Nothing Special

A mediocre day with me finding trading a bit tough today, though I’m really not sure why. It seemed that all my opening positions remained static then chipped away at a 1 or 2 tick loss or gain.

Fortunately I had more gains than losses and ended the day with a profit of £7.04 which I feel a little disappointed with but as I’ve said before, many times, profit is profit.

Overall I don’t think my mental attitude was totally focussed today and I’m a bit tired from a busy week. I expect that these combined may have affected my performance somewhat.

Tomorrow is another day so I’ll see what that brings.

Cheers

Late Start - Early Finish

I didn’t get a great deal of time to do any trading today and just managed to catch a few races over 30 minutes or so. I didn’t get home from work particularly early this morning and it was one of those days where the door to door salesman seemed to be targeting me personally, every time I dropped off to sleep.

Anyway I woke up about 15:15 and settled down to trade for the rest of the afternoon and got a phone call at 16:05 which lasted for around 90 minutes, so I decided to give up for the day.

So today I managed a small profit of £3.49 for about 30 minutes trading which is ok I suppose. 3 – 4 weeks ago I would have been happy to return that level of profit for an afternoons trading.

I just have to mention that I was playing Texas Hold ‘Em with a few friends on Sunday, only for pennies though. The very first hand I got dealt 2 Aces and the flop was an Ace and 2 Kings. There were 5 of us playing, each with reasonable hands and everyone was “all in” on the river. Needless to say I won and the game ended rather abruptly. As we really only play for social (and a beer) reasons I gave everyone back their “pots” and we played again.

I just wish I could have some luck like that whilst trading :-)

Anyway, back tomorrow.

Cheers

Road To Recovery

After yesterdays debacle the main thing on my mind is bank recovery. Well, I’ll have to start with a vengeance on Monday or Tuesday as I didn’t have a great deal of time to trade today but I did get a few races in.

A neat and tidy profit of £14.40 for today with I little bit of luck in the 16:25 Market Rasen where I’d placed a higher than normal exit trade only to see the price “spike” by 7 ticks and scoop up my nicely profitable exit in my final trade of the race.

I’ve had time to think about yesterday and I don’t believe it’s affected me in any negative ways at all. I know what I did wrong, so it’s been an expensive lesson learnt. Since the race of the actual loss I’ve already recovered nearly £35.00 so just over £50.00 to go.

I may have time to trade tomorrow and Monday but I’m not sure, so I plan to be back on Tuesday. But if I do get a chance to trade I’ll post again.

Cheers

Mucked Up Big Style

I wanted to use a stronger word in the title but my own standards would not let me. I deserve (and expect) a mucking good kicking from you guys after today’s total lapse of discipline. I am embarrassed, sore, deflated and many other stronger words that I can’t put to print.

So after 7 weeks of NOT taking a trade in play, why oh why did I do it today? What changed my mental attitude to this, probably one of my last, and most fatal, disciplines? Why, when I’ve preached this for so long now, didn’t I practice it? Was it over confidence? I don’t think so, I don’t usually start off that confident.

Well, whatever it actually was, here’s the mucking damage…

I suppose one good thing has come from it, I have a sneaking suspicion that I will NEVER take a trade in play again.

So today’s P&L looks a bit sick, but some good trading and tight disciplines pulled about £20 back to leave today’s P&L at a £67.14 loss. On an interesting note I got 43 Betfair points for the loss, none of the other races gave me more than 2!

I may be back tomorrow, I’m not sure what Mrs TG has lined up, but I should be able to get a little trading in at least.

Cheers (and go easy on me).

Just a Quick Go

I was not fully with it today. Yesterdays shift started at 17:00, I didn’t finish until 08:30 this morning and I found myself just too tired to trade.

I woke up about 14:30 and made an attempt at trading but wasn’t able to concentrate enough so I gave it up after a couple of goes.

Still, I made a small profit of £1.15 and hopefully will be back tomorrow.

