Diary of an Amateur Trader

I Missed the Football

2011-03-26T19:03:00.013Z

I got home later than expected, just after lunch, checked the football at 12:45, and found the matches I wanted to play were starting at 13:00. I probably had time to set up but don’t like rushing things to get ready so shelved it. I missed a good opportunity as I calculated a rough profit from £3 - £4 possibly a bit more, but never mind.

With a bit more time to prepare I did some pre race trading (for nothing) but it was good to do it again as it’s been a couple of months since I last did it. It’s more fun too, than waiting for time to pass during a football match.

So for the week (well, Friday 18th – Saturday 26th) I’m £7 better off!

Have a good weekend.

Andy

Exit Strategy

2011-03-25T21:52:00.003Z

I spent some time on Thursday analysing the last weeks trading to find an effective exit strategy for what I am currently doing. I am glad I did as it worked a treat today, which could have been very poor indeed.

I did two 17:00 matches which ended with a 7p loss and five 19:45 matches which ended with a £1.22 gain, netting an overall £1.15 gain for the day.

The exit strategies I looked at yesterday helped in limiting any loss and returned another profit. Not as much as I would like but while I’m testing this I’m not prepared to risk a great deal.

£23.20 still needed to recover the BAP subscription, but getting there.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Cheers

Andy

In & Out in 15 Minutes!

2011-03-23T21:46:00.004Z

Just a quick update, traded two matches today, one was profitable the other wasn’t. Both kicked off at 20:00 and I traded out 15 minutes later to a £1.27 net gain. The maximum risk was -£8.92, but never achieved anywhere near that, peaking at -£1.03.

I’m short of my £1.00 per day needed to recover the BAP subscription (by 36p) but have only traded on 4 days, Fri, Sat, Mon & today. I now have £24.35 to go having profited by £5.64 since the purchase.

Must go, some more stats to look at!

Cheers

Andy

How Do I Measure Up?

2011-03-21T20:44:00.005Z

I did 3 matches today, no real concerns, all done & dusted within the space of 20 minutes and a net gain of £1.14. This still leaves me £25.62 to recover for the BAP subscription but I’m chipping away at it with no real danger?

What does concern me is that I do not know how well I am doing and I need to measure it in some way. It could be that the way I am trading I am achieving a poor result, it could be that it’s a good result.

I know it’s only 3 days but I need to know what the effect will be if it does not work, I can only hypothesise and the hypothetical maximum loss I would have experienced is the £10+ I noted on Saturday.

I do believe that it could be worse but need the actual situation to occur to enable me to learn more from they way I am trading.

But, hey ho, I’ll keep the positives as frequent as possible, I've given other punters my hard earned over the last few years ;-)

Cheers

Andy

Cross Functionality?

2011-03-19T16:28:00.007Z

What does it mean? Well it enables me to look at several markets at the same time on a single tab of a spreadsheet.

By using Bet Angels “Guardian” feature and integrating it with their Excel link I can monitor positions in more than one market and make decisions, with a little greater knowledge, based on my overall net position.

Today I tried 7 markets at the same time (as opposed to 3 yesterday) though, whilst it gave me a few fraught moments checking everything, I achieved a greater profit but at lower ROI (7.00%)

The ROI calculation is based on leaving all trades unattended and achieving no wins or trades at all, this came to £29.16 when really the greatest deficit I could envisage was only £10.82 giving a ROI of just short of 20%.

Cross Functionality, or whatever you want to call it, means I can be a bit more focussed, or is it lazier? Oh, and by the way, £26.76 to go!

Cheers

Andy

Another Go?

2011-03-18T18:15:00.005Z

Time has been against me for… over a year? Well I didn’t realise it had been that long since I last posted.

I’ve not been inactive but have been unable to do any serious trading for a long time, the job is keeping me from it. However I have “kept my hand in" on a few things.

Last weekend I was doing some research on odds movement on football matches and stumbled upon something that may work for me, we’ll just have to see.

Anyway, I took the plunge today and renewed (for 1 month only) my Bet Angel Pro subscription and tried the strategy I’ve been looking at. Producing a net gain of £1.19 (an ROI of 8.95%) it seems to have worked, well for today at least.

I’m planning to have another go tomorrow if time permits. I need to as I’ve still another £28.80 to recover the cost of 1 months BAP subscription by the 18th April.

Cheers

Andy

Last Week

2010-02-24T19:17:00.003Z

Just a quick note really to let you know what happened last week.

Not having a great deal of time to trade I managed a small profit over the week of £3.71 pre race trading. I did have a small attempt at the greyhounds last week as well, the first time in ages, but nothing much to write home about there with a small profit of £0.11

I’ve had no spare time this week at all but hopefully will get an afternoons trading in tomorrow (Thursday).

Cheers

Steady, Steady!

2010-02-11T17:27:00.002Z

A case of whoa! boy as I jumped in full of enthusiasm, messed up, but got it together pretty sharpish.

After a poor first race where I gained 2 and lost 5 ticks in quick succession the rest of my time was spent fruitfully! I upped my stakes to £3 trades for today and ended with a £0.98 profit. I couldn't spend more than a couple of hours trading today but it was ok.

My decision making, although wrong at times, was much faster than usual and I also found it more exciting, with a couple of heart pumping moments when I realised I’d layed twice. A case of in, out, in, out, in, in, whoops!, out out! Must have a word with the wife ;-)

Cheers

Back With a Vengeance?

2010-02-10T19:51:00.001Z

I don’t know whether I’ll be back in the same way as before but we’ll see.

Anyway, apologies for not posting anything over the last few months and thanks for the comments asking about my whereabouts. I’m fine but needed a break from trading but didn’t expect to be away for so long.

I’ve not done a great deal of trading since August 2009, a bit here and a bit there, and mainly “event” trading rather than my favourite pastime, pre race trading. By event trading I mean making an entry and then waiting for a goal and trading out. This is less frenetic than pre race trading but not half the fun though.

I’ve spent some time analysing my trading style and feel that my best way forward would be to make substantially quicker decisions, both entry and exit positions. Many times I am too thoughtful and completely miss the boat so this is something I am going to attempt to practice.

Since I last posted, my Bet Angel subscription ended and I thought that would be it, at least for now, but I’ve been reading the blogs recently and picked up on a post by Ronnie2ticks about The Toy. It looks an interesting application (and it’s free!) so I’ve downloaded and given it a try over the last few days.

Trading with just £2 stakes I’ve managed a small profit of £1.22 with no lost races. Although I’ve mis read the markets frequently with several losing trades, on each occasion I’ve managed to pull back to profit or scratch.

I’m using the low stakes until I get more used to the software but the hardest thing I’ve found is the quicker decision making, particularly when it goes against me, I still need to speed up!

I know I won’t get the opportunity to trade as often as I used to but I will try to update the blog as and when I do.

Cheers

Andy

Nothing Doing This Week (Sigh!)

2009-08-28T11:18:00.001+01:00

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

2009-08-20T19:02:00.002+01:00

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!

2009-08-17T16:27:00.000+01:00

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

2009-08-07T17:07:00.001+01:00

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

2009-08-06T18:18:00.004+01:00

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

2009-08-05T17:17:00.001+01:00

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

2009-08-04T16:42:00.003+01:00

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

Got a Few In Today

2009-07-30T19:54:00.002+01:00

I managed to get a few races in today which I wasn’t expecting yesterday. Things just seemed to go well at work and enough sleep was accomplished for a late, but refreshed, start.

My trading was ok with, again, a slow steady profit and only one losing race. Though once again I managed to “rescue” more races from negative positions than positive starts, the first race being an exception.

