Stable Markets?

Today I was able to trade a few more races than normal. However I found the money around the favourites very difficult to read to get an idea of which direction the price was heading. It appeared that someone was controlling the market with quite a bit of cash. There was lots of money each side of the book and significantly more than was getting matched. I recorded the last race of the evening at Wolves to illustrate this point. Normally in my experience there would be a lot more movement in a Wolves market but the favourite is very stable in the last 5 mins.

New Toy for Christmas

Just been using the last 2 weeks to play with the Toy. At the moment it is my trading application of choice for Horse Racing. I like the versatility of the product and it has meant I am able to trade more than one horse successfully. I have always used Bet Angel in the past and found this to be a very good and reliable product. However it would be stupid of me not to look at other products. Currently there are some features missing from the Toy but it is free! For the moment I will continue to use both. If you want to try the toy download it from here.

Free Racing Diary

Just a quick post to say that you can register for a free Racing Diary with Racing UK. As a subscriber I have had one for the last few years. I always find it useful as it has all the racing fixtures so you can plan out your trading and look out for the big meetings. I don't think you need to be a subscriber because they didn't as for any subscription details. So treat yourself to a diary or get a cheap Christmas present for someone!

Greyhound Grief

I meant to post this earlier but forgot. I ventured into the Greyhounds on Tuesday. I meant just to have a look. So I decided to use a bank of about £50. I think perhaps someone was giving me a message not to bother. In the first race the 1558 at Sunderland I was happily trading on the fav when at 1556 the market was suspended and I was left with £42 liability. Now my bet was a lay so the fav duly obliged and won. Now I am not one of those people that believe these things always go against you because they don't. At times these sort of things have gone in my favour. If you read some people they must be the unluckiest traders in the world because every time Betfair mess up a suspension the long shot they had layed wins!

Anyway this has put me off the Greyhounds for a while. I don't think it was Betfairs fault because I presume that the race just went off early. I have checked my clock and it is right. Therefore I won't trade them if this sort of thing happens.

Evening Winter Racing

Now that it is pitch black when I get back from work most of my trading has to focus around the all-weather racing at Kempton and Wolverhampton. These markets can be very different from the markets in the day. Big Steamers and Drifters are very common mainly due to two factors
1) The racing is usually very poor in quality
2) This means that it takes very little money to move the price of a horse

Moves like the picture above are fairly common place. This horse halved in price in about 5 mins. If you are really brave you can even try the markets at Dundalk. Although these can be very thin. Anyway it is possible to make a decent amount and tonight I was able to clear £40 with small stakes.

Some improvement.

Today saw me return to some profitable trading. The highlight being the race above. I was very pleased with this as I thought carefully about when to enter this trade and things went perfectly. Sometimes I think I enter the market with very little thought and this is when I get caught. The rest of the trading was steady if unspectacular, that one race accounted for two thirds of my profit for the day. I think this was a good example of letting profits run however sometimes I think I look for big trades too often. I traded some of the breeders cup races and am looking forward to trying a few tonight.

The Wall

If trading is supposed to be a marathon not a sprint then I think I have hit the wall. Now I know that this time of year is going to be difficult for me with the lack of opportunities but this hard! The last week my trading is like this I either get in a green position only to make it red or it is red as soon as I open my trade. I think part of the problem is the pressure to match the returns of the Summer even though the opportunities are much smaller especially for a part time trader. Anyway I am telling myself that I just need to keep things ticking along and improvement will come. The most pleasing thing about this spell is I have kept my discipline telling myself to hang in and the profits will start to flow again. In previous years I have lost my discipline in spells like this and then made some stupid in-play trades.

Inplay tactics

Just a quick post to show a inplay tactic that can pay off if you chose your races carefully. You also need to watch the race and cancel the bets if it doesn't look like working. You should be able to see that I lay the field at 1.51. Therefore if there is a close finish hopefully at least 2 bets will get matched and you can make an profit. It worked in this example but it doesn't always. You have to remember that some punters probably have faster pictures, although sometimes this tactic takes advantage of this.

Small Stakes

Just been reading a few posts on using small stakes Peter Webb's on ten pound trader and Leon the fixers on tradeathon. So inspired by this or jumping on the bandwagon whichever way you look at it. I switched all my money to the aussie wallet except ten quid and traded the last 2 races at Kempton tonight. Now I did cheat a bit as I was using my full £10 to back each time to ensure maximum return. If you are starting off I would recommend you use stakes that you can back or lay with. However with my experience I thought I could probably just look to back and get out quickly if the market went against me. The only problem with this was the need to red up in the middle of trading a race. Which I did very inefficiently having watched the video back..

So I am very happy with my return of £5.91(59%) after commission. This did include a little bonus on the last when I had greened up for £2.82 profit on most horses however there was a £3.82 green on the eventual winner. Sometimes I struggle to make that amount on two races with a £500 bank!

The Need to Diversify

We are now reaching the time of year when Horse Racing trading opportunities start to diminish. It is a fact of life for my part-time trading. It is a shame as my horse race trading has now reached a consistent standard that I am fairly happy with. I now firmly believe and know I can/will make a profit in the long run so any losses are taken in my stride.

So with the limited races for me to trade I am planning to use the winter to expand my repertoire of sports I can trade. I am planning to look at goals and correct score markets in football. This interest is partly sparked by the 100K challenge. I have looked at their results and I have started to dip my toe into the water. Tonight was one example I layed under 1.5 goals at 1.19 and then greened up after the first goal. There are always plenty of late goals in the champions league.

Sports I plan to look at
Football
Cricket
Tennis
Golf
American Football

Hopefully I can work out a successful strategy for at least one of these.

