Nothing Doing This Week (Sigh!)

Once again my apologies to any readers. I’ve had no time to trade this week at all and even though I’ve got today off, the first in over two weeks, I won’t be trading as I have some home stuff to be catching up on.

I’ve mentioned before that the business I work in is very heavily influenced by the holiday trade with a 50% increase in business from late July through to early September. We’ve had no extra staff and sickness and holidays to contend with and are operating with less than normal levels of staff for the winter!

All this has conspired to limit my free time these last few weeks which is a shame as I was hoping to use August as “springboard” to increasing my stake level from mid September. I expect this will now have to wait until the beginning of October at least.

I’ll have to go now as I’ve 300 feet of grass to cut! The garden is only about 100 feet long but the grass is now about 3 feet high!

Cheers

A Brief Respite

Well I actually managed to get a bit of trading in today, not much. Sod’s law though as a mate called just after my first race and I didn’t get much chance after he’d gone.

Still, I got in 5 races and managed a £0.50 profit on a back traded £98, a heady 0.51% ROI.

Looking at Adam’s (Heathcote) blog he’s got some Betfair “accredited” figures up at the moment, £147 million traded on the horses with a £247k profit, if I read it correctly. That’s roughly a 0.17% ROI, makes me feel better already. Even if the volume is all traded it’s roughly 0.34% ROI compared to mine.

That still makes me feel better but just not as good :-)

Cheers

Normal Service Will Be Resumed!

My sincere apologies but work has virtually taken over at the moment so I have been unable to trade for the last 10 days or so.

I hope for a brief respite to get some trading in this week. I will update the blog if I do get to trade and will answer some of the outstanding comments when I can.

Once again my apologies.

Cheers

Andy

A Modest Start

I should have posted this yesterday but finishing off the July summary took more time than I expected so I left it for today to do two days together. However it turned out to be one day only as I had no time to trade today due to a very late finish at work and an early start tonight.

Yesterday I managed to chip away to a small profit with no major issues other than a couple of slips when I tried to record my trading using a program I didn’t really know. It would have been interesting I guess but I wasn’t even able to save the recorded file, more homework on that I think.

Anyway I achieved a profit of £0.80 on a back traded £173.52 which makes my ROI a heady 0.46% for yesterday. This gives me a high to come down from when I can trade next ;-).

I am not sure that I will be able to trade before Tuesday next week but I will update the blog if I do. I plan to get some time down the beach this weekend if work (and weather) allows as I need to catch some sun. See, there are some advantages to living in Cornwall!

Have a good weekend all.

Cheers

How did July Go

My apologies for this being a bit later than I expected as, already short on spare time, I also accidently deleted some of my notes made during the month and had to read my posts again to compile this summary.

I have to say that I am a little disappointed with the overall profit level as it is almost identical to June, although the manner of the profit achievement is a bit more progressive. Whereas June started off relatively flat and rose quite well from the mid to the end of the month, July was a more steady profit line with more emphasis on a reasonable start and less as the profit line increased more slowly towards the end of the month.

The two biggest spikes, one profit and one loss, were both for the same reason, that is a large amount of money came into the markets and threw the odds down some 8 – 10 points. Fortunately I was on the right side on one of those occasions, though the wrong side on the other, so they effectively wiped each other out. I guess, if I ever make a go of this, it will be a hazard of the “trade”, forgive the pun.

I back traded just over £3,200 during July so with a net profit of £6.15 my return on investment was just short of 0.19%. I could have halved the two near £2.00 losses with quicker decision making and reaction time and really should have performed much better at the time of the near £3 loss. So, like June, I could have nearly doubled my profit for the sake of better management and discipline in a 2 or 3 races.

On the upside the profit line continues to rise which, despite the small figures, is good and pushes me towards increasing my staking level. However I am going to resist the temptation at this time as I have concerns over my capability to react quickly enough when needed and my ability to deal with losses with an “unclouded” mind, though I have made considerable progress with the latter.