Going by the first race, which were all positive or scratch trades, I should be doing much better and my best recovery was the losing race, going from -£0.38 to -£0.06.

So I have to ask myself what is it that enables me to recover a position more efficiently than I am able to make consistent, profitable trades. I am guessing that some mental searching is probably required.

Anyway, let’s not go in too deep and say that today I achieved a profit of £0.55 on a back traded £119, giving me a %ROI of 0.46%, better than most recent results.

I have more to write but it is probably better to leave that until I do my July summary in a few days, most of my comments are about my trading ability and where I think I am with the trading mentality at this time, so I will leave that for now.

I do have an issue that I don’t seem to be able to overcome and, I believe, it is holding me back somewhat. I do not like to back first and as a result I think that I miss some great opportunities. I have tried to do a bit more recently but feel very uncomfortable for some reason, probably a mental thing again.

So I have a query for any readers who can afford the time to comment about whether you have a preference for backing or laying first and if so why do you have this preference.

I would have thought that a 50/50 split between backing and laying first would have been, how do you describe it, healthy. The last time I actually checked my history on this, my split was 89/11 in favour of laying first.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough and I’d be grateful for any comments.

Cheers

A Quick Update

2009-07-29T19:37:00.001+01:00

I didn’t realise it’s been nearly a week since I last traded, I just haven’t had the time but did a little (2 races) yesterday.

That’s neat, the Stones “Jumping Jack Flash” has just come on the radio, one of my favourite tracks, and one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen, in the film of the same name, with Whoopi Goldberg dancing around her flat trying to decipher Jacks code.

I digress, a neat little profit yesterday but not from trading, well I suppose it was as I placed a “bet”, not an intentional opening trade, and then “chickened out” and decided to trade out in play for a net of £2.69. My luck held, having traded out it went on to win :-( well never mind. I will leave this race out of my July results when I put up my trading stats at the end of the month.

I got everything ready to trade this afternoon and, after a hard nights shift, got to sleep in good time this morning, slept straight through my alarm and woke up at 15:45. So no trading today and probably not tomorrow. I think it’ll be Friday before I will have the time to trade so I’ll update then if so.

I will, over the weekend, put up my July results in a similar fashion to June but I don’t expect to have much time to trade before Tuesday next week.

Good luck & discipline!

Cheers

Steady Again?

2009-07-22T18:50:00.004+01:00

The P&L tells a different story to today’s activity as it shows a steady, though not record breaking, profitable day.

However, of the 10 profitable races I had, I actually traded 6 from negative positions following my first couple of trades in each of the races. I couldn’t quite manage it with the 16:10 Worcester although I recovered the race from £0.64 down at one point.

My best trade was to catch a small swing in the 15:20 Catterick where I made a £0.47 gain on the second favourite, after dropping £0.14 on the favourite. I managed to catch the start of the rise one tick above its lowest and got out right at the top of the short swing, just before the odds dropped again. It was quite pleasing at the time but it then proceeded to shoot up another 12 – 15 ticks about 30 seconds later :-(.

So a profit of £0.73 today which is roughly 0.3% ROI, yet again, I’d still prefer it to be higher for less stress!

I may be able to trade tomorrow, I’m not sure as I’m expecting to be busy most of the day.

Cheers

A Few Thoughts

2009-07-21T18:38:00.001+01:00

I am currently trying to improve my return on investment (ROI) as I seem to be able to sustain a return of about 0.25% – 0.30% without a great deal of effort.

Now I know this gives me a small profit using my current stake level but I figured that if I can improve my ROI I would feel more confident about increasing my stake level.

June turned out to be a turning point for me, with my trading mentality becoming far more normal than my gambling mentality. In July this has continued and, although it has slowed down somewhat, it looks like July will be another steady month, time will tell!

Today I didn’t get very far, granted I’ve made another profit but at this rate It’ll be the year 3000 before I can retire! I think I prefer trading at the latter part of the week as the race starts are closer together. I don’t seem to be able to put any rhythm into my trading when the races are 15 minutes apart, there is too much time between races for my liking and I can let my mind wander too much.

Anyway, turned in another tiny profit of £0.32 on a back traded £74, well at least the ROI was better at 0.43%

I gave up after the 16:00, other things to do I told myself! Just as well as Mrs TG came home early from work just as I was doing the dishes. It’s not what you do, it’s what you are perceived to do, works wonders!

Anyway I hope to be back tomorrow.

Cheers

Slow Going

2009-07-16T17:48:00.002+01:00

Although I was quite tired today, after a busy nights work, I traded but never really got with it all afternoon. I took a phone call from a business colleague around 16:15 and used that as an excuse to quit for the day.

I found trading extremely hard work today and missed quite a few opportunities so, although I made a bigger profit than yesterday, I feel I was not at my best.

However, I managed to turn in a small profit of £0.66 on a back traded £237, making my ROI just under 0.28%, small fry but still a profit.

I’m not working tonight so I’m off out for a few beers this evening (only a few, honest). I’ll be staying away from home and coming back for lunchtime tomorrow.

Hopefully I’ll be sufficiently refreshed to trade tomorrow afternoon.

Catch you soon.

Cheers

Stay Focussed

2009-07-15T19:12:00.002+01:00

Another day with some ups and downs where I fell into the trap of assuming my ability is as good as the last trades performance. Let me explain…

My first trade was entered with the wrong (a very carefree) attitude, not just dropping an entry point in the market, but with some thought behind it. It went against me so I cut out, got back in again, went against me, cut out, etc. etc.

I was actually quite pleased at just a £0.60 loss as prior to my current regime I would probably have left it run a bit longer and got into further trouble. The next race I approached with extreme caution but, again operating good discipline I ended with a £0.27 profit, nearly 50% of the first race loss.

The next few races went ok, nothing special but it is my trading ability that I am trying to improve, not so much the profits.

The 16:30 at Catterick is where I may have found myself on the edge of this “zone” you hear so much of. I didn’t actually notice at the time but, looking back, I was totally focussed on what was going on and with a high level of concentration I almost seemed to place my entry and exit points in “harmony” with the market.

This all probably sounds like bull but honestly, when I look back I don’t think I was aware of anything going on around me, just a total focus on the job in hand.

So then I felt invincible, a very bad move, and screwed up the next 2 races and ended losing half of the previous race gain, although I did recover both from poorer positions. Despite all this I did manage to pull a profit of £0.45 today, a 0.31% ROI on my back traded £143.00.

A good trader, I’ve read, does not focus on the previous 1, 2, 3, 10, 20 or 50 trades as each market is capable of offering something new and different to any previous market. Remain focussed on what you have to do, you can influence that. Learn from what you have done as you cannot change it, no matter how hard you try.

Jeez, Am I getting philosophical? It must be time for bed.

Cheers All

Some Mediocre Results

2009-07-14T19:55:00.001+01:00

I managed to get some trading in on Saturday afternoon and it went ok but I was quite fortunate in the 15:25 at Ascot. I backed, expecting a fall in odds, and 4-5 ticks of money disappeared below me. I thought “ah bonus” and immediately went to lay off just as another load of money arrived and scooped another 6 ticks and the lay price shot down even further.

This time though I managed to trade out with just over £2 profit and other trades in the same race gave me a £2.85 profit overall.

However, today exactly the same thing happened to me in the 16:10 at Downpatrick only this time I was on the lay side first. I managed to get out at about a £3.00 loss and traded back to a £2.66 loss on the race.

I somehow feel that when you’re lucky something will take it and when you’re not lucky it’s just tough!

Never mind, over the 2 days I managed to stay in profit by £0.75.

Hopefully back again tomorrow.

