It's all about me.

I started this month trying to take a few ticks in each football match that I entered, at certain points in the game. My strategy was going well and as long as I continued in the same vein I was confident that I would do ok. However last week I became over-confident, lost my discipline and fell into exactly the same traps in these in-play football markets as I have done on the horses. What was a steady, if small profit, capitulated into a much greater loss and since then I have been two-ing and fro-ing, losing one day and winning the next, but not making any inroads into the deficit.

I have actually felt miserable this last week, but I have only myself to blame. This really is all about me, my character and whether I can use the discipline and patience that I think about when I go to sleep, and what I know is required in this game. I have identified an effective football strategy (something I once thought I would never do), but I am the one who preventing this from succeeding. I haven't looked at the horses since October and the way my work schedule is, I can't see myself getting involved for a while yet. I am therefore relying on in-play football, a mad-cap sport where there can be no goals for 60 mins and then 6 are scored before the 90 minutes are out. Yes I came unstuck on this game today, for the same reason that I have come unstuck on the gg markets, by going against the trend, oh and risking too much of the bank. In effect, chasing a loss, gambling.

I must concentrate on getting mind right, be a trader and not a gambler, otherwise there's no point in continuing.

Watch this space.

2nd Quarter Assessment

I have been learning to trade for 6 months now. My first 3 months was a disaster - I didn't know enough about pre-race horse markets and I wagered far too much in football, putting me a good few hundred pounds down. The last 3 months have not been as bad and I have learnt a great deal, primarily that trading takes up more time than I can offer. It has been frustrating going a week between trades (on the GG's), but this is my life & I just have to take it on the chin for now.

As for my trading ability, well I still have a long way to go in the GG markets; I am a gambler at heart and I struggle to remove the gambler's instinct from my trading. This is a major obstacle for me, but now is the time, with racing starting at 1pm, to find out if I can overcome it. The other sport I have been concentrating on is football, and as of this weekend I feel as if I have made some sort of breakthrough here. I just hope I this new strategy pays off. Although I love golf and would like to trade it more, it doesn't suit my lifestyle at the moment and I prefer the timings of individual football matches. As for tennis I just haven't the time study that sport as well.

So my p&l for August thru October is:

£-188

made up of -£224 on the horses, +£48 on golf, +£11 on football and -£9 on both tennis & cricket.

As a reminder my p&l for May thru July was

£-451

Looking forward, I hope I can now get some good sessions in on the horses during the next couple of months to see if I can improve my trading and I will carry on with my football strategy, hopefully at least once a day. I do have a lot of work commitments in the next few weeks, so I will just have to fit trading in where I can.

Week with the kids

It's half term already, blimey that didn't take long. Even less time for trading this week than usual, as I'm keeping the kids entertained!

RCA

After going in-play and letting the trade turn into a gamble last Tuesday, I punished myself by immediately slapping my laptop shut and not trading for the rest of the day. I tried to recover the loss the next day on a football match but before I was able to exit my position when in profit, with the timer on 4...3...2...a goal was scored & that was that. So I was back to zero in my two active accounts again, but these experiences have made rethink a few things. I have therefore done some Root Cause Analysis of my problems.

Problem 1 - How to stop letting a trade going in-play?

Well, I go in-play sometimes by mistake, when the race starts before I have managed to exit my open trade. At other times however, like last week, I get myself into a unsatisfactory trading position, where I decide to gamble to try to get myself out of it. The trouble is being a gambler, I know there is a horse race starting when the market closes, so there's always a chance....

Therefore in order to solve the above, I need to find out:

Problem 2 - How did I get into this unsatisfactory position?

Simply, an unsatisfactory position is one where too much of my money is at risk. This is caused by either my stakes being too high, or my entry point is poor, my exit point is poor. I have analysed some recent trades and I am afraid I am guilty of all of these traits.

So I must try to improve my entry points, only enter a market when I am very confiident that I can make a one or two tick profit. Then I must exit when in profit (without trying to be greedy) and also set a stop loss so that if and when a trade goes against me, the important decision making is taken away from me. What I have already done is set out a strict staking/risk plan, for use in each market that I trade. Sometimes when trading a market I get "trigger happy", firing trades in at will, so increasing my risk. This I must stop and learn to use more self-control.