Sorry for the lack of updates but I didn't have much to say in the last 2 weeks. I did wonder if it is worth continuing the blog. However for the time being I will continue but the updates may be more infrequent.

Gridiron is Back

I am glad to see that the NFL season has started again. I had just started to profit from these markets at the end of last season. So I am hoping that this can be a profitable campaign.

As you can see from the shot I am in a no lose situation in the Giants v Redskins game at halftime. I could let the big green on the Redskins run. However I think I will close out and go to bed now.

Final Over

I had a great time watching the Cricket last night. I did also try a few trades to make a small profit of £3. However I still am trying to learn more about these markets. Australia looked to have the game sewn up with 6 overs to go but England kept hitting enough boundaries just to give themselves a chnace of winning. Subsequently the Aussies price kept coming in and out. In this time it traded from 1.01 out to 1.3. Which if you caught even part of this would be very profitable. It is often worth a lay at 1.01 because if you can lay £100 @ 1.01 you only need to back £50 @ 1.02 to have a £50 free bet. The only thing with this strategy is you need to be prepared to take a few losses for a big win.

The Video is of how the odds moved in the last over. I recorded it just so I could see how the odds move (it might not be the most interesting video). It is noticeable how much the Aussie price moves out when England score a boundary.

Odds On

Many traders really like to trade Odds on favourites. These horses attract nearly all of the money in the race and therefore provide good liquidity. In this race in Ireland the liquidity was not as good as many UK races but I was still able to use £250 stakes to make a decent profit. In the video you can at times see several £250 stakes, I was using these in case of some large orders going in and also to be first in the queue if the horse trades at that price. These types of markets can be very profitable although I think they do take a bit of practice.

Liverpool Price Doubles during one Game

After tonight's disappointing result for Liverpool their price for the title has doubled. Is this a case of the market overreacting or is this a true reflection of the odds of Liverpool winning the title? Personally I think it is an overreaction and expect the price to contract from its current value of 11. One thing that is true is that this kind of unexpected result throws up some trading opportunities. I backed Liverpool with 100 @12 and layed off at 11 within 15 mins of the final whistle.

Betfair V Betdaq

Betfair have announced that they will be making changes to the premium charge and probably charging successful traders even more of their profits. My thoughts again turn to Betdaq. So this afternoon I was able to compare the markets of the two exchanges on this video. If you can't tell Betfair is on the left and Betdaq is on the right. It is probably best you watch the video to make your own mind up about which exchange suits you better.

As you can see the lower liquidity helped me to make a tidy profit (9%) on Betdaq using only £50 stakes. However if I was using bigger stakes on Betfair I might have been able to make more money but sometimes it is not easy to see the direction of any move on the favourite.

It has been suggested several times by several people (me included) that traders and punters should all move to Betdaq. However no-one wants to lead us there for fear of turning around to see no-one behind them. The ideal situation would be for everyone to trade on Betdaq but I thought that would happen last year but it didn't.

On the Bet Angel forum it has been suggested that new traders should try starting on Betdaq because it is a little less hectic and they can use Bet Angel Professional for free. Hopefully a few people will take this advice and things will start to change.

Fast Pictures not Always an Advantage

I have been away for a few days to visit a friend and he gave me back my copy of A Definitive Guide to Betting Exchanges. This book is a very good introduction to Betting Exchanges although it may be a little bit dated now. I found the section about tennis very informative as I had little knowledge about these markets.

My favourite section is the one that lists all the strange things that have happened on exchanges. The best of these is the time a lady placed a 500 bet @1.01 to back a favourite that was cruising to victory in a hurdles race in Ireland. The bet was placed just as the horse was approaching a hurdle on her pictures (At the Races). Now as you probably know if you have SIS or are at the actual race course you have a perceived advantage. Someone with this "advantage" saw the horse make a mistake and the price shot out to 95. Next thing to happen was Ruby Walsh clung on and made a miraculous recovery and the horse promptly went on to canter home netting the lucky punter a £47000 profit when she was hoping to make£5. So just remember the guys with fast pictures don't always win.

Bot Problems

As a part time trader I am thinking that my time might best be spent designing a bot that can trade for me when I am at work. So currently I am in the process of trying to design one that will work on the Bet Angel Spreadsheet. I am making a bit of progress however my biggest problem is that I only want to trade in the last 5 mins of racing and then clear the status cells for the next race.

At the moment I have copied this bit of code from the Bet Angel forum and this clears the cells every time a bet is placed.

Private Sub Worksheet_Calculate()

Dim i As Integer
For i = 9 To 67 Step 2
If Range("O" & i).Value = "placed" Then _
Range("O" & i).ClearContents
Next i
End Sub

However at the moment this will fire too many bets into the market for me. So I am trying to write a macro that will clear the cells when cell I5 shows true. I have tried several things so far but they don't work in practice. I am sure it is possible so I will keep trying because if I can get this to work then I hope it will be profitable.

G'Day Australia

I was up fairly early this morning and had a bit of time to kill so I had a quick look at the Aussie Horse Racing markets. The liquidity in some races is not to bad (about £66,000 matched in this race). It has improved markedly since I last looked about a year ago. Whilst still being a long way short of the English markets there is the potential to take some small profits. Hopefully these markets will continue to develop and reach the level of the Irish Racing.

As you can see from the video This wasn't my best trade ever and I was a bit slow in canceling my order when the big money came to move the market up. However I did react in the right way and still managed to make a profit.