Cheers

Disappointed but Happy

2009-07-08T20:59:00.002+01:00

I managed to get a good afternoons trading in today but was disappointed by another of my single, silly mistakes. I keep doing these odd things from time to time and it always seems to hurt rather than help.

I’d traded to a profit of £0.60 in the 14:45 Lingfield and attempted another trade. It was obvious that it wasn’t going my way so I cut out in my normal fashion, to scratch the trade, using the offset column in BA’s ladder. It closed the trade, and my existing offset 1 tick away, vanished from the ladder.

Well you’ve guessed it by now the existing offset wasn’t cancelled but taken at the very same time and I didn’t notice. I closed my graphs as the race went in play and moved to the one click screen to see a big £23 red against all but one of the runners. I reacted immediately by checking the green up box and closed out for a £1.81 loss.

To push the knife in further the odds went from the 3.45 at that time to 4.7 with my break even around 4.0. Had I waited I could have achieved a nice profit, but no, I did the right thing, I’ve been on the other side too many times in my early days.

So today I managed to back trade just over £750 with a profit of £2.35, a ROI of 0.31%. It should have been better, much better and I would have achieved a clean day, no losses anyway, without the mistake. I guess I’m not yet ready to go with bigger stakes!

I was happy with my trading today in general, it seemed to go quite smooth and I only had to recover a couple of losing positions to profit.

With the weather particularly dour here in Cornwall I doubt I’ll get to the beach this week, so much for taking time off in the summer.

I’m not sure when I’ll trade again this week. I got the chance today as Mrs TG went to Truro with a friend to see some Take That tribute band (yawn!) not my scene.

Happy Trading & Cheers

So So Friday

2009-07-03T19:18:00.002+01:00

I could have been better but, I suppose, It could have been much worse. My best trades came in my first race. Unfortunately, so did my worst and this left me a little cagey for the remaining few races I managed to trade.

I had a number of interruptions during the afternoon and this also conspired to damage my concentration somewhat. However, I managed to pull in a small profit of £0.64 for the day with no losing races after the first.

I “back” traded just over £330 so my ROI for today was a measly 0.19% but that is better than a loss!

I was going to watch the rest of the Roddick/Murray match before going to bed. I hoped it wouldn’t be too long a match as I start work at 10pm tonight. Unfortunately I decided to install IE8 and update the blog. I then found that IE8 does not allow you to copy and paste and, as I compile my blog in MS Word, this was no use to me. I’ve just uninstalled and reverted back to IE7 and everything works fine now.

And Andy Murray has lost, better luck next year.

Both Mrs TG and me are on holiday next week so I expect my trading will be very limited, I will update if I get the chance so have a good weekend and a good week.

Cheers

July – A Good Start

2009-07-02T20:12:00.004+01:00

Ok, I know I’ve not long posted but you haven’t heard from me for a few days. So, a bit like buses, none for a bit then two come along at once!

I managed to get a little trading in yesterday (Wednesday), just two races in the early afternoon with a small profit of £0.39. I didn’t post yesterday as I’d not quite finished my June summary and I wanted to get that finished first.

As always nothing major to report but it set me thinking a bit more and I decided on a little different strategy today. I’ve seen many times during my trades that I exit too early, detailed particularly in last Wednesdays post.

So for today I thought I’d stay in the trades a little longer, provided they were not continuing against me. What I tend to do is if a trade doesn’t actually go anywhere or drops one or two ticks I get out immediately, only to see the market move the way I thought.

I decided that if a trade did not appear to be going anywhere I would just leave it open and see what happens, on the assumption that my initial “gut” decision was correct.

This had a twofold effect for me. In the first instance it actually worked ok for most trades but, disconcertingly it made me more cautious. However, it’s all about profit and I returned £2.30 today, on a “back” trade total of £120. That’s a massive, by my standards, ROI of 1.91%, hey – big smile!

I do have one trait that is concerning me a little and that is I can feel that I am becoming a little frustrated and impatient at the continuous small figures I return. I am tempted to up the stakes and “go for it” but I do realise that it takes time to learn and I know I have plenty of learning to do yet.

It’s my day off tomorrow so I should be able to get a decent afternoon in and test whether I’ve learnt anything or have just been lucky recently. Oh what a way to build confidence!

Cheers

How did June Go

2009-07-02T19:44:00.002+01:00

Having set upon myself to be more disciplined from the beginning of June I think I’ve had a good month. More with my discipline than profit, but a profit I have made.

The difference between June and other months is purely the discipline. I still get frustrated at times and the temptation is always there to push too far, especially to “recover” a losing position. However, this has really only caught me out on one occasion, the early £3 loss in the graph below.

What is apparent from the graph is that the two big losses (£3+ each) account for roughly the same as my profit for the whole month. So had they been managed better, to the tune of my worst race losses over the period, my profit would have been around £10 - £11 rather than the £6 it was.

Yes, I pinched the graph idea from “Bet Your Life Sports Trading”, I like it, it’s better and more informative than looking at a spreadsheet. I like the blog too, it’s a good read.

I “back” traded just over £2,200 in June, far less than I have done in the three previous months, but it has been far more structured than before. The ROI comes in at 0.27%, nowhere near where I want to be but in previous months half a dozen or so bad trades or decisions had cost me much more than the profit in each of those months. Not this time though!

Overall, I’m quite happy with my performance for June. They are not outstanding figures but nice and steady. I seem to be managing my exit strategy much better than I used to and, I believe, I am also managing my entry points better.

My time has been rather limited in June and I would have preferred to have had many more races and many more trades under my belt, it would have given me a much better sample to evaluate my progress.

Finally, for this post anyway, I don’t know whether it is co-incidence or as a result of, but the first race traded with over a £1.00 profit was just after I picked up and started reading “Trading in the Zone”

We’ll just have to see.

Cheers

One Tick Wonder

2009-06-26T18:03:00.001+01:00

I didn’t have much time today but managed to get a few races in .

Nothing major just some one tick wins with me not being under any real pressure. Some straight forward trading resulting in a very small profit of £0.43.

I haven’t much time to comment on today as I’m dropping Mrs TG into Newquay shortly for a girl’s night out so have a good weekend all.

Cheers

Know What You’re Doing!

2009-06-25T19:22:00.001+01:00

I had a bit of a mare today in my final race and wiped out both today and yesterdays profit.

I’d dropped a tick on my first trade and elected to switch the auto offset on to recover this within the next couple of trades. Except I forgot when I started trading again.

Having been used to trading manually, both entry and exit positions, here I am placing my exits manually and then having the offset click in placing the reverse. I got a little confused for a few seconds before I realised what I’d been doing, cancelled all open positions and found myself nearly £4 down somehow.

The best I could do with the time left was to trade back to a £3.26 loss which meant that the earlier, laborious, good run had come to an end and put me back to the beginning of yesterday, closing at a £1.70 loss for the day.

I’m not cut up about it, I know that a lapse in concentration and focus probably aided this mistake. Better to make these errors with the small stakes I use and learn from them now in readiness for the bigger stakes to come.

I’ve got a day off tomorrow, but so has Mrs TG so I’m not sure about trading for the next few days. If I don’t catch you before, have a good weekend.

Cheers

Another Steady Day

2009-06-24T19:03:00.004+01:00

Despite the markets attempts to frustrate me early on I was quite pleased with today’s trading. I didn’t break any records again and even incurred a small loss in my 2nd traded race, which at one point was around £1.30 down.

I nearly destroyed my days “work” in the 16:40, finding myself again around £1.30 down, but managed to pull it back for a small profit.

In the final race I managed to lay “Budwiser” at 2.54 and trade out at 2.60, I thought I’d done well only to see it continue right up to 2.80, then fall down to 2.22 and then rise back up to about 2.74, these swings I must learn to catch!