I am sure that psychologically my trading has improved but I still get bouts of being too cautionary which I believe affects my trading greater than it should. Very often my cautious nature stops me making an entry and I’ll sit there watching the odds going in the direction I predicted wondering what might have been or I’ll exit too early upon a hesitation in the market, missing another opportunity. I still have a long way to go in the “mind over matter” business.

Another fault I have, connected to the above I expect, is that I don’t attempt enough trades. I have a couple of colleagues that attended the same Bet Angel Academy course that I did and we still keep in touch. Recently one of them sent me his trading P&L on a spreadsheet. When I first glanced at it I thought it was for the month, just over £6K back traded. It turned out to be just that day! Still my ROI was better by 0.03%, so there’s another positive for me.

Overall I guess that July has been ok, I think I may have learnt more from July than June, awareness for one thing and looking at the 2 months the damage that can be done by a few poor decisions. Just over £12 profit for around 175 races, with roughly £13 in losses from just 6 of them. That equates to 3.5% of races accounting for 52% of potential profit, in anybody’s opinion that has to be very poor!

So I’ll bore you for at least another month at low stakes, until I can control my identified failings. The problem is I guess there are going to more unidentified failings yet.

Thanks to those that commented to posts during the month. I have had some really constructive points made to me and I’m not afraid to receive constructive criticism either. Please feel free to leave comments, advice etc.

Oh, and by the way, although it may not seem so sometimes I do really enjoy this trading lark.

Happy trading and…

ROLL ON AUGUST!

Cheers

Quick Wednesday Update

Just a short post as I’m trying to leave myself enough time to finish my July summary and a comment on my last post has given me something else to think about.

I traded one race yesterday but thought the race had been cancelled so I didn’t check my Betfair account. I was pleased to see today that I was mistaken and my massive £0.07 profit from the race was there today.

I’ve included yesterdays race in today’s P&L, it gives me a much better profit total (4.5 x in fact). Today was ok except I left my trade in the 15:10 Pontefract in too long again, as it went against me.

The only other notable race for me was the 16:30 Brighton and because of my cautious style I exited, and deep down new it, far too early.

The trend of the selection I was trading was up, up, up! As the odds came down, very slowly, I placed a lay entry at 5.1, the lowest the odds achieved before it went in play. I traded out at 5.4 after the market hesitated at 5.4 – 5.6 and after I traded out the odds didn’t stop until 6.6, b****y marvellous! Not to worry that race profit of 20p turned the day into profit.

So I managed a 2p profit on the day, 9p with the race yesterday that I thought had been cancelled.

I don’t usually trade at odds over 6.0, though I will be doing so soon, but as there were a couple of races with the favourite higher than 6.0 I decided to trade the place market in the 16:00 Brighton. A reasonable success but I suspect that I would need to watch the markets longer to see how they react. I guess it was just beginners luck.

Catch you all soon.

Cheers

Last Day of July

Sorry I’ve not posted this for last Friday but I haven’t had much time. With the opportunity to trade this afternoon (Tuesday) I opted to go for that and then found that today’s racing is all to cock, giving me time to write this.

I had hoped to leave July with a bang but instead left it with a loss. I made the mistake of leaving a couple of poor trades in too long as it went against me both times (15:40 Bangor). Here is the annoying thing, I recovered the race from a net -£3.34 to a net -£1.73 on the race. If I could only capture that later trading first, hell, my confidence would be so much higher!

Again, the following races after the loss I performed much better than before the loss and it seems I need some “impetus” for profit making, or at least to trade more effectively. Sometimes I really don’t know.

So for the last day of July I posted a loss of £0.77, safe in the knowledge that the big loss of the day could have been lower, or even in profit, with a little more discipline.

I’ve had a quick look at my July performance and will post in the next few days. Initially it looks ok but not really as good as I had thought, or hoped. Anyway, no more drivel for now.

Cheers