trades. I had less regard for worrying about a trade going against me as I was mentally prepared for the exit in such a case.

I did make an error today that cost me about £3.00. I was preparing to exit at a 1 tick profit when I decided to close the Betfair graphs I use. I have these set slightly off to the right of my screen and when I close them I usually right click the graph title bar and select “close”. On this occasion I just clicked the X in the corner of the screen which happened to be Bet Angel! By the time I had re-opened and exited I had lost 2-3 ticks and lost £2.16 on the trade.

The day could have been better and ended £3.19 up, despite my mistake, with minimal trading and my bank increased by 1.33%.

I could have put more trades through, but it is early days so I will just see how the first week or two go. Hopefully my confidence will grow and I will be comfortable taking bigger risks and, therefore, bigger rewards.

Cheers

Betting Exchange Academy Seminar

In many ways I am extremely sceptical about certain things surrounding the betting/gambling/trading lifestyle. One of these is the enormous amount of “purchasable” items, be it information, specialised strategies, training courses, seminars and other such oddities that make you believe you are purchasing something really special.

One of the main reasons for this is the total disregard, to the punter, by persons (unknown) to provide absolutely useless information, at a price, to the totally uninitiated or beginner. Not only in the sole pursuit of profit but also fully knowledgeable that the information being provided will do the complete opposite to that suggested, which is usually wealth generation. Read John’s post a few days ago.

Fortunately for me I figured early on in my betting/gambling/trading days that the sale of these “information” packs was only pursued because the method/strategy etc did not work and the only way of making an income from it is to sell it to the next generation of unsuspecting people.

So what a fantastic breath of fresh air I found the Betting Exchange Academy Seminar I attended on Monday 16th March. An extremely well run day hosted by Peter Webb and supported by one of his team, David. I have to say that the course not only met my expectations but greatly exceeded them in many, many ways.

There is Peter discussing the history, methods, strategies, race types, what to expect (and what to not expect) and, there in the background, is this David who, in the afternoon, said little other than £10 from that race, £15 from that race, £7.50 from that race (it just makes you sick you know) and all with stakes not that different to what I am using and I’m only achieving 1/10th the profit!

I thought that my trading was progressing ok, a little slow maybe but ok, and I now realise that I have been trading inside a deep, dark tunnel. The seminar has, in my mind anyway, taken me out of that tunnel and made me realise I knew virtually nothing but the very basics and, effectively, opened my eyes to the practically limitless trading possibilities.

Please do not ask me for any trading tips as I will not go into any specifics, after all my rough costs are in the region of £600 for the course, the previous night’s hotel stay, fuel etc. Also it would be unfair to Peter and his team, they are the teachers, the professionals, I am not. I would not like to mis-inform anyone about the information provided to me on the course, but I will say that if you are serious about trading for a living you must attend the course.

There is NO other alternative to fast-track the knowledge that Peter has gained over the years but if you feel that the course is expensive I, for one, would have been happy to pay more. If I can now make a success of it I will be attending the course again for a refresher, maybe in 6 months, maybe in 12 months, we’ll just have to see.

Now the real proof in the pudding is whether I can make a success of it, so I will spend a day or two digesting the quite extensive book and slides that Peter provided and come back to trading this week some time when I feel comfortable and ready, not before.

My apologies for this post being so long but when you feel as strongly about the content as I do, I feel anything shorter to emphasise the importance, to your trading ability as this course is, would have been an injustice.

Now I will leave you alone and be back in a day or two.

Cheers

Gold Cup Day

No trading yesterday as I’m still very busy with some other issues but I thought I would have a chance for a short while this afternoon.

As it happened I was only able to trade the one race, the 14:20 Fakenham, which I managed a small net profit of £0.63.

In between telephone call times I actually managed to sit down and watch the Gold Cup itself, on Channel 4. I have to say that although I have not really watched a horse race for about 15 years I found it quite exciting. I expect that is to do with the hype over the Kauto Star / Denman rivalry and, despite the distance between the two at the end, both horses seem to run a good race but Kauto Star seemed to perform at a higher level than Denman this year.

Another thing I didn’t realise was the steepness of the rise near the end, I’ve heard talk of it before but seeing it on TV I’m surprised they didn’t take any Sherpa’s with them :-)

I’m hoping to get some trading in tomorrow but I’m not really sure. I still have some things to sort out and this may take up too much time. Anyway I’m off to Peter Webb’s seminar on Monday so you may not hear from me for a few days. Good luck with whatever you are doing.

Cheers

Nothing Doing, The Sequel

Sincere apologies all, due to business and new employer issues I’ve not been able to trade today either.

It may be a couple of days before I am but I will be back soon…

Cheers

Nothing Doing Today

Well, I got all fired up to trade this “Cheltenham” that everybody is talking about, even from early this morning. I work in newspaper distribution and my particular run (11 customers) normally takes 6 copies of the Racing Post. Today the total was 20 copies, a 300%+ increase. I expect more tomorrow and Thursday.