A few things to bear in mind though

1. If you are trading from the UK the response times are slower
2. How do you get pictures to see when the off is?
3. The markets have less liquidity so you should probably use smaller stakes

Thanks Peter

I spent a very worthwhile 1 and a half hours listening to Peter Webb's webcast last night. The talk was very interesting and gave me plenty of ideas of how to improve my trading. I have tried a few tonight and am sure it resulted in a slightly better profit. His enthusiasm for trading is infectious and can only inspire me to improve mine. My only disappointment is that I can't get to London for the course.

Open to Improvement

Had a little dabble in the open market once I saw their was going to be a playoff. I managed to come away with a good profit. The potential of these markets is very big with several of the competitors trading at low odds during the last day. I do think that I need to have a go at these markets not just in majors to help understand these markets. My initial thoughts are about laying odds on as it only takes one bad shot for these to drift significantly.

Did I Do the Right Thing?

I have just put this screenshot from yesterday as this race asked some serious questions of my trading. As you can see I made a nice profit from the race, however I did some things that I think may cost me in the long run. I thought the horse was going to come in a bit so I backed at 4.8. The opposite happened but I was still convinced the horse was going to come in so I backed for another £100 at 5.4. I was then out of my comfort zone as every tick that went against me was costing me about £4. I wanted to get out but froze and part of me still was sure the price was going to come in. Then the price did come in and the move was quite strong so I was able to make a nice profit. However this doesn't always happen and I could have been left with a hefty loss.

After this race I am left with these questions

Is it always good to go with your gut feeling?

At what point do you realise you were wrong and cut your losses?

Would this type of strategy work in the long run?

Is it a good idea to risk more money when the initial trade goes against you?

Only a Game?

The title of this post refers to the name of the horse on this video. However it often feels when trading that you are playing some sort of computer game. Please remember you are not, it is REAL MONEY and if you are losing it is real money you are losing. I remember at times I have forgotten this and this is when I have got sloppy and then lost real money. At the time it didn't matter because I thought I was still in profit. However I soon got into bad habits and this started to eat away at my profits. The worse mistakes being in February (read the post if you want).

As you can see from the video I started off in a good position and made hardly anything in the next 4 mins. Watching the video back is very frustrating but it is always easier in hindsight.

Talking of games I went to a sports quiz on Sunday. I got the racing question "Name the ten UK Race courses with a G in their name?" Answers? See how long it takes you.

Toilet Break

Just thought I would put up this screen shot from yesterday. I thought that this horse was going to steam in so I backed it about 7 mins before the off. However nature was calling rather urgently so I had to leave the room. At this point the horse was trading at about 3.5 so I was already in profit but I was convinced the move was going to continue. So I used the stop loss facility to guarantee a profit and came back a few minutes later to see the price had come down to 3. Perhaps I should leave my screen more often if I had been watching I might have closed out too early.

Just A Steady Trade

Thought I would just put this video up of a fairly normal trade. I have put this up because it was a fairly steady race with not much movement. What pleased me most was that I was able to make a reasonable profit out of the race for little risk. If I can do this on every race then the profits will continue to roll in. I was helped in this race by some spoof money pushing the market down just as my back was taken. I love it when that happens.

I have found it very useful to record my trading as it helps me to analyse my style. Currently I think I have improved my entry into trades but I am probably still a bit greedy and hang on for too long before exiting.

Personally I think videos are great for learning I wish a few of the better traders would put up some videos of their great trades. Although if I was making that much from trading I am not sure I would want to share it with the world.

Too Greedy

Just a quick post to show one race tonight when I was a bit too greedy and it did cost me a little bit. As you can see The horse had drifted massively and I thought it was going to keep going. However it did stall around 17 and moved back so I closed out for a profit (always nice) but not as much as I could have made. To be honest all the signs were that the move had petered out but I kept hoping my speculative price would be met. By the way the horse came last!

Racing UK to Stand Alone

Racing UK have announced they will now operate as a stand alone channel. However The cost will be £20 per month! So I was getting several channels for about £12 a month and now I can pay £20 for one channel.

Sounds like Racing UK could go the same way as Setanta.

Click here to read the announcement.

Know when to get out

Not much to report about my trading of late just to say it is moving along steadily in the evenings. I have not been able to trade Ascot due to work. Not sure I can justify to the wife taking a week off to trade the horses!

I have just decided to add this video of a recent trade. The reason I have put this up is that I was quite pleased that I just accepted what had happened in the market and acted accordingly. In previous times I would have got annoyed that all of my position had not been filled and tried to hold out for that extra tick. Which could have led to 2 things
1- Making less money
2- Or even worse risking the trade in-play.

So another sign that my trading is moving forward.

Derby Day Delight

Had a great day trading yesterday even though I only traded 7 races. It was one of those rare days where everything went right. I managed to make a profit on every race I traded and often got in and out of the market at just the right time. I managed to make a decent profit on the Derby and my only regret that I was going to let my £50 green on See the Stars run in the race as I was sure that it had he class and stamina to win. However I did enjoy seeing him cruise home.

It was so good that when I sat down for a few races in the evening I managed a great trade on the 1st race (for me) of the evening. Now normally I struggle with the first race of the evening but I got on a good steamer and just let it run for a healthy 19 ticks. You can see the end of the trade on the video. The money just kept coming for this horse like defeat was out of the question however it trailed in last! Somebody obviously thought they were in the know. I am going to take the day off today as Sundays are normally useless for me.

Why can't it always be this easy?

Enjoy the Ride

Hope like me you are enjoying the big ups and downs in the market at the moment. Today it certainly helped me to record a decent profit. I am sure you know what I am talking about. Not sure who this person is but as this has only just started then maybe it is a bored premiership footballer with too much time on his hands and too much money.

I think Betfair must be rubbing their hands at the commission he/she is generating.