It turned out to be my most profitable race of the day and topped my days profit up to a grand total of £1.70 and keeps me on course for a profitable June.

It’s been suggested that when calculating my return % I should express it as a percentage of the total back stake used. So today’s return, with a total back stake of £266 is 0.63%, I know it needs to be better.

I understand a little more, not nearly enough though, of the kind of mindset needed to trade effectively. I’m afraid my “demons” visited me a few times during the afternoon but, all in all, an ok day.

Cheers

One of my Better Days

2009-06-23T19:37:00.003+01:00

I’m not talking about the profit level but more about the method of its achievement.

Last Friday I didn’t trade the afternoon but spent some time reading “Trading in the Zone” and watching the markets. The reading caused me to look at the markets slightly differently, not so much as the enemy, but more as the opportunity to be taken.

After a couple of hours I couldn’t resist the temptation to trade and, taking note of what I’d read and noticed, I traded the 17:20 Musselburgh for a few minutes. To cut a long story short I traded some £550 in those few minutes, some going against and some going for me. In the end I profited by £1.28.

The most noticeable thing to me was my attitude to what was actually going on whilst I traded. There was no sense of alarm when the trade went against me, it was a case of moving on and looking for the next opportunity.

On Saturday I was raring to go for a full afternoon of trading but Mrs TG had other ideas, though I did manage to trade the 16:55 Newmarket for a profit of £0.71. I adopted the methods used Friday and, thankfully, the same mindset and came away quite full of confidence.

I did a bit more reading on Sunday & Monday and made sure I was away early from work today, and rested well, for some trading this afternoon.

By the time I sat down at the PC this afternoon I was brimming with confidence so, to avoid any potentially damaging repercussions from some poor trading, I immediately halved my stake. I am now using £0.50 tick sizes as I feel it puts my bank under no real pressure but, if things go well enough, I will have no real issue in raising the stakes.

So, this afternoon bought, what I feel to be, some extremely good trading although I would like to have done much more. The trades I made were, generally, good decisions and despite some turning against me initially I profited in every race. I usually get at least a couple of scratch and / or losing races.

My turnover, at £423, wasn’t as high as I thought it would have been but turning in a profit of £2.39 gives me the highest % return (0.56%) I’ve had from pure trading for some while.

Although I am not new to trading it is nearly 6 months since I started this current regime and I do believe that I have achieved something this last week or so. I have said many times that my fear of losing tends to rule my mind but I feel this has changed somewhat recently and has made me look more at the opportunities presented.

There is still a little time to go but I am on course for a small profit for June. I would like to think I am beginning to pass that “Don’t Lose Money” stage and maybe over the coming months I can turn in regular profits.

Now, by saying that I’ve probably spoilt any chance of a profitable month, so here’s to tomorrow.

Cheers

No Drivel Today

2009-06-18T18:02:00.001+01:00

Just a quick post as I’m a little short of time but managed a small profit of £0.32 today. I found the markets as tough as yesterday but I felt that I traded slightly differently, certainly mentally anyway.

I hope that further reading will help me as I‘ve now landed a copy of “Trading In The Zone” thanks to a generous reader.

I don’t have Friday off this week due to staff holidays so I’m not sure what time I will have tomorrow, or before next Monday / Tuesday but hopefully I will be able to get some trading in.

Cheers

A Pivotal Day?

2009-06-17T19:20:00.003+01:00

I lost count of the times I waited, and waited, and waited, to place my entry point, only to place and have the odds shoot against me as someone scooped up 3-6 ticks worth of orders. It seemed at one point that someone was sat behind me waiting for me to place my orders!

I’ve read that many people are finding it tough trading the weeks of big meetings, well, me too! I had a bit of a go yesterday but gave up after a short while, no losses, an 8p profit if I remember right. I just found the markets difficult to read and difficult to get matched outside the money.

Today started off exactly the same but I thought I’d persevere, after all I’d like to make a profit at this one day. I didn’t think it was going particularly well, quite poorly in fact, but at the end of the afternoon I found I’d only lost £0.25 and suffered less losing races than I thought.

At one point, after my third to last race, I was quite down, mentally not financially (at the time) because I’d struggled to just scratch the trade, due to the “money scoopers”, which at one point was £0.57 in profit.

I traded the second to last ok, but without any real conviction, still I managed a profit.

This was a tough mindset to take to what was my last race. However, whilst I was observing the markets my mind said to me “go for it, if it goes against you, don’t worry, just get out and try again”. It’s a very odd thought for me.

So I set about trading my last race and this is how it went…

1) Lay Astrodiva @ 2.94, backed @ 2.86 and redded out for -£0.28

2) Lay Astrodiva @ 2.72, backed @ 2.66 and redded out for -£0.23

So -£0.51 after 2 trades

3) Lay Whispering Gallery @ 2.16, backed at 2.18 and greened for £0.09

4) Lay Whispering Gallery @ 2.12, backed at 2.14 and greened for £0.09

So now still -£0.33 after 4 trades.

As I was watching the Astrodiva ladder something in my mind said “it’s gonna go” so my final trade…

5) Lay Astrodiva @ 2.68, backed @ 2.80 and greened for £0.46

To say I was chuffed would be an understatement and this race went a long way to changing my mental attitude, both for the afternoon and, I hope, for the future, we’ll just have to see!

I hope this drivel hasn't bored you.

Cheers

Analytical Times

2009-06-11T19:16:00.002+01:00

Quite often I find myself being too analytical and seem to miss opportunities when they present themselves. I’ve said many times before that I’m a cautious trader and I believe it is a mind over matter problem I have.

Many people have suggested the book “Trading in The Zone” so I guess it is a must to purchase and will get hold of it as soon as possible, I’m hoping it will help me overcome the ghosts that sit in my mind when trading.

So, let’s have a look at some analytical stuff…

This is a picture of the various graphs that are available and what happened whilst I was watching what was going on in the 15:35 Nottingham.

It’s things like this I need to understand. The WOM pressure (lower graph) was down for some time, as you can see from the picture. The 3 circled graph areas on the picture cover roughly the same time period for Eastern Warrior, and I would normally be tempted to back as a couple of indicators said to me this was the current best policy. Despite this the odds continued to rise early on, making me nervous and I didn’t make an entry this time. Unfortunately, whilst writing this I missed Candy Stripe’s refusal to go in the stalls and Eastern Warriors subsequent fall in odds from 3.0 to 2.74. Tradergrays luck again.

Then, while finishing off my notes, I immediately missed the Kinetix opportunity in the 15:50 Newbury, going from 2.06 to 2.26 for the same reason and then reversing back to about 2.10. So I will not be writing notes for my blog as I trade in future!

So today started with a loss in the first race but had none after that and resulted in a turnover of £422 with a profit of £0.66, giving a lowly percentage of 0.15%. I’m really aiming for double the % at least, but it wasn’t a losing day like yesterday!

I have a question, or query rather, for any readers that care to take the time…

In the case of Yarmouth today, where racing was postponed for 30 minutes, what would you guys normally do? I had actually traded for a £0.13 profit in the 14:50 just before announcement was made. I then left it and came back to it at about 15:15 but didn’t do any more trading on the race as there was no money being put through the market. I wondered what you guys did. Subsequent races, although delayed by 30 minutes, seemed to affect other races less so I’m guessing that the normal schedule comes first and if there is time the delayed meetings are traded.

Anyway, I don’t expect to be trading tomorrow so have a good weekend and I’ll catch up next week.

Cheers

Don’t Chase Losses

2009-06-11T09:05:00.005+01:00

I’m trying to be more professional with my approach to trading, looking at the longer term picture and not necessarily the current net profit scenario.