Anyway, I spent the 'supposed' first hours trading, on the phone to my business partner so I couldn’t trade then. I’m actually leaving the business next week and as I settled down to trade from about 3pm my new employer rang and that took the next 45 minutes. Then my insurance broker rang, you may remember from an earlier post, the car insurance is due next week and this took another 20 minutes or so.

When I finally settled down at about 16:20 I decided to forget it for today and, as I’d been doing throughout the phone calls, just continued to watch the markets, interesting stuff ha! Anyway, the pic is just to show I didn’t win or lose a shedload.

I’ve just read Peter Webb’s blog and it looks like he’s got off to a great start, £175 green on the first race, maybe some of his ability will rub off on me next week. I have booked into the hotel for the night before Peters course on Monday 16th, if any readers are doing the same then let me know and we’ll have a beer!

Cheers

I Made a Pound

After a day off trading yesterday I thought I’d be refreshed for today. During Sunday afternoon I took some odds stats from in-play football matches as I’m interested in doing some “event” trading i.e. goals, corners etc. Anyway I just took some stats, nothing else.

I wasn’t working last night, yep I do get one night off per week, and this week I couldn’t get my sleep pattern correctly. This resulted in me being very tired when it came to trading this afternoon so after a short while I decided to call it a day.

Not a great deal happened, I lost on the first race, as normal, and ended up a whole £1.00 up after about 1½ hours trading. I packed it in at that time simply because I felt too tired.

I’m back to work tonight so I’m hoping that my sleep pattern will return to normal so I can put in a better effort tomorrow afternoon.

Cheers

Cautious or Sensible?

After yesterday, probably the last few days really, I figured I ought to trade today if I had the chance. I’m not sure what stage my trading may be at but I felt I might use the last few days’ performance as an excuse not to trade. So off I go and I can’t figure out whether I am ok or not with how it went.

On the one hand I struggled to make any trades, watching many opportunities pass me by. In one instance I expected this particular horse to continue a steady downward trend and followed it with the mouse icon from 5.60 to 3.65 without placing a trade.

On the other hand my bank increased by 1.16% and I made a profit of £2.73. I had no losing trades though quite a few scratch trades and, in fact 5 scratch races. Also, despite some poor days I’ve actually made £11.09 this week with a bit of luck (good & bad), a fair wind, etc. etc.

So I guess overall I’m ok, a bit over cautious and very sensible. However, I suspect my mindset is not correct so I will definitely take tomorrow off, yep that’s a promise I won’t be trading tomorrow to give me a bit of a rest so I’ll catch up on Monday.

Cheers

Ability In Question

I don’t really want to go into the psychology of it but I’m beginning to wonder what I am doing so different to my first 3 weeks. Let’s look at today which, on the face of it, was a fantastic day. My bank increased by 9.96% and the profit for the day was £20.38. Both record breaking achievements for me.

When you look at how I did it, it really throws my current trading ability into question. I lost the first race traded, so what, £0.47 and then got that plus a bit more back on the second race traded, £0.70, well ok then nothing great but not a losing one.

The third race I deliberately took a £1.78 losing trade in-play (the first time in over a week) with the intention of waiting 15 seconds and then equalising the profit/loss. My selection (Busy Isit) must have stumbled at the start as within seconds of the race going in play my loss was around £15.00. With a maximum liability of £20.00 anyway I decided to take the risk, for another fiver I thought ‘What the Hell’. However, during the course of the race, Busy Isit proceeded to win and I greened up just short of £32.00 profit.

I thought this was great and, perhaps, a bit of payback for the times I’ve closed losing positions which would have been profitable if I hadn’t. It was then another 90 minutes before I could bring myself to place a trade, I think I was too afraid to in case it went against me. I did manage a winning trade, after studying a few race graphs, and was quite pleased with the £0.74 profit.

I then, basically, “mucked” about in the last race I traded, very undisciplined, with little thought going in to what I was doing and only succeeded in throwing away just over a tenner.

At the time of writing I am not sure if I will trade this weekend. I think some “revision”, reading and video watching is required. I need to focus on what I was doing right in the first 3 weeks and see if anything sticks out as an obvious difference.

Have a good weekend

Cheers

Very Costly Day Today

I had to take the car for MOT today (£47.00), MOT fail (est £230.00), 2 new tyres (£65.00), oh, and guess what, the insurance is due in 2 weeks, just had the reminder for £855.00 fully comp for me, Mrs, son (22) & daughter (18). Best of all it’s the Mrs car and her and the kids drive it mainly!

To top it all off I started work at midnight, all our deliveries were very late due to the snow in Devon & Cornwall so I didn’t finish until noon, rushed to the MOT, rushed to the garage, rushed to the tyre services, rushed home and the kids said “you’re late, what’s for dinner?”. Following my reply they haven’t spoken to me all afternoon, bloody heaven!