Looking forward to the Derby tomorrow.

Moving The Market

I have just put a video of the 1950 at Kempton tonight to show you how there is some large money moving the markets at the moment. Leon has mentioned it a couple of times on his excellent blog. I only just managed to catch the end of it but you can see from the red line on the graph how the price quickly goes down from 5 to 4 in the last minute before the off. Luckily or unluckily I was already out of the market for my £1.77 profit!.

I am sure this punter is losing quite a bit as they appear to be throwing money at the market. However as a trader I need to adapt to this and try and make some money from it.

Analysis

I had a steady day yesterday after not trading at the weekend. I was away at the weekend attending a wedding. The Screenshot shows you my effort from yesterday. It is taken from a very good spreadsheet created by Nigel on the Bet Angel forum. As you may be able to see you can analyse your results by race track, type of race distance etc. It is an excellent and useful tool. You can download a copy from the Bet Angel Forum.

Trading Video

Here is a video of a trade from yesterday. As you can see it was reasonably successful could and probably should have got out a tick earlier. Any feedback on the trade would be useful. I managed to make £50 from 6 races yesterday.

Boring Boring Football!

I am not talking about any team managed by Sam Allardyce but I am referring to trading football before the off. Peter Webb recently talked about how boring it is on his Blog

However for all you insomniacs out there here is a video of me trading the last 10 mins before a recent Prem League game. The best way to watch it would be in fast forward. There is very little to see except some large bets being matched and the fact that the market is very stable allowing traders to commit more money to the markets. I only trade these matches if I have nothing else to do as it can be quite a strain on the eyes.

Hard Slog

Over the last week my Horse Racing Trading has reached a bit of a plateau and it has felt like I am treading water. It has been one step forward and one step back. Take today for example I had a rare day when I could trade most of the races. I started very cautiously and went without a loss in the first ten races. Then for the rest of the day I made a bit in one race only to lose it in the next. The only thing that pleased me was the fact that I managed to keep my discipline. In the past I am sure I would have lost it especially on a Sunday usually my worst day by far. On days like this I know I couldn't do this full time and I take my hat off to those that can.

I have also decided to reduce my bank back to £500 as I am not feeling confident using larger stakes at the moment. This may have been part of the problem this last week. Since last week I have made just over £85 profit in too many races.

Preakness Stakes

I had a rare trade on the US markets tonight. I just traded the 10 mins before the off in the Preakness and managed to make a reasonable profit. The market was a bit slow and the volume traded was probably inline with an evening race in the UK. Normally the US markets are very low in volume so I don't bother although I know some traders do trade them.

The Preakness Stakes is the second leg of the American Triple crown. One thing worth noting is that the market is not offered in-play like the UK markets.

I will update progress soon but off to bed now.

Watch the Weather & Know your Duckworth Lewis

Just a quick post about cricket trading. Yesterday I had a small trade in the Derbyshire v Lancashire one day game. Basically I layed Lancs at low odds just after Derby had lost 2 quick wickets. Derby made a slow recovery and Lancs odds move out from 1.12 to 1.29. So for the small the small risk of £6 I made a profit of just under £5. I got out by placing £25 at 1.2 and £25 at 1.29. I was tempted to let the trade run but had other things to do so closed out my position. Within 5 mins Derby lost another wicket and then the rain came and the game was abandoned. The Lancs price collapsed within seconds.

Therefore Derby lost due to being behind on the Duckworth Lewis calculation. I am not sure anyone understands the calculation but you can find out here Duckworth Lewis. Whenever trading One Day cricket it is definitely worth knowing who is ahead on DL. It also helps to assess if the current price is accurate.

Racing update will follow soon.

Best Race for a while!

Another good day today. Including this good trade at Lingfield. Not much time to write anything else so I will let the picture do the talking.

Good Week So far!

Races Traded: 39 New Bank: £570

My trading has moved steadily along this week. As the week has gone on my results have grown and grown. Yesterday was a good example of sticking to my aim of not losing money. The first few races I was very defensive with my money and I was making a couple of pound on each race. this happened for about 6 races. Then suddenly i caught a couple of good Drifters and I made £38 on two races. It is amazing that with just a couple of good races behind me my confidence rocketed and suddenly the markets seem to make more sense.

Another milestone is that I made it to 50 races without any major mistakes. I am now focused on reaching 100 races. I think I can do it. Now my bank has passed £500. I am planning to withdraw a little bit of my profit each day. I feel I need to do this due to past mistakes when I have risked too much of my bank when suffering a big loss. I am hoping that I have moved passed this stage but by doing this I am making sure it is less likely to happen.

Nice Ladder

Races Traded:11 New Bank:£400

Some solid trading today. Just managed to make a few quid by sticking to my new discipline. So far so good I have now traded 31 races without any major risks taken. I am very happy with todays result as unlike Saturdays I normally struggle on Sundays. Maybe because there was a big meeting at Newmarket (with terrestrial TV coverage) the markets were more like a Saturday.

Above is a screen shot from some trading I did this morning. I am not showing it for the tiny profit I was about to make but to show the new feature on the Bet Angel ladder. I really like being able to see my potential profit or loss for any price. I think it has already helped me to identify exit points when a trade goes against me. As always Well Done Bet Angel.

It is also worth noting that the horse steamed into 1.83 ish before the off.

Solid Start

Races Traded:20 New Bank: £372

I made a solid start to the month, mainly by sticking to my aims. I started quite shaky but managed to keep the loses to a minimum and then the profits came later in the day. Personally at the moment I prefer the Saturday markets. They appear to make more sense to me than the weekday markets. I know this is in contrast to some traders. This maybe that as I am a part time trader I trade the Saturday markets more and therefore am more comfortable with them.