This would have worked out reasonably well for yesterday had I not made an error and also gave me an absolutely fantastic lesson too, one I’ve already learnt as I didn’t compound the error further. Let me explain…

A bit disappointed I traded out of the 14:50 Brighton at a loss of £0.73, not too damaging on its own but at the time I didn’t realise that I’d clicked twice in the back column on the ladder interface.

By the time I’d noticed, which was no more than 30 seconds later, then checked the Bet Angel log for what I had done, a further £2.30 had been lost. I immediately traded out to a £3.11 loss and was kicking myself for the mistake. Within seconds the race went in play and on the one click screen I was showing a £3.09 – £3.12 red across the card.

This is when my mind went to work, ok I can lay a selection at £3.12 making a net zero, which selection?, I know towards the end of the race any of the runners that achieve odds greater than 8.0 but less than 15.0, it’s got to be worth a try.

So towards the end of the race here I am with finger poised to lay this selection at 10. This is when my sense took over and I realised what I was doing. I leaned back in my chair and took the £3.09 on the chin and moved on. You’ve already guessed it, the selection went on to win, so instead of a £3.11 loss I’d have been looking at a £28 loss, good decision there then!

So whilst a bit erratic in a couple of races in the main my trading was relatively stable, although I made a loss of £1.32 on the day. The picture shows a £1.12 loss as I’ve included the single race I managed to trade the day before. Just before my boss rang and ruined the afternoons trading with a 90 minute phone call.

I turned over £550 including Tuesday but made a loss of 0.20% or £1.12. Thank god I didn’t turn over that £1,000,000!

I have Thursday and Friday off this week but currently have plans for Friday. So I expect to get a full afternoon trading in on Thursday and then probably won’t be back until next week. I’ll update later anyway.

Cheers

A Weeks Summary

2009-06-06T18:32:00.003+01:00

As I’ve still not found a great deal of time to trade, something I must change as soon as possible, I’ve done a small summary for the week. I’ve only managed to trade a few races each day, usually towards the end of the afternoon cards, and this sometimes makes it difficult to write something that may be of interest to you guys.

I seem to have too many interruptions at the moment and, coupled with my erratic working hours, it makes it difficult for me to trade with any decent level of concentration. I’ve said before that I work nights, starting about midnight and finishing about 10:00, and I like to get a few hours sleep before I trade.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been finishing later, as late as midday, and to get adequate sleep before I trade means I’m not getting up before mid afternoon. I also like to spend 30 minutes or so doing my “trading homework” with a cup of tea or coffee before I actually start trading.

A typical example of how I’m affected by lack of rest etc. is Thursday this week, no major loss but a loss all the same. When I’m tired I tend to let the losing trades run a little longer than normal and whilst I can regularly trade to small profits a single poor decision can cost me 2-4 races profit.

By poor decision I mean my indecisiveness in exiting a trade quick enough, though today my speed cost me. I backed Titus Andronicus (16:05 Musselburgh) at 3.00, which momentarily dipped to 2.94 and I traded out at 2.96. I then had a quick glance at the next race, came back to the 16:05 some 30 seconds later to find Titus at 2.74, ah well, such is life.

Anyhow, for the week I’ve managed a net profit of £1.05 on a turnover of £296 which gives me a % return of 0.35%. Now if only I could turnover £1,000,000 per week :-)

Most of you have probably read this already but if you haven’t then you must read Adam Heathcote’s post on entry points, it contains some excellent information for trading. I, for one, will be reading it on a regular basis.

Anyway, whatever you’re doing this weekend, have a good one.

Cheers

Back In The Swing?

2009-06-03T19:10:00.002+01:00

Well, for a brief go this afternoon anyway! I managed to catch the latter part of the afternoon card and didn’t break any records either.

I figured that I’m getting better at scratch trading but didn’t really do anything worth getting excited about. I didn’t “recycle” my stake much either as you’ll see from the results.

My trading was cut short by a business colleague phoning me for advice on a job interview and that destroyed my concentration so I packed in after 30 minutes with a profit of £0.95 for the day.

Base Level £10.00 / Ave Per Race £0.31 / Return 3.10%

Turnover today £42 with a profit of 2.26%

Touchwood, I should be back tomorrow.

Cheers

I'm Still Here

2009-05-31T19:18:00.002+01:00

Hi All

Just a quick post to say I'm still around. I haven't traded since the last post and, in fact, I've hardly touched the PC for over a week.

It's been tremendously busy at work and Cornwall, being a holiday area, is seriously affected by the seasonal influx of holiday makers. I also had to undertake a 3 day Fork Lift test so ended up only working and sleeping for the last 7 days or so.

Rest assured I should be back this week, I'm hoping for Tuesday but that is looking very busy so hopefully by Wednesday at the latest.

Catch you soon.

Andy

Very Quick Post

2009-05-22T18:42:00.001+01:00

I found it difficult trading today but had some good results, and one bad. I attempted to trade 3 selections at the same time and lost myself a bit (and a quid!). Never mind I’ll put it down to my (lack of) experience.

Base Level £10.00 / Ave Per Race -£0.02 / Return -1.10%

Turnover today £372 with a loss of 0.03%

I hope to get some trading in tomorrow but, as always, the weekends are now dictated by Mrs TG’s arrangements.

Whatever happens have a good weekend.

Cheers

Strategy Adjustment

2009-05-20T19:36:00.004+01:00

I’ve not traded since last Friday again, partially due to the time I’ve (not) had and partially due to my lack of consistency when making trades.

So I’ve spent a bit of time, not enough really, reading some trading literature and watching a few of both the Bet Angel and Racing Traders videos again.

Whilst, in my opinion, the Bet Angel software is far superior to the Bet Trader equivalent, I find many of the Bet Trader videos more helpful to me as a beginner.

Having spent some time doing “homework” I’ve sort of gone back to basics with my trading, in so much that my general strategy has returned to that which I started with back in January. The main difference now is that I am applying my increased knowledge of trading to those strategies.

In an effort to monitor my consistency I need to develop a measure that is quantifiable and for this reason I have reduced my trading level to 1/30th of my bank in order to make mistakes and keep the damage to a minimum.

Should my consistency improve I will raise my trading level and see how things progress. The only issue that annoys me a little at the moment is that my trading time has become somewhat limited but I hope to rectify that in the near future.

Any ideas from the trading fraternity as to what would be a good measure of consistency will be gratefully received but as a start I will measure my average race profit as a percentage of my base trading level.

And so on to today, I had very little time again but managed to get a few races in at the end of the afternoon. It is interesting, for me, that all three races started with a losing or scratch trade but all three ended in profit. This gave me a profit of £0.75 over the three races.

So using my new “consistency” measure, well at least for now…

Base Level : £8.00, Ave Per Race : £0.25, % Return : 3.12%

Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow and as I’ve got Friday off again, normal service should be resumed…

Cheers

What Happened?

2009-05-15T17:07:00.006+01:00

As I don’t have a great deal of time to write this today I’ll go straight in.

I achieved a loss of £12.02 today but I am still at a loss to understand why. I wasn’t having a particularly favourable day but I expected to be, at the vey least, breaking even.

I nipped out to the local garage around 15:25 to get some munchies and when I returned I refreshed the BF balance to find it was about £14 less than I was expecting. So I checked my account in Betfair to find there was a loss of £10.51 on the 15:00 Newmarket, a race where I had a full green book of at least £2.30 shortly after it had gone in-play.

It transpires that Rule Four came in to play over Tropical Paradise being withdrawn. The mystery to me is, according to my Bet Angel log (next picture), that I placed a back bet of £2 @ 50.0 on Tropical Storm some 38 seconds AFTER the race went in-play (15:07:48) and it was matched a couple of seconds later (15:08:26).

