Hooray! A Profitable Day

A good start to the new month and a big relief for me. As you know I was starting to question my ability and lack of discipline. This time I was really focused and as such didn't make any stupid decisions.

It is inevitable that there are losing horse races. I had three significant losses of £26, £17, and £35 and in each case I took it on the chin and didn't take it in play. Despite these losses I managed to end the day with profit on the horses  £73.  I was very conscious of the timer and made sure I exited my position in plenty of time.

I am looking forward to watching the Sheffield Wed v Crystal Palace game on BBC1 later today. It promises to be a very dramatic match. This is in complete contrast to the Liverpool v Chelsea game which I think will be an easy win as Liverpool have no incentive to raise their game. I am not saying that they won't try, they just won't find that bit extra in order to compete with Chelsea. The Betfair prices reflect this with Liverpool at 4.9 to win.

In the words of Money Tree (BF forumite) this is a nailed on away win!

April Review

I have not posted since Tuesday as I was away on business Wednesday and Thursday. You could say that those two days were good as I managed not to make a loss!

In all seriousness I shouldn't be flippant about it. For anybody seriously thinking about dipping their toe into this game, it is not easy and you must treat what you are doing with the utmost respect. If you trawl blogs you could be forgiven for thinking it is easy. There are far more diaries showing success than failure but of course if they are doing well they like to share it with the world but publicly showing failure is not a natural thing to do and there are many blogs that simply disappear overnight or simply lie about their results. Having said all that there are always going to be people with natural ability and are therefore extremely successful. As far as I am concerned, If I have a mortifyingly bad run you will see it.

In reality there is a fine line between winning and losing and it is very easy to build up your bank over days or even weeks only for it to be vapourised within one stroke of the keyboard. You have to constantly say to yourself that this is not just a numbers game it is real money. In the early days it is not about making money. It's about getting a feel of the market. It's about testing strategies and most important it's about creating discipline!

For those who are already involved in trading and struggling to make it work, take time to review your strategies. Have a deep look at your performance on each market and think about your decision making. Why did this work? Why was this a disaster? How can I improve?

So let's look at my performance in April. First of all let's take a look at an extract of what I wrote on April 3rd.

I seem to have a good solid run only to make stupid mistakes which wipe out a large chunk of the profits. It's a typical scenario but at least I am making more than I am losing. I just need to limit the losing trades to make this all worth while. I think that it's a fine line between success and failure but I know what I need to do to manage this into solid consistency.

That statement just about sums it all up. Another good start to a month that seems to end up going nowhere with the same mistakes being made. Yes I made a profit of £240.57  and for someone just starting out it is a satisfying result but it is not as if I am new to this and £2,880 will not go far!

The £243.94 loss on 13/4 was what I call a 'natural loss' .The power cut was beyond my control and I had an emergency plan which I was not able to execute because of the timing of the loss of power. It can happen to anyone at any time.

What stands out for me is my poor performance in the horse markets since 20/4 and the fact that I haven't made an overall daily profit since 21/4. There are significant  Horse racing mistakes resulting in unacceptable losses. Discipline is the main reason such as not exiting before the race starts and then making things worse trying to trade it out whilst in play and then chasing the losses. However in addition to these stupid mistakes my actual ladder trading has been poor since 20/4. I was reading the markets so well up to 19/4 and then it just fell apart. I said in a previous post that it felt like someone was watching what I was doing and then turning the markets against me. Of course that can't happen but you can get paranoid like that. Perhaps I was getting over confident after a great start to April.

I am going to trade the horses today and will see how that goes before I decide whether to cut it out temporariy or possible permanently.

So let's look at the positives. A profit for the month! Snooker and Football seem to be working for me. I have always done well on the snooker. As long as there are scrappy frames I have a very high success rate. I could make far more if I trade it regularly but you need to watch the frames and it is very boring and time consuming. The family would not be best pleased having to watch snooker every evening!

So what does May hold for me? The cricket 20/20 World Cup will dominate the month. I made a nice profit on the SLv NZ game. The swings towards the end helped immensely.  Hopefully there will be more of the same as the tournament progresses. We also have the Rowland Garros Tennis which starts the third week of May. I am not a Tennis trader but I am going to give it a go! Plenty of football as we build up towards the greatest sports competition in the world. Then there is the very unpredictable election night. I am hoping to see large swings in the most seats market as the event unfolds throughout May 6th. Remember that I am currently in profit in this market

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To conclude, I would just like to mention that I have subscribed to a Horse laying service. I know we all get tons of these offers every day but for some reason (don't ask me what)  I was drawn to it. This is the first that I have actually paid for. It cost £37 so will see how it goes this month.

I would also like to thank everyone for taking the trouble to view my blog and revisit.  I have had 686 unique visits in April with 374 people returning. It is interesting to see  a considerable amount of Polish readers that regularly visit me. I would have been happy with 10 viewers

If you are trading today I wish you good luck and I will report on my performance in the morning.

I am working on the spreadsheet today so hopefully it will be available for download shortly.

Much of the Same

Not had much time to add to the blog. Just to say that things are not too good in the Horse market as yet another mistake of trading when the race turns in play and then the price immediately dives out cost me £95 in one race. Perhaps I need to temporarily cut this market out as I have not had these sort of mistakes occur in the regularity that it has recently. At least I am still up!

I have had many requests for the spreadsheet but please allow me a few days to tidy it up and make it available for download.

Another Day, Another Dollar!

I  think I have got yesterdays performance out of my system and let's hope that I can move on with lessons learned.

I am still in profit and I know that £300 so far this month is a nice amount to some recreational traders but it is far short to where I want to be. £11 per day is hardly a tidy sum for all the time I have been using at evenings and on weekends! Maybe I should just stop and find something more useful to do. We'll see what happens over the next few weeks.