I also found something unusual today. I was trading a maiden race and there was a horse taking a big drift so I had my layed the horse and was watching it drift out about 7 ticks. I had my stop loss (on the ladder interface) set on Bet Angel at my entry point. Then suddenly a huge order went in and took the price down about 10 ticks and straight through my stop loss, which fired but wasn't matched. This actually worked in my favour as I canceled the order because I was so convinced that horse was going to drift again. It then drifted back out to its original price and I made a nice 7 ticks.

A good day lets hope I can keep it up.

May this month be Good for Trading?

I am back after a bit of a break. I made some bad mistakes at the beginning of April and decided to give trading a good break. It can be fairly difficult at this time of year so I have tried to go back to basics and have reduced my bank to £270 and hopefully proceed with caution. I have done a fair bit of reading in this time and have tried to think as if I were starting again. I enjoyed reading Leon the fixers recent post don't try and win. I think I need to follow this advice at the moment to get my confidence back up as this got shot to pieces at the beginning of the month.

My main concern as always will be my reaction to losses. I still think I am getting there but I need evidence of about 50 races of not messing up that I have finally turned corner. By messing up I mean not taking any unnecessary risks e.g. letting trades go inplay. Whilst trying to trade 50 races without going inplay I will update my progress on a more regular basis. If I can manage this then just maybe I will give it a good shot over the summer.

Dead Heat

If any of you followed the tip you will have seen that the Horse was involved in a Dead Heat. This threw up an interesting scenario for me which I have not encountered before. I backed the horse with £30 at 3.7 for a potential profit of £81. Therefore I thought I would make a profit of half that when the horse tied for first. What I forgot was that I lost half my stake as well! Therefore my profit was only £24 after commission.

This made me realise that if you back a horse less than evens and it Dead Heats then you would actually lose money. Something useful to know.

I think I will bring an end to my tipping service at this point with a 100% record or is that 50% I am not sure.

New Tipping service!

For one day only I am offering you free access to my own tipping service! The one and only tip from this service is Always Cruising in the 1450 at Wincanton today. My very reliable information comes from a friend of a friend of a friend that I once knew.

Please note I accept no responsibility if the horse doesn't win.

Sorry for lack of updates but I will try to post later this week with my progress or lack of it!

I Trade Well When ....

1. I close all my trades before the off.
2. I have no other distractions in the house.
3. I watch pictures of the races before the off.
4. I accept my loses as just part of the trading process.
5. I take lots of small profits frequently
6. I am confident.
7. I enter the market about 7-5 mins before the off.
8. I put very little pressure on myself.

I probably have more to add to this but this is my thinking so far.

I have decided to write these down because my trading like the economy has started to stagnate. The last 2 weeks have just been one step forward one step back. I have tried to be positive with these statements as I feel I have been far to hard on myself recently and this has led to a complete lack of confidence. So I feel it is time to refocus again and not look for such big profits just more consistent ones.

Glad to see the back of February

As the title suggests February was a bit of a disaster mainly caused by two big mistakes on two days. I think this has also led to a lack of confidence in my trading. Recently I have just made lots of bad trades. Therefore I have consistently lost on the Horse Race trading. This has again made me question if I should continue to trade them. Most of my mistakes have stemmed from holding onto positions too long a common mistake among traders. Some of my other sports have continued to be profitable e.g. football although most of that was from one game. The figures were slightly better than this as I made £130 on the Australian markets. The most annoying thing is that I have undone all the good work from January. I am now looking forward to March and a lot more trading opportunities.

I hope to post a bit more but when things aren't going well it can be quite difficult to share the bad news.

Is Strike Rate Important?

Had a good day today traded 6 races all profitable for a total profit of £85. Therefore I had a strike rate of 100% a perfect day. The reason I ask the question about strike rate is that the answer has to be no because strike rate is not important, it is that you make a profit in the long run e.g. you could lose 99 races then win on one that covers all those losses and still makes a profit alternatively you could win on 99 races then lose on one race that wipes out all of your profits and more.

However psychologically it feels better to have a fairly high strike rate so you frequently get the feedback that you are doing well. Confidence as a trader is very important and when it goes it can be very difficult to stay profitable and then keep your discipline.

Currently my strike rate is about 75%. Knowing this may help me to deal with my losing races. If I can expect to have a losing race about one in every 4 then hopefully I will be able to take the losing races and just move on confident in the fact that losing races are just part of the trading process. As long as I am profitable then losing races shouldn't matter.

Lay the Odds On

Returned to trading at the weekend. Had a nice result at the weekend on the Milan Derby. Thanks to BBC3 the game was on the box so I watched the game. Although Inter were 2-0 up at half time I fancied that AC could get at least one goal. Inter were trading at 1.15 ish at half time so I thought it was a good value call to lay Inter with the small downside but fairly big upside. To be honest the game was very open and it could easily have been Inter that got the next goal but about halfway through the half AC obligied with a goal and as you can see I was quids in. So yet again my football trading/betting has come good.

I have also traded a few horse races since last weeks disaster. I have made a little bit but I am still not sure I am cut out for pre-race trading just because i find it so difficult to deal with any losing races/trades. As much as I look at the evidence that just take a loss and move on it affects my trading nearly every time. I am thinking that it might be time to concentrate on other sports and give the nags a miss. I would hate to do this as there is so much potential with these markets but I am not sure I have that much potential to exploit these markets.