Despite individual horses showing red profits from time to time, this was the final back bet, the only one made in play, in a series of successful dutching attempts I made as the book was consistently under 100% in the few minutes before the race went off. I then went on to green up the excess profit to give me a fully green book.

The next picture is my Betfair “Voided” list, this may help explain something, I don’t know!

Now, can anyone explain how the rule four works? I’ve tried to understand it but can’t seem to grasp exactly what happened in my case. Also, is it possible that a horse can be withdrawn after the start of a race or is this just some anomaly that occurs on occasions?

Whatever, I need to understand what happened and whether it applies to Bookmaking in the same way as well or would the reverse happen and you make more profit? I’ve absolutely no idea.

I’ve “handcrafted” this spreadsheet to use both Dutching & Bookmaking in certain types of race and was planning to test it a bit more soon. On the race above I didn’t use it, but used the Dutching tab in Bet Angel.

I think Mrs TG is out tomorrow afternoon so I may well get some time to trade and if so I will post again tomorrow. If not then have a good weekends trading.

Cheers

Another Busy Week

2009-05-14T19:34:00.002+01:00

No updates for nearly a week. Unfortunately I’ve had no time to trade whatsoever, which I find very disappointing. I’ve said before that if I could achieve a minimal income from trading that would be perfect (well nearly anyway). But it is also an enjoyable “hobby” for me so I do miss it when other commitments call.

At first glance I wasn’t too impressed with my figures for today, and I guess I’m not really anyway. However, I didn’t realise until I looked at the P&L that I’d only traded for about 90 minutes. Shortly after that the telephone rang and there I stayed until around 18:00. It wasn’t too long ago that I would struggle to make today’s profit in an afternoon, so I guess that £1.64 in 90 minutes is my daily positive (I always try and have at least one!)

Ok, so £1.64 is not a great deal but when I started this “journey” I’d be happier with less. The one thing I found today is that you can get out of practice, certainly for me that is. I haven’t traded since last Friday and I felt a little “rusty” today.

Once again I have tomorrow off, so a bit of reading, a bit of relaxation and, hopefully, a whole afternoon of trading!

Cheers

Just Not Disciplined Enough

2009-05-08T19:02:00.001+01:00

I will probably take the weekend to do some reading, Profitable Betting Exchange Strategies, provided by Peter Webb at the Betting Exchange Academy course.

With a well disciplined start, being a little more selective with the races I traded, adjusting stake and strategy to match my abilities etc. etc. the first few races went according to plan.

After that I went a bit awry, I carried the 15:15 in-play and was staring at a mind numbing £68 red before the race finished. Fortunately it worked out ok for me in the end with a profit of £44.78 in the race.

With this indiscipline I quit for the afternoon, considering myself to be extremely lucky that I was over £50 up instead of £90 down. However, the pull of trading, despite the stress sometimes I still really enjoy it, got me back at the PC just over an hour later. This time I did exactly the same thing and it didn’t work out.

Why is it? Your mind knows the correct thing to do but it also prevents you from doing it, despite the most obvious dangers. 7 weeks I went without taking a trade in play but it still catches me now. Fortunately the loss was so much less than the win and I ended with a profitable day.

If I had exited at the correct time on the 2 races my net P&L for the day would have been around £6.00, if both had gone wrong for me my net would have been a loss of about £92.00. As it happens I ended the day nearly £42.00 up and feel I need to do some work on my mindset.

So, I doubt I will trade over the weekend, I think I’m too dangerous for my own good at the moment and will come back refreshed on Monday / Tuesday next week.

Have a good weekend.

Cheers

Back With A Whimper!

2009-05-06T18:42:00.002+01:00

Last time I posted, Friday 1st May, I didn’t think it would be 5 days before I got a chance to trade, and only just today.

It’s been a hellish few days at both work and home and I haven’t had time to do much at all, but I did manage to get a few races in today.

Nothing special to report but I still managed to make a small profit of £2.68 trading 3 races late afternoon / early evening.

I suspect I may not have much time tomorrow but, with the day off, I’m hoping to get a full afternoons trading in on Friday.

Cheers

Up ‘n Down

2009-05-01T19:13:00.002+01:00

I didn’t get a chance to trade yesterday so I was really looking forward to today, knowing I should have plenty of time to give it a real go.

It turned out to be quite disappointing with a very mixed day today. I started off quite well but couldn’t get it quite right after the initial impetus and really tailed off after that.

In particular the 15:40 Southwell just didn’t work for me at all. Every trade I placed almost immediately went in the opposite direction and my usual tact is to close the trade and reverse my position. Virtually every time I did this the odds went back the other way. I guess had I started trading 15 seconds earlier it could have been totally different :-).

So today ended at a loss, albeit a small loss of £3.24 so we’ll move on and see what tomorrow brings.

Cheers

Nothing Special

2009-04-29T17:08:00.001+01:00

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

2009-04-28T19:45:00.001+01:00

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

2009-04-25T18:52:00.002+01:00

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

2009-04-24T17:54:00.002+01:00

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

2009-04-22T18:26:00.001+01:00

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

2009-04-21T15:16:00.006+01:00

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

2009-04-17T18:11:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-16T20:23:00.001+01:00

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?

2009-04-15T19:07:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-14T19:22:00.002+01:00

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

2009-04-13T18:55:00.003+01:00

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

2009-04-11T17:37:00.001+01:00

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

2009-04-09T19:43:00.006+01:00

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

2009-04-07T18:31:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-04T17:34:00.002+01:00

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?

2009-04-03T19:27:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-02T18:09:00.003+01:00

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

2009-04-01T19:46:00.001+01:00

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

A Minimal Return

2009-03-31T19:32:00.001+01:00

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

2009-03-30T18:46:00.004+01:00

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

2009-03-26T18:58:00.003Z

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

2009-03-25T19:24:00.003Z

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

2009-03-24T18:29:00.003Z

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

2009-03-21T18:06:00.001Z

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

2009-03-20T18:18:00.004Z

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

2009-03-19T18:27:00.003Z

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

2009-03-18T17:28:00.003Z

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

2009-03-13T17:48:00.001Z

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

2009-03-11T18:55:00.000Z

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

2009-03-10T17:34:00.002Z

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

2009-03-09T19:14:00.004Z

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?

2009-03-07T18:45:00.004Z

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

2009-03-06T19:31:00.001Z

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

2009-03-05T17:48:00.001Z

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!

2009-03-04T19:08:00.004Z

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

2009-03-03T18:51:00.002Z

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

2009-03-02T18:38:00.003Z

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

2009-03-01T17:35:00.004Z

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

Just A Little For Today

2009-02-28T17:46:00.005Z

Yesterday I was looking forward to trading today, but following a busy nights work and a late finish I didn’t really feel up to it. I didn’t get my normal morning sleep and when I sat down at the PC I was still tired, not good for trading anyway.

Despite this I did throw in a few trades in which I came out with 2 wins and a scratch. It was obvious to me that my heart wasn’t in it and I felt I didn’t have the right “courage in my conviction” when looking to make trades. Although I did watch many go the way I expected I guess I had some psychological issues too, so I thought it would be a good idea to call it a day.

Anyway, I ended with a massive £0.31 profit for about an hour of trading which is better than throwing good money after bad.

It has been a tough week for me with various issues, both work and home, so I guess it may have affected my performance overall. However, again I think I have taken some small steps forward in my trading ability, lets see.

I don’t expect to be trading Sunday as we will be visiting my parents so I’ll be back on Monday. Have a good weekend.

Cheers

Check Your Settings!

