Last Day Rally

The month ended positively. I traded 19 evening races to record my highest horse total of the month. As I have said many times, in each session I can either read the market perfectly like today or find that it goes in exactly the wrong direction. There is never any middle ground. 

 

Unfortunately my speculative lay of £200 at 1.07 when England lost their fifth wicket came to nothing.........well you never know!!!!

Looking back over the month there are too many red days to make any serious progress and the 14th June was a day to be forgotten but the last six days have been encouraging and I hope to be able to continue in the same way. Positivity is very important to trade successfully and I was definately affected for a week after my large loss as my results in the horses show. 

 

I have mentioned before that I would like to start to get involved in the Tennis markets so I popped along to the Tradesharks website during my lunch as Paul invited followers to watch him trade the Federer Quarter Final for free. His decision making was perfect and by the early games of the second set he was already up by £70. Unfortunately after 40 minutes I got cut off and couldn't get back but looking at his webpage he went on to total £100 and then made another £100 on the Nadal game. I would have liked to have seen him struggle, not because I am a jealous sod but just to see his exit strategy because minimising losses are the key to success. He may be doing it again on Saturday so why not pop along if your serious about Tennis markets. I certainly will.

The Profit Continues

Just a quick post to report that it's my fourth consecutive profitable day and my third on the horses. I only traded a handful of races and feel a lot more relaxed now that I am not chasing targets. £40 a day is good enough for me as an extra £1,200 per month is a significant amount.

England - Will We Ever Know The Truth?

Let's not kid ourselves with what might have happened if Lampards goal would have stood! England were poor. Not just this game but the whole tournament and the friendlies before. How can a large bunch of talented players put in such inept displays after such an encouraging qualification? 

My own assumption is that something must have been wrong in the camp and I have a feeling that if Fabio leaves, someone will start to reveal what actually happened. During qualification  the players are only away from their clubs for a few days and Fabio does not have any time to put in place any strict procedures for morale to start to drop. However this group of players had been together for well over a month which is more than enough time for problems to start to surface. 

The players never looked particularly happy and I put it down to Fabio. This is just speculation of course but there were a few events that I felt were strange. The fact that Fabio told the players the team a couple of hours before the game was strange including who was playing in goal.  It smacks of bad communication between management and the players. David James was interviewed after the Algeria game when he was told that Fabio thought the players were scared and nervous. He answered 'did he' in a tone which suggested that there was a reason for the bad performance but it wasn't that! Then there was John  Terry's  strange press conference when he was suggesting who should be playing in the final group game and that there should be a change of tactics which I took as a guarded message that the team were not happy with Fabio's strategy. Frank Lampards equally strange press conference the following day when his jokey and smiley attitude seemed to be so over emphasised that it looked false to me.

Finally there is Wayne Rooney. a revelation for Manchester United who was totally anonymous in all four games in South Africa. Why?

Back in the Green

It was a bad start to the trading day. The Grand Prix was more like a procession rather than a race and there weren't that many options to reduce my loss. The rest of the day was positive (apart from England of course). Once we had fallen 3-1 down I decided to trade the horses. I traded the last 8 races without pictures and was more conscious of the time so I was really good at closing my trades well before the off. The liquidity was reasonable for the few races that were on while the footie was still going and I found the movements easier to predict. The big boys were probably down the pub! I also did a handful of US races late in the evening to achieve £56. 

That's £100 on the horses over the past couple of days and hopefully I am over my bad run of results.

Gained a little profit on the cricket and the evening football to help turn the bad start around and finish the day with a profit of £42 and more importantly put me back into the green for the month.

.

Only Two More Years to the Euros

The England match report is now on Fifa's official site. Read it here.

A portion from it reads:

Meetings between these two sides often provide talking points and this one's came 60 seconds after Upson's goal when Lampard's shot from the edge of the box struck the underside of the crossbar and bounced down, with the referee ruling the ball had not crossed the goalline.

It seems to have been carefully written. Diplomatic to say the least!

Edge - I Have Found Two

I have come across a few blogs that talk about having the edge and how that is the road to success. They think they have found something that nobody else has. It's all nonsense of course as everyone knows that the only two edges in the world are shown below.

 

Gaining experience on the markets, learning to make the right decisions at the right time and controlling your emotions when things go wrong is the way to long term success. Each sports market reacts in different ways and these characteristics can only be found by playing them time and time again. The winners are the one's that understand the characteristics and the losers are normally the newbies although there are some people that no matter how long they play, can never get to grips with the market movements.

So what of Englands chances today. I am not so sure. Germany are always resilient and they have a good young side. They took apart Australia and on their day they can take on anybody. Rooney needs to be back to his best to unlock the German defence. 

If England can do the business I will be doing my bit to ensure a Mexican victory. I have few people round to watch the game this evening so what better way to help the Mexicans than with an assortment of Tortillas to nosh washed down with plenty of bottlles of Sol. 

Buena Suerte!

Taking the Opportunities

Essex needed 79 from 5 overs. A seemingly impossible task. The odds reflected this as Surrey were 1.01.

