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.