What I have also done is work out on a spreadsheet how much each tick is worth to me, at different price levels. Obviously as the prices increase, so does the value of each tick, at each "crossover point". This is now printed off and will be visible in future trading sessions, starting today. This will probably see me looking at larger-priced horses now, hoping to make one tick here & there.

Going back to problem 1. If I can control my trading and staking, there is less chance of going in-play. As a last resort, if I am close to the off then I will use the Take SP option of BetAngel which will prevent any further mistakes. It is very difficult to subdue the gambling instinct where horseracing is concerned, especially as I love watching quality racing, but hopefully by employing all of the above techniques I can keep it at bay.

I have already started using the same new staking/risk plan for football as I will be for the horses. As it happens I've come out on top from the first two games, but it will only show its worth when I lose.

Dangerous Colours

I have been into the GG's in a fairly big way for a few years now. I'm no expert but I am interested in much about the sport, including the breeding, the trainers, owners etc. Now when I used to bet regularly (before trading entered my life) I had several strategies, but one in particular was to look for a horse whose price made it too big to ignore, and whose jockey was wearing what I called "dangerous colours" or silks. In simple terms a horse owned by one of the big-time owners, the Sheiks for example. The colours that ALWAYS spring to mind are the Khalid Abdullah silks.

I just so happened to notice them in the 2.40 Maiden at Salisbury today. From looking at the racecard, Revered was a serious enough horse on paper, due to its breeding, by Oasis Dream & connections, trainer Michael Stoute & jockey Ryan Moore. What was interesting was the price had been drifting from around 6.0 if I remember correct. I was aware of money for the fav but Revered was around 9.0 when I first caught sight of it so I did no more than follow just this one horse throughout the betting market. The price drifted all the way up to a high of 12.5 and I was thinking that this represented such a good value bet, in each-way terms. I had backed it on the way out from 9.6 up to its max at 12.5 and exited my trades as the punters steamed in and reduced the price back down to 9.something. I was ecstatic with my £1.16 greened up profit as it's the very first time I have used past racing knowledge to good effect whilst trading. I just wondered if anyone else ever does the same kind of thing?

3 points as footnotes:

I know us traders couldn't care less what the outcome was, but Revered finished a staying on 3rd behind the fav, so in betting terms that would have been money back & a little bit more for an each way bet. Another one for the notebook!

I don't have pictures so I did not know at the time if the horse was playing up or sweating up, but the price drifted too slowly for this to be the case. That's why I backed it out, expecting punters to steam in at some point.

I made this swing trade using the ladder, thanks to watching Sam's (Adapt & Survive) latest video. It gave me confidence to get straight back in and give it a go. Cheers Sam!

Following the trend

October began a little like September had done. I went £50 down before I knew it in both the GG's and football, for a number of reasons. I traded what was I think my very first Saturday afternoon last week (something I was really looking forward to) and recorded most of the session, but I am afraid it turned out to be very tiring and not very successful. I was probably trying to do too much at once; trade & commentate on my trading. At times I went silent for ages whilst concentrating and at other times I was just talking gobbleaduke! It was my first attempt at this so no need to be too harsh. Now I've done it once though it should become easier in future and being able to review my trading should really help, especially with my entry points, as I rarely get these spot on.

I had looked at this week thinking I would not be trading at all due to working four 12-hour day-shifts followed by 3 night-shifts, but it just so happened that I had read one or more blogs about trading with a ten pound stake or a ten pound bank. Considering I'd whittled down my Betfair account to £12 I decided to join the party on Monday afternoon.

Well my results are quite good: On Monday whilst at work I managed to have a few trades using the standard Betfair interface, losing only 1 of 8 trades. I was forced to take Tuesday off due to my wife being ill, so I grabbed the opportunity of trading using Betangel, but this didn't go so well. Using the Ladder I lost the first 4 trades but recovered all the previous losses in my next 2 trades. That was it for the day though. On Wednesday I had 4 winners & one scratch, back @ work & back on Betfair.com. On Thursday I had a 3 trades & lost one, making a losing day. On Friday I didn't trade at all because I was looking after my 5 year old daughter, who had broken her forearm the day before in a collision with a classmate at school. She was in too much discomfort to go to school and she was also complaining that the plaster cast was too heavy, my poor baby! I'm glad to say she is much better already.