I forgot to mention previously that I traded out of the 'Most Seats' market on Friday as the polls were showing a Conservative revival following the second debate. This was reflected in the price as it was slowly coming in. I used the iPhone app iBetMate to close the trade at 1.27 for a very small profit but didn't work it out correctly so I had to tweak it with a lay bet of 1.28. My judgement was correct as the price has since fallen further and is now 1.23. I am aiming to get back in at some point.

Add caption

Whilst writing I put in a lay of Kibet in the mens Marathon. No need to trade out and a positive start to the day..

The final two tabs to my spreadsheet are shown below. If anyone is interested in it I can make it available to download and will provide instructions as to the handful of cut & pastes required daily and monthly.

Profit / Loss Horses Only

Analysis Table

           

A Few Days To Forget

 It has been a bit of a stressful few days. It all started in the office on Thursday morning. As soon as my laptop reached  the desktop I was receiving fatal Windows errors all over the place. I rebooted a few times but it was still occuring. I know my way around computers but I cannot understand why this was happening. It wasn't as if I had installed new software or that I had a problem shutting down the night before.

It became apparant very quickly that this was a problem that could only be solved by reinstalling XP.  We don't have an exchange server or profiling so the restore of emails and documents depends on the regular backups that I store on a flash drive which thankfully I did the day before.

It has taken two full days (and late nights) of restoring and configuring to bring the machine back to the sort of level it was when it crashed. The most important thing is that my work  data has been fully recovered and now that the machine has had a good clean it is running much faster than I can ever remember.

With all this going on, trading was the last thing on my mind. I wasn't going to attempt anything until I was satisfied that my computer was stable.

So what of Geek and Bet Angel? The programs are stored on a completely separate flash drive so should be totally unaffected but my Geek ladder configuration must have been stored on the 'C' drive as they have been lost, so this morning I went about the boring and time consuming task of setting it up again.

...and as for todays horse trading? Absolutely shocking! It's as if the whole market is watching what I am doing. I could watch a situation for five minutes where not much is happening but as soon as I enter the market it all goes mad in the opposite direction. It's not as if I am piling in loads of cash! It happened time and time again! I was down loads on the 18.35 at Haydock and was so hacked off and frustrated I just let in run in play and it won. That made me very angry and I did the same thing the next race but at least I managed to get half of the previous race losses back. It is not the right thing to do. This blog is supposed to help. What a mug!

Quick Post

Continuing with my spreadsheet. I have two month tabs. One shows the general monthly performance and the other shows the monthly sport totals as a consolidation of the Daily Chart.

Didn't do too much today but still managed a respectable £40. Reaching £1000 by the end of April is a step too far but I am looking to get to £700. I still have my 'most seats' lay in potential profit. The price is currently 1.28 and I am hoping that it will move higher after tomorrows debate.

Never Trade When Tired

If ever there was an example of how situations can quickly and easily go against you then this was it. Over the course of 45 minutes and just 5 races  I had managed to lose £92.53. The reason? I was tired and not in the 'zone' thus making very bad decisions by guessing rather than reading the markets.

In the first race I lost £29.72. I was down £15 and decided to try to claw it back in running. This is never a good idea and there are countless warnings on many blogs to stay away. It is the correct advice but the temptation is very strong.  Anyway the market continued against me and I lost an additional £15. 

After this disappointment the natural desire is to get things on an even keel as quickly as possible. The best advice is to fight against this desire and either trade how you know you can or just switch off for the night! I know I shouldn't but the next couple of races I increased my stakes and dug an even deeper hole for myself. The one positive is that I didn't go in play but came away with losses of £14 and £20. I gained on the fourth race but that was obviously more luck than judgement. The last race went the same as the first. I was down, went in play and lost more!

Had another go at the snooker and managed to reduce the bad evening by 10%.

Having played this game for over 3 years I should know better. It is a concern that I still do it, even though it is to a lesser extent but writing this blog really is good therapy for me. During the losses I was thinking to myself of how embarrassing this is going to look on my page and that can only be a good thing.

Referring back to my spreadsheet. I have put up another two tabs. The first is my daily horse market and it keeps me up to date with my targets and projections the other is a bar chart. Please excuse the spelling in the yellow bubbles. I found out that they can't be amended once I have saved it. Stupid if you ask me!

There are four more tabs to show in due course.  The month summary, The month totals by sport, Horse Race line chart and the long term analysis.

Just the result

Not had time to post properly. Will do more next time. Had a go at Snooker on a frame by frame basis. Wouldn't recommend it as it is far too volitile.

Result of the days trading shown below and the total on the right has been updated.

Internet Explorer Users

I use Firefox as my preferred browser but I do check my page on IE now and again and I just noticed that my Blog list wasn't showing on it. My apologies for this. It should be working now that I have moved the Bet Angel Banner below it. However the titles are still grey rather than gold!

Sunday Best

It's been a good day on the horses and I don't think it's a coincidence that Sundays seem to be strong for me. Most of the big players take Sundays off and with them out of the way I definitely read the markets better. I am especially pleased of my  total as I made up some ground after my day off on Saturday.  I would have carried on through the evening but my iPhone decided to crash and lose all it's data while it was syncing and I spent the next three hours restoring it!

As mentioned before, I keep meticulous records of my trading with lots of calculation of stats and targets and I have started another spreadsheet based on the 3rd April start. I have uploaded a couple of the tabs with more tomorrow.

Most Seats Update - Conservatives up three ticks from last night. Now 1.31 with a potential profit of £45 no matter what the result.

Daily Sports Chart

P/L Line Graph