2009-02-27T18:25:00.003Z

An ok day but I guess the day could have been much better (or worse!) as you will notice a big gap of 2 hours in my trading. I had to take a telephone call, despite the fact I told the person to make it early evening. Unfortunately it was extremely important and I had no choice but to take the call, it just went on longer than expected.

Whilst I consider myself to be a completely amateur trader and, therefore, unable to offer any real advice at the moment, I’ll say this “CHECK YOUR SETTINGS”

After yesterdays “recovery” I had to go through the same process today because I did not check my settings in Bet Angel Pro, following some changes made yesterday. I didn’t matter for the first 2 races but it manifested itself in the 3rd race and cost me.

I won’t go into it as I’m more embarrassed about it than anything else but fortunately I noticed them and subsequently changed the offending settings. I then went on to have some excellent trades, pulling back the deficit to a profitable day of £1.53

By the way, I now take a screenshot of my settings and it is now another checklist item before I start trading tomorrow.

Cheers

One Small Mistake

2009-02-26T19:16:00.004Z

I had a reasonable day trading, except for one mistake I made that I should have noticed at the time.

I believe I either closed my position at the same time as my stop loss triggered, or clicked twice instead of just the once. This wouldn’t normally be a problem but I actually didn’t notice until the race was in-play. By that time my net position was a deficit of just under £9.00 so I closed for this.

Now I’ve had this happen before, once or twice, so I decided to remove the possibility of it being the stop loss and traded the rest of the day without it. This requires significantly higher discipline but I actually didn’t find it a problem, felt quite comfortable trading this way and will now continue to do so.

Anyway, despite this setback, I ended the day £4.63 down which, under the circumstances, I don’t believe was too disastrous.

By removing the stop loss I think I’ve taken a small step forward in my trading and, perhaps, focussed my mind a little more.

Cheers

A Couple of Days Off

2009-02-25T17:13:00.005Z

So I’ve spent a couple of days without trading because I’ve been a bit busy.

Monday I had to work in the afternoon, bummer!, Tuesday I got a couple of trades in and netted a £2.25 profit but had to go out late afternoon for some beers with friends and today I had to take Mrs to Newquay, I got back in time for the 16:10 but didn’t feel like trading so I thought I’d bore you with my blog update.

Tuesday afternoon I spent a little time just watching the markets, trying to see how things react, wondering if there are any “standard” patterns to odds movement but gave that up, whacked in a couple of trades, won and got ready to go out.

Touchwood, all should be ok for a full afternoons trading on Thursday, lets see how it all goes tomorrow.

I've posted the pic from Sundays trading, showing the £1.32 loss and the £2.25 profit from yesterday (net £0.93) just in case any of you had thought I’d won a shedload and buggered off to Rio.

Cheers

Indifferent Today

2009-02-22T17:47:00.005Z

A very mixed day for me today, perhaps a little too eager to “get in there”. Also I had a few interruptions, they didn’t affect the current trades but probably disturbed my concentration.

Anyway, a small loss today of £1.32 but I feel that I have learnt something this weekend. All I’ve got to do is figure out exactly what it is!

I’m not sure if I can trade tomorrow as I may be needed at work in the afternoon, but I’m hoping an alternative can be sorted.

Cheers

Composure Day

2009-02-21T18:27:00.002Z

So, after yesterday’s performance a little soul searching was required. Having had a brief look at what I’ve done differently I believe it could be that I have not been trading over the last few days to the same guidelines I’ve adopted from the beginning.

Being a cautious trader I’ve been making 10 – 20 trades per day, a couple per race maybe. The last few days I’ve made roughly 8 per race and I think I am probably trying to “force” a trade rather than waiting for my recognisable opportunities.

So, back to basics for today, no losing trades and 1 scratch trade, making a total profit of £4.06.

Although the amount is small, I’m quite pleased with how my trading went today, I hope this is the shape of things to come.

Cheers

Friday 20th, Late Posting

2009-02-21T00:58:00.004Z

My sincere apologies for not updating the blog on Friday. Unfortunately I had to dash off to Exeter at 16:00 and didn’t get back until about 19:30. I then had my tea and got off to bed as I’m now back in work at midnight!

Well, I’m not sure I really know what happened today, it really seemed that everything I did went against me which was epitomised in my last trade of the day. I don’t believe that I did anything different to normal and I expect most of this is due to my inexperience.

Anyway, today’s trading resulted in another losing day, to the tune of £17.38, coming from trade after trade that went against me. In one case I was chasing the odds, to exit my position, over the full length of the ladder I use (18 rows) and when I finally caught up with the odds I was over £5 down!

On to my last trade of the day which came after looking at the Bet Angel "one click" screen with the “reverse book” open. I didn’t do anything in this mode but went onto the ladder screen to look at the last race (for me). I’d forgotten to change the “reverse book” option and placed what I thought was an opening lay position. It was in fact a back position and, fortunately for me, my prediction of the odds movement was true to today’s form, the odds promptly fell, and I greened out at £2.09 profit. It was after that I thought I’d have to call it a day!

I will spend a little time this weekend trying to find what I have done so differently this week to previous weeks, though I expect it is likely to be my experience level. Roll on Peter Webbs course, just over 3 weeks to go!

Cheers

Some Good Work Undone

2009-02-19T18:01:00.003Z

Hmmm… what a day, my trading went fine, a bit here a bit there, a couple went against me but most went for me so pretty pleased in the main how the trading went.

However for the last 2 races I tried some in-play stuff for a change, only £2 lays, and it is quite obvious that I don’t know Bet Angel as well as I thought I did. This resulted in a loss on the day of £28.84 and £34.00 of that loss came from those last 2 races.

So, on a positive note my pre-race trading netted a profit of £5.16 and although my Betfair balance is now £249.20, £0.80 less than when I started, I have been able to draw a £25.00 “dividend” and I am, on paper at least, still £24.20 up.

Tomorrow, strictly pre-race trading only as sometimes it’s hard to see a positive when I get it so badly wrong :-)

Cheers

Only Just Made a Profit!

2009-02-18T18:02:00.005Z

I’m a little disappointed after today’s trading, more so than yesterdays. I tried to replicate my performance after yesterdays poor start and for some reason I really wasn’t with it.

It was pretty much a win/lose/win/lose/win/lose sort of day coupled with me not realising I’d possibly clicked my position twice, or closed my position manually as the stop loss fired, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe someone could enlighten me as to whether the latter is possible (I use Bet Angel Pro).

I took a break for about 40 minutes in the middle of today’s card but I didn’t come back as refreshed as I thought I would.

Anyway I did make a profit, albeit £0.32 for the day, so at least I didn’t lose.

I also think I’m more tired than I thought as I’m yawning (a hazard of working nights) whilst writing this so I’ll keep it short and just say…

Cheers

It Finally Bites Back

2009-02-17T18:20:00.003Z

I’ve been waiting for this day for some time, yes I lost today, -£4.41 and I guess that came from being overconfident to start with and then fuelling that with a dose of stupidity.

My first trade went against me (I can hear you all shouting “no you didn’t”) well yes I did, I took it in-play and it bit me back heavily, to the tune of -£11.76. The second race didn’t fare too well either with a -£0.31 loss. So I’m looking at a -£12.07 deficit after about 25 minutes of trading.

I’ve now taken 7 trades in-play and the others worked out ok. Now this is a very rough calculation but I would probably have been no worse off trading out when I should have done in all 7 than I am now. However, I believe that today’s trading experience has probably been far more valuable than any other day so far for 2 reasons.

Firstly, although I know I should have closed out earlier, having got myself into this poor position and finally traded out I was then looking to the next trade and not dwelling on the loss as I have always done previously. This really is the first time I have felt this way after a loss.