Unbelieveable

Things were going so well. In reading my previous entries I could see myself heading for a big fall. Well I got that wrong it was 2 big falls to be exact. It all began so well on Friday I traded the first race so well that I made my biggest profit for ages £64 greened up. I think that I suddenly thought that I was some big time trader and could just trade a race and make huge profits. I had that dangerous feeling of being invincible. The next race I traded I was in a small losing position before the off (about £10). For some reason (greed probably no definately) I decided not to red up before the off and put up a back bet to make a small profit. I then watched the race and the fav that I had layed was looking good and my bet had not been taken. So I decided to close my position. As soon as I had closed the position the favourite fell at the next fence. I briefly thought about what might have been and the fact that I could have won over £750 if I had let my lay run. Then to my horror I looked at the screen to see a big red £750 on all the remaining horses in the race. I stared in disbelief at first thinking that my software was playing up or I had gone completely mad. Then I realised what had happened. When I had closed my position I had used the stake button not the close position button. So I had left in my initial back bet of £750 that somebody with fast pictures quickly hovered up. I swore quite a lot at this point and switched off the computer (or something like that!)

By the next day I had regained my composure and thought I would carefully trade a few races. So in the first race I put a £250 back trade in just before the off of a race. I got briefly distracted before the off and wasn't watching the TV pictures then just as the race was about to start I went to close out my position and the horse had shot out from about 5.5 to 1000 before the off! It appears that the horse didn't want to race. So in less than 24 hours £1000 had disappeared from my account.

I have decided to take at least a week off from trading whilst I think what to do. Part of me wants to knock trading on the head with this double blow but the other part of me tells me I can do this. I only have to look back to last month and my recent trading to see that it is possible. I think I have fallen into the classic trap of being over-confident when things were going well and thinking I only had to put on a trade to make money. I became careless and got what I deserved because if it hadn't happened this week it would have been next week or the week after that because if you keep on taking chances you will get caught. Anyway I will give myself more time to think and make a decision by next week.

Good Break

When things are going for you and you feel confident good things just keep happening for you. Take yesterday for example. I was up fairly early on Sunday so I thought I would trade the Aussie Tennis final before the start. I was about to close before the start for a £2 green figure. Just before I did they announced that Federer would serve first. With my increased confidence I thought he is expected to win his service game so there would probably be little movement in his odds if he did but if he lost his serve! So I let the trade go in-running I think he won the first point and his price shortened a little but then he lost the next 4 and his price jumped out from 1.63 at the start to 1.93 after one game. I thought how lucky I had been and took my profit of over £100 for a few minutes work. I then stayed away from the game for the rest of the excellent match as I had lots to do at home and was reluctant to lose this good return.

However this game gave a great example of why tennis trading has huge potential. The graph below shows Federer's price in the first set. As you can see many huge price movements which are good if you call them correctly. The rest of the game continued to swing from one player to the next. I am sure that some traders made thousands from the momentum swings between these evenly matched players. as for me I probably committed a bit too much to my trade and it worked out but again this is another sport that looks great for trading.

My Horse Racing trading also continued on its recent upturn with 10 races traded for just over £100 profit. I feel really positive about this change because unlike the tennis trade it feels like my trading has improved whereas the tennis trade might just have been lucky.

Looks like these were timely profits as the outlook for trading this week looks bleak. Oh well just have to concentrate on building snowmen this week rather than my bank.

Jan Review

So here are the figures for Jan 09(I also made about £10 from the Aussie markets). A month that has got better the longer it has gone on. The last week has been excellent with nearly half of the profit coming in that period. I am really happy to have managed a profit in this month as January is so tough with the lack of racing, especially if you work as well. I am pleased that I have been able to spot opportunities in markets apart from Horse Racing, very useful at this time of year. American Football was a revelation to me and although I only made a small profit after quite a big loss the potential is huge. Although it is a shame I have to wait until next season to start(apart from tonight).

In the last week my Horse Racing trading appears to have moved to a new more confident and profitable level. I just hope that this can continue because their is nothing better for improving your discipline then being in an all green position at the off.

Now I have increased my bank to over £1000 I intend to start paying 50% of any future profits out of my account. I think it would be wise to grow my bank slowly and not look to commit too much to the markets because there is a fine line between confidence and over confidence.

Different View of the Markets

My trading over the last 2 days has been somewhat transformed. It was really a combination of two things. Firstly I watched the excellent video on Peter Webb's Blog and then watched the last episode of Million Dollar Traders. Watching both programs has given me a different perspective of the markets and subsequently I appear to be reading the markets much better. It is difficult to describe the change the only thing I can say is I am looking at the markets with a longer term view than before. This different view appears to have given me more confidence which has subsequently improved my performance. It is early days at the moment but I am hoping this could be breakthrough moment.

As you can see tonight I traded 5 races and made over £50 which for me is an excellent return.

Lay Up Pompey

Just a quick entry to show my good luck/work tonight. In all my time on Betfair the one sport I have consistently been able to make a profit after commission is football. I think that I have a fairly in depth knowledge of the sport having played to a decent standard. So tonight I took Pompey on with a fairly big lay. I felt that they just don't have enough firepower up front now they have got rid of Defoe. Villa are also playing exceptionally well and better away from home than at Villa park. So I looked at putting a lay in with the desire of getting out when I was in profit or if Pmpey scored first. With the aid of soccer mystic I was able to predict the worst case scenario if Pompey did score in the first half. This is something that Peter Webb has written about on his blog before and with soccer mystic it definately allows you to weigh up the risk of taking football trades in play.

So I am still not sure if tonight was a sensible decision to take on this trade. I do know that it was profitable but if it had gone against me how would I have reacted? My only thoughts are that hopefully I could have taken it on the chin because my previous results tell me that I am able to make a profit on Football in the long term.