I am also very glad to say that Saturday has been my best day's trading ever! Not that I won much at all, but because I traded 7 soccer markets, winning 6, and...wait for it...I traded 22 horse races, winning 17, scratching 4 and losing only 1. Not a bad day considering I'd had only 4 hours sleep after working a night-shift. All week I had been just trying to make one or two ticks using a £2 or £3 stake and I just continued that strategy throughout the day and evening. Because I had traded well during the week when using the Betfair.com interface, today when using Betangel I switched from using the Ladder to the One-Click screen. I had always enjoyed using the Ladder but previous results in general have not been good at all, so I think I'll continue on the One-Click screen for the foreseeable future, especially as it is more suited to scalping.

I must admit I did go in-play a couple of times; more due to lack of concentration than anything else and I was fortunate that I either scratched or was able to green up for a few pence each time. The other downside to the session was that early on in the day after going 7p up I decided to have a bet instead of continue to trade the race. I just fancied an Alan King runner at a big price so I had a few quid on it (I just love the jumps!) Anyway the horse lost which meant my p&l for today's horse markets is a measly 15p when it should be somewhere around the £3 mark.

In trading terms however that is a huge lack of discipline. I won't let a gamble affect my trading bank in future though, not now I seem to be doing something right. Also I have taken advice from another blog and have opened new Betfair accounts for different sports. I am just waiting for BetAngel admin to allow these other accounts to be registered with the software and I'll start using them. They'll be funded with a nominal amount, probably just a tenner; this appears to be the current trend (and actually it seems to be very much the RIGHT thing to do for me) so I hope I can continue with this apparent breakthrough that I've made. My P&L since embarking on the new reduced strategy on 05/10 is £2.69 up on the GG's & £3.12 up on the footie. It'll take a while at this rate claw back my 5 months' worth of losses, but maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I am now moving towards it...

P.S. I remember seeing that Alazan won on Thursday! His odds were prohibitive for me however at 4/9 and I gather he gave his backers a few nervy moments when he jinked and clattered one or two hurdles before romping home by 10 lengths!

Timing isn't everything

Tonight I took on Man Utd in the game against the German champions. The end result for me was satisfactory, but it turned out to be a scary few minutes instead of an easy winning trade. When Wolfsburg scored after half time my first thought was to exit my trade for a greened up result, job done. I didn't do that; I decided to add to my position. When did I do this? Well I waited until the next time Utd's price dropped a few ticks. And when was that? Just after Utd gained a free kick outside their opponents' box. Jesus I don't half make it hard for myself! Anyway I was able to hang on for another short while before exiting with £7 all green before Utd scored again.

So let's analyse this one: I layed ManU at 1.38 for £40 on about 8 minutes for £15 max potential loss. The reasoning was Utd's short price considering the calibre of their opponents. I wasn't looking at the end result, but for their price to drift sufficiently that I could make £10 greened up. The price took a long while to drift and even at half time I wasn't ready to green up. My entry point wasn't good and I spent too long in the market waiting for my price. Not to be too harsh though, in my opinion I did predict the game to be tight for a while, hence the opening position that I took. So, bring on Soccer Mystic, which was not to hand as I was trading using the Betfair standard interface at work, but which would probably have predicted this lack of price movement(I still haven't used this software in anger yet).

Into the second half and the game went my way before the magical £10 green figure appeared. Wolfsburg scored, putting me in an excellent £23 green position. Immediately though I got greedy and went for more and unfortunately this time my timing was perfect-ly bad. I entered the market by gambling that Utd wouldn't score from their next free kick. By doing so and by ignoring the downside, I layed Utd at 3.00 (thinking they wouldn't score & the price would revert) and increased my potential loss to £34! Only after Utd scored did I look at the potential red numbers and think "what an idiot!". I let the game run for just a few minutes longer before exiting my trade at around 1.9 for £7.08 profit.

A winning trade, but in response to the title of a recent post by The Scalper, timing isn't everything, for me anyway, as I still manage to make more than one howler!