Six Month Ramblings

When I started this blog six months ago I had planned to acheive a consistent profit of £1,000 per month netting me £9,000 by the end of the year. I have used the phrase 'easier said than done' on a few occasions recently and nothing is more apt than in this case.  £33 per day sounds an easy target but the losses soon drag me down and I'm left playing catch up.

Now let's look at the reality. The most important fact is that I am green, that's always a good start. There have been 184 days since the start of the blog of which 141 days were traded. 96 green and 45 red. 

11 of the 45 red days were losses of over £100 (24%) whilst I only acheived profits of over £100 on 21of the 96 (22%). 

As you can see from my Analysis tab, my daily average is just over £15 and at this rate I will reach £9,000 on the 17th November 2011 rather than the end of this year. To reach my original target I am going to have to make at least £68 every day.

Looking at the shorter term view my performance since the 4th September could have been exceptional had I not succumbed to the frustrations of an IT glitch on black Sunday! The Nugget Crew over at Trading Football have certainly helped me acheive my best football month by far with a healthy profit of £365. The £25 monthly membship and a further £80 on the videos was cash well spent. 

I have made no secret that the big loss last Sunday hit me hard and I have been quite low for most of last week and was not interested in any trading or contributing to the footie chat. So on Thursday night  I made a conscious effort to cheer myself up and turn things into a positive by deciding to turn some of my overall green into reality by withdrawing for the first time since the introduction of the blog. £15 a day may not seem much but looking forward to doing something with £1747.41 is a different matter. After withdrawing I was left with a bank of  exactly £2,000. It make's everything worthwhile and I am now full of beans and ready for the October challenge which incidentally got off to a modest start.

Keeping records is a must for any trader but blogging adds that little extra to help you recall the bigger moments of the past. It was upon looking at my bar chart that I noticed the big loss of over £350 in June. I couldn't remember exactly what happened but a few seconds later I was able to click on the post and it all came flooding back. It was a replica of last Sunday and £550 that could have been best served in my pocket rather than the drain.

The number of daily visitors to my page have always been more than I ever imagined but has particularly grown over the last couple of months. I honestly never thought that a diary of my journey would be so interesting to others. It was never meant to be anything other than a personal diary to aid my discipline. That objective is still questionable but if any of my ramblings has helped people make various decisions in their trading/gambling life then I hope I have helped to make the correct one's for them.

I would like to mention the spreadsheet. With more new hits to my site, the more requests I have been getting for it. The first time I made it available was June and the continued interest  over the months has meant that I have been spending time re-adjusting the layout and formulas to bring it up to date in addition to various bespoke requests. The past month has had considerable interest and taking up quite a lot of my time so it is only fair that I charge a small fee for my time. Therefore new requests for my spreadsheet with a start date different to the 1st October will be charged £5. The last version will always be available for free and anyone with reasonable Excel experience should be able bring them up to date. I have some outstanding requests which I hope to complete by the end of the weekend.

I have done some horse trading in between watching an excellent quality stream of the Crystal Palace V QPR match and will report my results in the morning.

Off to the Nugget room!