Its Hard Work

I continued to struggle over the weekend. Although I managed to scrape a profit of £60 from about 30 races this weekend including Friday. I think the only thing that is keeping me going is that hopefully it will get better as the year goes on. As in a previous post I was reacting too slowly to the markets. I kept on having thoughts like I think I should scratch this trade just to play it safe...I think I should scratch it now before all the money goes... I think I should scratch it.. Oh No! (or words to that effect).

So my lesson from this weekend is that even though it didn't feel good I still made a profit. Also follow your instincts and normally you will be right.

The Risk and Reward of In-Play

I have not been able to fit in any trading since the weekend. However I saw something very interesting on Saturday(that I forgot to include in my blog) that has got me thinking. I was trading a novice chase at Wincanton on Saturday and had just closed my position on the 2nd or 3rd favourite (the horse was trading at about 5 at the off.) I was trading close to the off so had not greened up my position before the off. I had a £40 green so £8 profit if I had greened up before the off. I was just about to green up when the favourite fell at the first. Suddenly my horse came in to 3.5 I thought that is nice and again went to press the hedge button just before I did this the other fancied horse fell at the second and the price on my horse crashed in to just under 2. At this point I thought how lucky I had been and greened up for a nice profit of £20. It again showed me how risky taking any pre-race trades in play would be e.g. if you had backed the fav and gone in-play your money would have been gone in seconds.

However if you did some research and knew your horse was a good jumper then could you not take a small stake in-play and see what happens in the frst few fences, then close out your position? This could be one of many strategies that could work in-play. If I am going to use in-play strategies then my stakes will be minimal £10 at the most. I will also not rely on a strategy where seeing fast pictures are crucial as you probably know there is always someone with quicker pictures and reaction times. I will be looking to try one strategy over the weekend this will not be used in every race but I am sure it could draw in some extra cash.

Small Gains

Just a quick update of the weekend. I have made £62 from 17 races. My trading was a bit erratic very up and down but managed to come out on top. I also lost £6 on some pre-match trading on the West Ham v Fulham match. This should remind me not to bother with football pre-match it is not worth the time and effort.


As you can see from the screen shot I have made nearly £25 from the NFC champion ship game. The game is still going on but I am going to leave it and get some sleep. I am very pleased with my trading on the Gridiron. After my initial loss I have started to take advantage of the constant ups and downs in the market. My profit from todays game was generated using a bank of £100.

The week ahead could be a bit tough for full time traders as the forecast does not look good. Three meetings were lost today and I doubt these will be the last of the week.

Taking it Easy

I have been rather frustrated with the lack of opportunities for me to trade Horse Races recently. So it was nice to trade a few races today and make a profit on every race albeit small profits on some of the races. My trading today was slow and steady rather than spectacular. That was mirrored by the markets that I found. I traded 7 races and made a satisfactory profit of £40. I really need to keep my focus at this time of the year, as being part time my opportunities are limited and the racing isn't great at the moment.

Tomorrow looks like it could be quite good as Master Minded will be odds on for the Victor Chandler. So there should be plenty of volume. You could also use about 4 times your bank if you are brave enough to lay him! Me I am not brave enough as I think he may be even shorter than his current price of about 1.27.

Million Dollar Traders

Want to see traders going through the pain and pressure of trading. Then watch the new program on BBC2. I have just watched the first episode and it was great to see other traders go through the emotions of getting it wrong and right. The program was fascinating as I recognised some of the mistakes they made as mistakes I have made and will probably still make e.g. some of the traders got so scared of losing they wouldn't trade and therefore were never going to make money.

The concept is basically taking 8 normal people that are good at Maths and turn them into City traders by setting up a hedge fund with a million dollars of someone elses money. For me the old guy just has to go at the moment he just looks like a bumbling Grandad with no idea what is going on. My favourite moment was when he bought some shares instead of selling them so doubled his risk and lost an extra £200 in a minute.

If you missed the progam then you should be able to watch it on BBCiplayer .

Learning Day by Day

Feel like my trading cricket trading took another step forward yesterday. I traded the Australia V South Africa 2020 game. I have decided to be steady and only deposited a bank of £10 into my Betfair Aussie wallet. So I was very pleased with my return of £2.75 from the match. As you can see from the screen shots I worked myself into a good position, mainly by laying at short odds. I could have greened up for about £6 profit but such are the big swings in Cricket especially 2020 is was happy to let it ride knowing I couldn't lose on the match. I was happy to try and green up following a bigger swing. It didn't happen but it would have only taken a good over from SA and I would have had a much bigger return.
So I think I have learnt that there are big profits possible from cricket especially if you are prepared to lay at low odds and don't mind taking the odd small hit. As I have said before a small downside but massive upside at those odds e.g. if you lay at 1.01 which I did yesterday you can back at 1.02 with half your stake and be in the position where you can't lose.

Glad I am Part Time

I finally traded a few races today, 3 to be precise. My last horse race trading was last Saturday. As the title of this blog says I am very happy at the moment that I am a part time trader. I take my hat off to any traders that will have managed to keep their discipline during this very difficult week. For me it has been good going back to work knowing that I have a steady income that will pay the bills at the end of the month.

My ultimate aim would be to be good enough to trade full time but at the moment i think this is some way off. I need to work on my discipline (although this has been much better recently) and I need to find areas apart from Horse Racing that I can trade.

