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.