Seriously, after all that I probably shouldn’t have traded but had a quick go and lost £1.41, still that’s nearly £22 better off than yesterday!

I haven’t had any sleep today and as I’m back in at midnight tonight I’ll keep this short and get some shut eye.

Cheers

A Bit of a Disaster!

Here are the steps I take when I’m finished trading a particular race. With 1 minute to go I check where I am with the “green up” situation on the Bet Angel one-click screen, flit back to the ladder interface and see if there is likely to be any further opportunities and with 30 seconds to go I go back to the one-click screen and green or red up. I then Ctrl-Shift-N to the next race.

I did this (or rather thought I did) after I’d finished trading the 16:30 Fontwell and started trading the 16:40 Lingfield. On this race I refreshed my Betfair balance, following a successful trade, to find it not reading correctly, about £100 down. I went back to the 16:30 and found I hadn’t equalised (it was for a loss of about £2.50 I think). Staring me in the face was an in-play red up figure of £22.91, funny how you remember that type of thing, so I quickly equalised the loss and managed to match for a loss of £19.83 all round.

I should have quit for the day then as I think I became a bit reckless in my trades in an attempt to recover some of the damage. I suffered 4 consecutive losses which destroyed what had started off very promising, resulting in a net loss of £23.33 for the day.


It is going to be a long learning process and this is just the beginning so I’m not too disheartened by today’s result. I am, though, disappointed in myself for both the original mistake and the subsequent poor trades and guess I haven’t overcome the necessity to move on from a bad result as yet.

Here’s to tomorrow.

Cheers

A Change of Strategy

I didn’t know whether it would be a good idea or not but I changed my trading strategy today and tested it with smaller stakes, just straight £25 backs and lays.

You may ask why I changed and it is mainly because I feel my trading has been restricted somewhat by my reliance on “automation”. I use the ladder interface in Bet Angel Pro, generally with a 10 tick offset, with greening, 10 seconds fill or kill, stop loss at 5 ticks, placing at 5 ticks and trailing stop activated.

I have found that 99% of the time I close profitable trades at +1 to +3 ticks, with say a maximum of +5, but because of the stop loss I just let it run if it goes against me. I felt that I needed to think more about what was happening, rather than just let it happen.

So today I traded without any of these aids, still on the ladder interface, and I had to pay far more attention to what was actually going on. I think it has been extremely beneficial to me and, although I have probably been more cautious than normal (you know me!) it has produced, well what I call, a reasonable days profit of £3.78.

Although I had only 3 losing trades overall, I experienced no losses in any race but then I haven’t broken any records either. It seemed to go ok to start with but there were times when I did nothing and I notice on the above screenshot that there was a whole hour where I didn’t place any trades. I just couldn’t find the right opportunity, or maybe my confidence wasn’t high enough, possibly a combination of both.

Here I go rambling on again, I’ll have to keep these posts shorter. If, like me, you read a few blogs it’s nearly a full time job keeping up with them.

Cheers

“Chuffed” is The Word

I'm very pleased with today’s performance although the bulk of it came from some lucky trading in my last race, the 16:50 Wolverhampton.

I’d managed to lay Imprimis Tagula at 3.3 for £41.70 which was the current peak, ah well, such is life. It subsequently dropped to about 2.92 and, on the turn, I lay it again at 2.98 for £47.80 where it proceeded to rise and I matched £85.13 at 3.35. Somewhere on the way I also matched £1.63 at 3.15 which, in all, gave me my biggest net profit on any single race to date of £5.70.


Despite a minor setback with the 16:10 Lingfield and a couple of interruptions during the afternoon, I’ve had my best day so far by achieving a net profit on the day of £8.51.

Overall my bank increased by 3.83%, a very pleasing result after my recent poor run of form and indiscipline. I’m now looking forward to tomorrow so I’ll probably destroy all the good work I’ve done today.

Cheers

I Don’t Help Myself

I thought I was in for a right day of it after the first race. I had 4 consecutive trades go against me, so quick I was almost unable to react in time and close out. Is it Sunday trading? Can Sunday trading be that different to the rest of the week? I really don’t know.

My parents cancelled the planned visit for today so I took the chance to look at some training videos this morning for both Bet Angel and Bet Trader. I thought I’d picked up some new snippets of information but after the first race I wasn’t so sure.

Anyway, being £7.28 down after the first race didn’t deter me and produced that psychological target again. With a couple of good trades and plenty of steady trades I managed to pull back £7.81 from the remaining 15 traded races. This produced a net profit of £0.53 for the day.


At the moment I really feel the necessity for, at the very least, a 1% bank growth per trading day, with the last 3 days being 0.69%, 0.14% and 0.24% respectively I am a long way off. Still in 2 weeks time I will be setting off for Peter Webbs course and hopefully it will make a significant difference.

Cheers All