I say hopefully as I have to drive to Newport tonight for a 03:00 am Health & Safety meeting and I’m not sure whether I will be back to have a decent sleep in time to trade tomorrow, but here’s hoping anyway.

Cheers

Following On

Just a quick post to say that I seem to be continuing where I left off, although it is really too early to tell.

Again today started off nice and steady until the 15:00 Folkestone when I got a phone call from work to start at 17:00 tonight, yes in just under 2 hours :-( so I’m going to get a short sleep now.

I managed just 4 races today and accumulated a profit of £6.65 in an hours worth of trading, better than the minimum wage anyway.

Must dash and get a short snooze, being picked up later so I’ll catch you tomorrow.

Cheers

It’s About Time

That I had a good day, you know the kind of day that you really do feel bloody good about.

Everything I did today worked out ok with the exception of the 14:50 Ayr. With only three runners with odds in the range 3.0 – 4.1 initially, I wasn’t sure on the best way to trade so I just threw a few in to see what happened. It didn’t happen for me but only a minor loss.

Normally I have the reverse “Midas” touch, everything I touch turns to c**p but today someone was watching over me, probably my bank manager :-)

Although not my best daily P&L, I almost certainly had my best trading day yet, no luck involved, good or bad, just plain steady trading. The only disappointing thing about the afternoon was I had to cut it short due to a couple of phone calls, who knows what I may have achieved. All the same a net profit of £22.36 was an incredibly satisfying result.

I’d like to think I’d turned a corner in my trading but that would be a little premature. There is still a long way to go and, today anyway, confidence is high. It is for this reason a probably won’t trade again before Monday, possibly even Tuesday next week and I will end a very topsy turvy week with a profit of £1.69.

Oh, and by the way, I didn’t even switch on RUK so I can’t tell you what the delay was like today but Betfairs own streamed offering was only 10-14 seconds behind, on the times I noticed it.

Have an excellent weekend y’all

Cheers

A Good Poor Day

Or is it a poor good day, I don’t know, as despite the P&L negative I feel I’ve had a good day. I guess I should feel down or whatever but I don’t, in fact I’m pretty upbeat.

The reason must be because, although I lost £10.89 today, a click error combined with my limited knowledge caused a £22.15 loss in 1 race which, I believe, should have been a loss of around £3.00 had I done it correctly.

I’d been using the Bet Angel “Dutching” option again and this time also using the “Take SP All” option when the race went in play. With the 15:20 Cheltenham I clicked the “Keep All” option by mistake, didn’t notice and went off to put the kettle on.

When I came back, less than a minute later, the race was in play but still with the bet unmatched. A quick check on the log identified what I’d done so I cancelled the bet and went to “Green/Red” up on the “One Click” screen. I realised immediately that this option is disabled when using the “Dutching” or “Bookmaking” tabs and then realised I had no exit strategy worked out for this eventuality.

So now I’m trying to calculate, in my head, the profit from the other selections in order to stake an amount on the unmatched selection to lessen the blow, but all a bit too late and it went on to win.

That is my luck sometimes, I back all but one of the selections and it goes on to win. Still, an excellent lesson learnt and I now know what to do in the future should it happen again.

Taking that particular race out of the equation would have seen me with roughly a £10 profit for the day which I would have considered to be very good. Essentially it was a bit of mix and match for my trading but I feel pretty good about how it went.

I’ve had no comments about RUK but today I had it on all throughout the afternoon and, to be perfectly honest, it did not help me one bit. The time delay was, however, better than yesterday at some 30-33 seconds behind the in play suspension on Bet Angel.

Here’s looking forward to tomorrow.

Cheers

What Benefit is RUK?

Although I had a very late start and didn’t get to the PC until about 16:00 I spent a bit of time with RUK on the screen. I have to question the worth, though I’m guessing everyone is in the same boat, of seeing the pictures some 40 seconds later than the actual race.