I don't know how many times I have seen 1.01 and thought that there was no point sticking a lay of £100 when it's just £1 wasted as there is no chance of it being overturned, only to see it do just that!  However this time I did it and Styris decided to let rip to make 27 runs off the next over. The following over the team made a further 13 runs leaving them 39 from 3 overs. I decided that 1.34 was plenty enough for me and took my profit. Essex went on to win having required 22 runs off the last over and achieving it with a ball to spare.

Just before that I was watching the Spain v Chile game and on 85 minutes they both stopped playing. Not literally of course..... but they were just passing it around satisfied with the result just like I had wrongly predicted may happen in the game earlier in the week. I had the correct score market already up and noticed that 1-2 had quickly dropped from 1.30 to 1.18 as everyone was getting on!  I joined in and then switched over to the Swiss game as I knew that as long as the Swiss didn't score in the last 5 minutes (they needed two to qualify) the other game will end 1-2. If the Swiss would have scored I would have quickly exited my position at least at the same price I had gone in at.

 

I am not too bothered about my continuing losses on the horses. Like I said before my mind isn't totally on it when I am concentrating on other sports.

I accidentally came across a marvelously written blog. Joining the South African Party. He should take up Journalism!  It's about a guys adventures whilst out in South Africa enjoying the World Cup. It's a must read for all of us that wish we were over there too.

A whole post and I haven't mentioned

it once and no sign of a spreadsheet!

Less Targets More Profits

It was good to see both Mexico and Uruguay going for it in Tuesday's game even if it did mean that I lost. I don't usually go for a straight gamble but I really thought that a draw was on the cards. I did make some of the loss back on the evenings matches and had a good cricket result.  I have not done much on the horses as I have been relaxing watching the footie. Trading the horses is tricky enough when fully concentrated on but almost impossible if you are trying to enjoy a football game and trading without pictures.

I would like to thank my anonymous readers for their recent comments. Having thought about it they are right when they say that I am targeting myself too much and that it is not good for overall performance. It encourages chasing when things don't go right. There have been quite a few occasions when I have traded a market just because I want to hit a certain level and then come unstuck. I will try to improve in that area as I but I still believe that an objective is still necessary to keep some kind of focus.

One thing is for sure! I am not going to reach a profit of £1,000 this month. It has been a very random performance this month with 12 daily wins and 12 losses.

My only objective is to finish the month green. I think that's a target that I am allowed!

 

An Interesting Afternoon Awaits Us

As I write we are about nine hours from the start of the final games in Group A and the volume for the draw in the match odds market for Mexico v Uruguay has gone through the roof.  We should be seeing volume for the three outcomes at about 500,000 but as you can see the draw alone is £4,238,700 which is about 93% of the whole market. Goodness knows what the volume will be as the game starts.

Will we see an exciting end to end game with the teams worried about  losing and the daunting prospect of facing Argentina in the next round or will it be a boring  unopposed passing game at the half way line securing the draw that is needed to qualify.........

........ either way, I am a contributor to the 93%.

Is 1.87 low value?

 

There is one happy guy over at the Trading Tennis blog. I don't know the actual trades but I bet that the most that was at risk at any one time was less than $500. I keep meaning to get involved. This has got to be an incentive!

Not much to show for my efforts over the last couple of days.

I am now averaging £16.56 per day which is half of my original target. I am supposed to reach £9,000 profit by the end of the year but at this rate it will be September 2011. I need to profit by almost £40 every day this year to pull it back.

The Bigger Picture

Trading on any market is not necessarily a 'one dimensional' activity as sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture. This is why research of the implications of a particular scenario is very important.  Take the France v Mexico game a couple of days ago as a prime example. While many punters were just concentrating on this in play market, shrewder one's were keeping their eye on the Mexico v Uruguay market which was due to kick off five days later.  The clever traders were praying for Mexico to take the lead. Why?.....because if the game ended with a Mexico win then both Mexico and Uruguay would qualify if they drew their last game. So while the France market was suspended after Mexico took the lead, the Mexico v Uruguay match odds remained open allowing opportunities to gain significant profits as the price for the draw started falling. Now I am not saying for one minute that the final match will be fixed but while there is speculation the price is always going to drop.

 

You can see clearly that when it went 1-0 the price dropped from about 3.25 to 2.25. Although the drop was fairly sharp it wasn't a straight vertical drop that you always get in an in play market so there was time to get on the ride. When Mexico scored their second it dropped to 1.75 and it is currently settled at 1.85.  It is worth keeping this in mind with the remaining second round of group games.

As for me, I was not shrewed enough. My main concentration was on the horses and I only thought about looking at the future match a few minutes after the first goal had been scored.

There were a lot of evening races on Thursday. I traded many of them only to finish with a profit of just £2.60 so I am still clearly struggling but after four days of losses in a row it was a significant  green result. I didn't do much on Friday as I was downing the beers watching the unbelievably poor England but I came out with a small profit of £13.

I am out this afternoon so no horses today. Perhaps that's a good thing.