My 3 races that I did trade were good I made a combined profit of £15 on the first 2 then scratched that last race. Although during the last race I noticed something about my trading that probably cost me a little profit. I had entered an initial trade that had gone against me by about 2 ticks. I was confident it would come back up to my price so left the scratch trade in the market. It soon became clear to me that the price has stabilised 2 ticks below my back bet. Rather than closing my position and enter several prices either side of the market I just waited for the price to come back to my price which it did just before the off. Now if I had gone with my instinct and closed the trade and then traded around the stable price I would have made some profit from the race however my pride not wanting to take a loss undoubtedly cost me money. I think this is one of the hardest things about trading is admitting you got it wrong by closing a trade. Although it is not admitting you got it wrong because it is impossible to get every trade right, it is basically accepting that trade didn't work out but you know others will go in your favour sooner rather than later.

Lastly if you are reading this blog expecting great profits then you may be disappointed! Although I do hope that this changes. This blog will hopefully show you that it is possible to make some money but at the moment it won't be hundreds of pounds a day or even a week.

Gridiron Gold? Not Yet!

I spent an interesting Sunday evening watching and trading the American Football. I have always enjoyed watching Gridiron since my childhood and the initial Channel 4 coverage. However I have not traded the sport until Sunday. With what I saw I think there are great trading opportunities presented in this sport. I am writing this despite making a loss on my trading.

I watched the Miami v Baltimore game. The fascinating thing for me was laying the very short odds on. I had made a few early trades and was all red due to Baltimore scoring a few touchdowns. The Ravens were a couple of touchdowns ahead and trading at 1.02 so I stuck a big lay in and watched to my delight as it moved up to my break even point of 1.09. It was then that I made my mistake of being too greedy. I then backed using half of my stake and watched as the price increased up to 1.24 at one point. However as with all markets knowing when to get out is key and I held my position just as a Miami drive petered out and the odds shot back in to 1.02 meaning a loss of £60 for me. However this really did open my eyes to the potential of these markets. I then proved I had learnt a little from this as I traded the next game to make a nice profit of £15. A loss on the day but I hope this experience will lead to big profits in the future.

I think I will also look at other markets were you can lay at odds on as these trades have a very small downside and a big upside. The only problem I can see is the psychology of taking lots of small loses before you get the big profit.

Big Freeze on Profits?

The cold weather looks like it is going to slow me down next week. I have just read that all the evening fixtures have been moved to the afternoon to compensate for the likely loss of the jumps racing. Whilst this appears a sensible move for most punters/traders for part time traders like me it means the next week is virtually a write off. Well this will give me a chance to look at a few other markets and just make sure I keep my patience and wait for the warmer weather.

As for yesterday I managed to trade 9 races for a profit of £38. I started quite slowly and had made about £1 after 4 races, then I caught a nice steamer at Cork and made £25 on that race. My trading then picked up and I was able to squeeze a bit more out of some fairly static markets. The most pleasing part of Yesterday was that I kept my losses very small, I had 2 losing races both only £1.50 ish. Losses are an inevitable part of trading but if you can keep them small then you have a chance of making some good profits in the long run.

Why I want to trade Cricket

The graph above is the price of the West Indies.

I just started watching the end of a rain shortened ODI between the West Indies and New Zealand. I thought i would have a quick go at trading with small stakes. I need to use small stakes until I get use to the markets. I managed to make a quick trade to make 22p! I layed New Zealand at 1.11 and backed at 1.14. I was quite happy with myself and thought the game was probably all over as the Windies needed 38 runs off 21 balls or something like that. I decided to go and have a shower. After my shower I reutrned to see the last over to see the Windies trading at 1.05! As it turns out my lay of 1.11 was the lowest price matched on New Zealand. These wild swings in price are a traders dream so I will continue to watch and trade with small stakes in cricket. Some punters must be making and losing huge sums in these markets.

Hopes for the New Year

This year all I am aiming to do is to build my bank to £1000 to start with and then to start to take a percentage of my profit out of my account. For me the first two months will be hard. As a part time trader there will be limited opportunities to trade and the markets are not normally that good during January & February. My main objective will be to keep hold of my bank in these tricky months. Apart from that I will not be setting myself any targets as these have led to me forcing trades in the past.

I will concentrate mainly on the horse racing markets but will try and profit from other sports but normally I will trade before any market is turned inplay to limit my risk. Although I am looking to experiment with the inplay cricket markets this year as these appear to attract plenty of cash. These have proved expensive for me to get involved in in the past.

As for today I traded 10 races and could only manage a profit of £16. Today is was a case of one step forward and one step back. I got caught holding a few positions too long when it looked like the market was going to reverse and it did right through my position. I did manage to make a £7 profit from the Murray tennis match before the start. I just put in a back and a lay bet on Federer 6 ticks apart and both got matched in the 2 hours before the start.

Steady start to the New Year

I made a steady start to the New Year. I traded 15 races today in between taking the Christmas decorations down. I tried to concentrate on taking small one tick profits today as I have been guilty recently of trying for 4 or 5 tick trades too often and getting caught when they quickly go in the other direction.

I have started with a bank of just under £300 and after todays effort that has taken me up to £320. For the moment I will concentrate on building my bank up slowly whilst I get use to using Betfair again.

Good Luck with your trading in 2009. I hope it will be a profitable one.

New Year - New Blog

Hi Everyone

Its a new year and I have decided to start a new Blog and have finished my previous blog as I have moved back to using Betfair as well as Betdaq. Therefore I would be somewhat hypocritical to continue to tell everyone to just use Betdaq when I myself will be using both this year. I have made the decision to use Betfair again for one main reason LIQUIDITY. I have tried to make a profit on Betdaq but at the moment there is no denying the liquidity is much better on Betfair and greater liquidity should equal greater profits for traders. I do however hope that liquidity does continue to improve on Betdaq so that it becomes a genuine choice between the two exchanges.