I saw the first race I looked at go in-play and was expecting the race to start with the pictures some 10 – 20 seconds later. 42 seconds later the runners were off and this wasn’t abnormal. I only monitored a few races, maybe 5 or 6 but the quickest after Bet Angel showed suspended was a mighty 39 seconds.

I’ll reserve judgement for a day or two but I am wondering whether there is any value in having RUK. I would have expected 10 – 15 seconds but not more than triple these times, maybe my expectation was too high, I don’t know.

I said I’ll take a screenshot of my single monitor I use when trading and you’ll see it is quite obvious that I need at least another or a bigger screen. If you want a laugh then have a look at the pic below.

Today I only managed a couple of races. It was a bit frustrating because a planned finish at work for 09:00 turned into another midday finish and another 12 hour shift. As I like to complete the 4 S’s before I trade I overslept and didn’t wake until 15:45.

Anyway, I’m babbling on a bit there, I managed a couple of races at the end of the afternoon card and turned in a profit of £1.40 with a 2 different strategies.

We should have a full staff complement tonight so I’m hoping that I can get away on time and get my 4 S’s in good time to trade the whole afternoon tomorrow.

Cheers

A Lack of Discipline Costs

Looking forward to today I got off to my usual poor start which is always the case when I feel more confident!

It wasn’t really a lack of discipline, more looser disciplines in two of today’s races that cost me. I’ll let you figure out which two.

I pushed many more trades through today than I would normally and, I suspect, a lot less than most traders. I totted it up and I matched just over £1K at £10 units making 102 trades.

Trading normally it was ok, if a little haphazard, but in general seemed to go ok. Unfortunately I caught myself thinking of chasing the losses from the first 4 races and it clouded my judgement resulting in the £5.41 loss in the 14:50 Yarmouth.

The £6.68 loss later in the day was really due to me “mucking around” and I should have known better, but never mind, you live and learn. Overall I produced my first losing day for a while with a loss of £11.74 and although I’m unhappy about the loss, the actual trading went ok.

I subscribed, for a month, to RUK today and it’s obvious that I really need another screen to help remove some of the clutter on my single 17” flat panel monitor. If I remember, I’ll take a screenshot tomorrow while I’m trading just to show you what I mean.

With the RUK subscription, I now have to learn what I’m looking out for, any tips anyone?

Cheers

Caught the End of the Day

I just managed to catch a few races at the end of today’s racing.

This is the first Bank Holiday Monday that I’ve really looked at the racing and I found that the proliferation of races seems to muck up the markets a little. They appeared, to me anyway, quite unstable at times with the money arriving at varying times before the off.

I also skipped a few races using the -Ctrl-Shift-N- in Bet Angel to move between them when the races were scheduled at the same time and I possibly missed some more tradable races because of this.

However I managed a meagre £0.56 in the two races I traded and I guess this is ok, a bit of profit but no losses!

I am hoping to get a reasonable go at trading tomorrow with, hopefully, a bit more time available to me. I intend to try and push more trades through the markets and see what happens.

I need to see a major improvement in my daily profit figures and in order to measure my progress I am considering setting a daily profit target, or % profit target. I’ve read in some other blogs that targets are not necessarily a good way forward. I’d appreciate some views from any readers on setting targets, whether you‘ve used them and whether you’ve found them useful to you.

Also I am considering either RUK or ATR, with both at £9.99 per month for the online subscription I would appreciate your views on both. I am told that ATR have many adverts that sometimes interfere with pre race trading and they run up to 14 seconds behind “live” but that is all I’ve been told.

As always, please feel free to comment and constructive criticism is most welcome.

Cheers

Not Much Time Today

Unfortunately I only had a very limited time to trade today but managed to get just under an hour and 3 races in. After last weeks connection problems I thought I might leave Saturdays alone but, though not perfect, my connection was substantially better than last week.

I was a bit disappointed with the first race as I exited too early, I got matched at a good price and expected the price to increase but it just held there for about 25 seconds. Then the WOM pressure reversed so I exited at scratch only to see the odds jump 7-8 ticks within the next 10 seconds, such is life.