Secondly, this -£12 deficit actually gave me a psychological target. My biggest win on any day was £6.20 and I realised that if I was to turn it around I would have to out perform my best day by 200%. A tough assignment for a cautious trader.

I took a short break, gathered my thoughts, came back to the PC and applied myself to the job in hand. It didn’t work, I mean I didn’t get the £12.07 back but I managed to recover £7.66 of it and for that I made more trades than I’ve ever done in a day. It goes to show that if you push yourself you may be capable of more than you think.

Anyway, once again, I’ve rambled on too long. Here is the P&L for today and I’ve included the race P&L, just for information, as I wouldn’t normally bother.

Here’s looking to tomorrow, I’ve still £4.41 to recover!

Cheers

A Landmark Day

2009-02-16T18:25:00.002Z

I’ve had a reasonable day today and the “Landmark Day” refers to my first “dividend” payment.

In my introductory post I said that I would allocate 50% of all daily profit to a dividend fund and pay this to myself as a reward for getting it right when the dividend fund balance was at a reasonable level, I think I said £10. Well today I have withdrawn £25 as a payment for the last 16 days trading, £1.56 per day :-).

Today I traded 7 races which returned a profit of £5.68, giving me £1.89 per hour traded. There were not many opportunities for me initially as many of the today’s races were just out of my trading odds range of 2.30 – 5.00, particularly in the middle of the afternoon. Towards the end though several opportunities presented themselves and all worked out fine with no losses in any race.

The 17:10 Wolverhampton caused a little panic for me today, I placed an opening lay on Princess Zohra with about 3 minutes to go and as it matched either Betfair or Bet Angel froze. However I was able to close down and restart Bet Angel in time to trade out for a £0.36 profit.

Cheers

No Rest For The Wicked

2009-02-15T18:39:00.009Z

OK, so I said I’ll be back on Monday, I’ll have to stop telling you that I may not trade tomorrow…

I did a bit of a test today. I was enlightened by ronnie2ticks as to the ability to trade at higher levels, even at 100% bank, so I gave it a short go today. Nothing major, just over a couple of hours and earned roughly £1.59 per hour.

What I will now trade at is a maximum liability of 25% of my trading bank by using the “Auto Stake” option in Bet Angel as in the picture below.

This means if backing first I will stake at £67 and laying first will limit the liability to £67, so at 2.0 odds my lay stake will be £67 and at 5.0 odds my lay stake will be £16.75.

I will run this for a week and, if all goes well, will lift the liability to 50% of my trading bank.

I’m not sure how to present any stats for this so I will just continue to post my profit & loss picture for now.

Anyway, thanks to Ron for the information and catch you all tomorrow I expect.

Cheers

A Rest Day Today

2009-02-14T17:48:00.003Z

My sole intention for today was to take a rest from trading. I decided to open up Bet Angel and just look at the markets, no stress, listening to Queen CD’s and a bit of studying the markets.

I noticed that, for me, there was either too much or not enough money in the markets, creating either slow movements or highly volatile movements respectively. Right or wrong this is how I read it anyway.

However I did place just the 1 trade and managed a 1 tick gain of £0.56 profit. I won’t post the other stats I normally post just for this 1 trade but to say my initial bank of £250.00 is now £292.60, a profit of £42.60 after 3 weeks of trading (13 actual trading days including today)

I must say it was nice to have a rest and not to have to concentrate so hard on the screen. I think that if I become pretty successful at this I’ll at least invest in a bigger screen.

Another rest day tomorrow, but I intend to be back trading on Monday.

Cheers

Friday 13th, Unlucky?

2009-02-13T18:35:00.003Z

I read Adams 13th Feb post before setting up and took a note of his last comment “The quicker you can accept what has happened, the more focused you will stay”. Here’s a guy making more than a living from trading, someone to learn from.

So I decided to trade today and I turned in a decent profit after a very slow start. I think I started slower because of the incident yesterday but I soon got into the swing of things. The final profit level was a pleasant surprise and, as I only traded for 2 hours, a £2.75 per hour earnings rate.

For today I traded 6 races with a £5.50 net profit so :

Per Race Profit % = 3.43 (+1.93 to target)
Today’s Profit % = 20.60 (+10.60 to target)
Day on Day Bank Variance = +1.92%
New Trading Level of £27.00

Now I feel tired and I may well take a break from trading this weekend. It has been a busy week at work, an interesting week trading and a stressful week with Mrs TraderGray having job interviews.

Have a good weekend.

Cheers

Thoughts on Yesterday

2009-02-13T01:07:00.002Z

I wouldn’t normally post again about a previous day but yesterdays episode has really been bugging me. I’ve just started work and I’ve got some time in the office before I’ll be “bothered”.

I wrote yesterdays post rather quickly and I see I forgot to mention that my potentially disastrous lay trade actually went on to win (Kayf Aramis in 16:30 Chepstow). Now the whole episode has quite literally scared the crap out of me and I’m only playing with small figures of £26 per trade.

If, as is my target, I was playing with larger amounts, say £1,000 trades, this liability would have been closer to £4K and that is what scares me, how will I react in a similar situation?, will I have the discipline to close at what would be a small percentage loss by comparison, but much greater loss in £££’s?

Fortunately, I believe that I have much more to learn than other, more seasoned traders, have probably forgotten and I expect that dealing with these episodes probably becomes more like a hazard of the job rather than the major issue it has for me.

I’m still not sure if I will trade on Friday but as I don’t always have the opportunity to trade at the weekend I probably will.

Sorry to bore you.

Cheers

A Dangerous Game

2009-02-12T18:21:00.004Z

I may take the day off trading tomorrow, not sure yet. I’m rather perturbed that I broke my own rules yet again. This time it could have been extremely costly and I think I’ve ridden my luck enough for this week.

I took a lay trade in-play again (it wasn’t a particularly poor loss either) and I guess the horse got an excellent start as the odds dropped by about 25%. Carrying a total liability of £97, at one point my market position was -£10.19, I was about to take a -£3.46 “red up” when it drifted and I greened up for £0.55 profit.

However, today’s trading has produced another profitable day, 5 races for a £2.84 profit, giving me an hourly rate of £1.13, it could have been substantially worse, I still have so much to learn.

So for today…

Per Race Profit % = 2.14 (+0.64 to target)
Today’s Profit % = 10.68 (+0.68 to target)
Profit v Bank = +1.00%
New Trading Level of £26.70

Who knows what tomorrow brings, maybe I will trade after all.

Cheers

A Good Day?

2009-02-11T19:24:00.002Z

As far as profit goes yes, but I am not entirely happy with my trading performance today as I once again broke my own rules and let a position run a little too long (backed at 4.6, then layed, finally, at 5.6). Fortunately the reverse happened with the very next trade, a steamer, backed at 4.2 and layed at 3.15. So I guess you win some, you lose some and anyway I earned £2.48 per hour this afternoon, my best yet.

I was still a little too cautious today but I’ve decided that I may as well carry on as I am for now as the bank continues to grow. I’ll probably take a different view after Peter Webb’s training course in mid March.

For today I traded 5 races with a £6.20 profit so :

Per Race Profit % = 4.71 (+3.21 to target)
Today’s Profit % = 23.57 (+13.57 to target)
Day on Day Bank Variance = +2.23%
New Trading Level of £26.60

Finally an apology is in order as I’ve noticed I posted an incorrect figure on the Saturday 7th February post. The profit v bank figure should have read +1.57% and not +3.53% as posted. The +3.53% was for the week, not the day, I’d just read the wrong figure from my spreadsheet.

Anyway, enough ramblings…

Cheers