The other 2 races provided no real problems with a small profit in both but I’ve had to call it quits for today as I’m taking Mrs TraderGray out for a meal tonight. I ended today with a £1.04 profit for about an hour in front of the PC, better than some days for me.

I didn’t have a chance to test further what I commented on in my last post so, hopefully, I’ll have anther go next time I trade. I’m not sure if this will be before Tuesday so have a good weekend and happy trading.

Cheers

Slow and Steady

Firstly let me apologise, I have the feeling this could be a long post and it is not my intention to bore you.

Secondly I didn’t get the chance to trade yesterday. The computer system at work failed at 07:00 in the morning and I ended up doing a 13 hour shift, finishing just in time to listen to Peter Webb on Juicestorm at 13:00. Found out I couldn’t get it live so I went to bed and woke up around 17:00, a waste of a day.

A couple of posts ago I said that I have something holding me back when it comes to making an entry into the market. I’ve read somewhere on another blog (though I can’t find it at the time of writing) that the writer may be uncomfortable the level of stakes they were using and I think this may apply to me.

I feel I don’t use excessive stakes, just 10% of my trading bank and I’m still only trading at odds between 1.8 ish and 5.0. For this weekend I may reduce my stakes to between £2 – £5 and go back to basics, that is not to lose money. I am hoping that this will encourage me to push more trades through the market as I already know that I do not make enough trades in each race because I am happy to make a small profit in a race and move on to the next one.

Anyway, today I didn’t do a great deal but no losses. I successfully had a play at the Bet Angel “Dutching” option by backing all selections at the lay price in the 14:40 Folkestone to a total stake of £20.00, resulting in a net profit of £0.49 and I’ve included a picture in case you’re interested…

I also tried something different in the 15:50 Wincanton with a maximum risk of £2.20 had I not traded out but there was never any intention not to. It was just something I’ve been watching when the 1st and 2nd favourites odds are very close together. I had a couple of successes with it recently but only have a small sample of races to analyse at the moment so I’ll see how it goes for now.

The other 2 profitable races were just my normal, cautious, trading with small profits in each and I had a scratch race as well. All this resulted in a profit of £1.12 for the day.

So today was so slow and steady I guess but I don’t think I was really up for it. I’m quite tired from a busy couple of days at work I would probably have left it go for a day but with no racing tomorrow I persevered, gave it a go, and made another £ :-)

Cheers

A Good Recovery

Just for a moment I’ll recap on my "Lucky Error" post as Dave from Bet Angel has come back to me regarding the issue with the following advice…

Andy

Don’t use the save bets option, it can throw up these spurious bets and cause chaos. There is a problem with how Betfair handle these bets and also how the data is cached.

I advise you to connect using mode 9 or 13 and simply use “Keep All” to resubmit any un-matched bets. You can hit keep all as soon as you submit your trades, if they’re matched then they go anyway and if they are un-matched they are kept and immediately entered after the off.

Regards,

Dave

I have to thank Dave for his prompt, informative and helpful manner with this query, it has been second to none.

So, on to today. I committed one of the big sins, I starting off feeling confident which is unusual for me and lost on the first race. I then screwed up on the second race and neglected to “green up”, or rather “red up” and lost £3.01. Had I equalised then it would have cost me £0.94 so £2.07 wasted there.

So at £3.69 down after 2 races I applied a little more concentration and managed to recover just over £5 in the next 5 races, catching a neat swing in the 16:30 Fontwell. Overall I’m not impressed with my start but the manner of recovery was very pleasing and resulted in another small gain of £1.68 for the day.

I’m hoping that I have things under control with my new job so I should be able to trade a bit more frequently now although I may not be able to start until mid afternoon, I’ll just see how it goes.

Cheers

Poor Connection

My original intention for today was to reduce my stakes to the minimum £2.00 and see how many trades I could get through in the few minutes before a race got underway. The intention being to use larger stakes in the future and see how much of the stake I could “recycle” and what difference it made to the profit levels.

This started off ok, with a £0.09 profit in the first race I tried it with, which is a 4.5% return. However it soon became apparent that my connection today was poorer than normal and, despite rebooting and changing the connection mode, it never really improved.

So I reverted to my more cautious approach and staked at normal levels (£23.40 today), which returned 0.98% and 1.92% in the remaining 2 profitable races.

My connection almost ground to a halt with the 16:05 Chepstow fast approaching “inplay” and I finally managed to exit, after several attempts, about 90 seconds into the race. I got caught up in Betfairs bodged suspension in this race too.

After that I decided to watch the Grand National on the TV and call it a day for my trading, which resulted in another day of no lost races but a very minimal £0.80 profit.

David has come back to me about yesterday’s lucky error and I have sent him a little further information so no more on that at the moment.

Have a good weekend, I’m taking tomorrow and maybe Monday off from trading so catch up with you soon.

Cheers

Lucky Error?

Well I’ve had an excellent day but the bulk of it came from something I do not understand. I can only assume that someone or something was shining on me at the time.

I used the Bet Angel dutching option to back all selections at the lay price in the 14:20 Mussleburgh and it would appear that my back stake on “Nomoreblondes” was submitted twice. There were 2 selections left to match when it went in play and as the current odds were not that far away from my prices I left it go in play.

They were both matched in play and, fortunately for me “Nomoreblondes” went on to win. As I’m unsure quite what happened I have emailed David at Bet Angel to see if he can throw any light on it.

Anyway, that aside, my trading went its usual “death of a thousand cuts” style with no losing races but minimal profits each time. The total profit for today was a massive, by my standards, £21.22 and my best day to date! Even with the £17.87 taken out of the equation the modest £3.35 achieved wasn’t too bad for me.

I’ll be interested to know if David can shed any light on the lucky race, I wouldn’t mind doing that a few more times :-)

Cheers

Speculate to Accumulate

I’ve been thinking about the single race I did yesterday. I placed 9 trades, or 18 positions (entry & exit) in the space of a few minutes, not by throwing “caution to the wind” but with some essence of logic. Having analysed each entry and exit position I found that 5 of the trades were either scratch or 1 tick losses but of the 4 winning trades, 2 were 1 tick gains and 2 were 2 tick gains. The overall net result was a 3 tick gain on the race (losses -3 and gains +6).

This is not how I normally trade and I’ve said before that I am an extremely cautious trader. However, very often I find myself not opening a trade because of a number of things, confidence, fear of losing, whatever it is and because of this I miss many opportunities.

I feel that I now have no issues with my discipline and I am comfortable that when I actually open a position I will exit according to the situation, whether at a profit, scratch or loss.

I think that now I have to concentrate on my mental attitude to trading and I would suspect this is going to be the more difficult of my issues to overcome. A couple of readers have recommended books to read and if you have any recommendations then please do not hesitate to leave them as a comment, I’m sure they will be useful to others.

Anyway, on to today. I still didn’t get much done today. I had hoped that when I sat down at about 15:30 that I would get a good 2- 2½ hours of trading in but my new job has now issued me with a mobile phone. Guess what?, yep that’s right, I got the first call at 15:35, just a short one. The next came at 16:07 and lasted nearly 55 minutes. Ah well I managed to get 4 races in, all with profits for a change, and ended the day a whole £1.10 up which I’m happy with I guess.

The mental thing I’ll have to pursue but I have to get over this confidence, fear or whatever is holding me back. The saying is “Speculate to Accumulate” and if I’m not speculating I’m going nowhere.

Cheers

Just 1 Race Today

Another quick post as I only managed to trade the one race today. Interestingly enough I pushed through nearly £400 to escape with a £0.66 profit. A poor return of 0.165%. Still, as I’ve said before, profit is profit my son and it works out at nearly £4 per hour for the 10 minutes I traded :-)

Here’s hoping that tomorrow gives me more time.

Cheers