Shooting myself in the foot

Today I traded 17 markets and watched a rugby match in the middle of it.

The day started off well using the small stakes and saw a good return on my stakes of £2 mainly.

I caught quite a few swings and decided this time instead of going for a 1-2 tick scalp, to try cutting a trade that looked like it would not work and try to let the profits run until the price was leveling out.

It worked well and I stuck with using £2 stakes but had a few positions scattered about the ladder on several occasions.

The first couple of hours went well and my profit on the day was over £2.70 - which was a good result for me considering my previous efforts!

I took a break and went out to watch a bit of rugby, and came back frozen from the English weather; cold, wet and windy!

When I came back I lost concentration, probably the brain freeze! and although I was profiting from each market, it was very small and I was not as relaxed as before.


I watched a few in-play races (not watching the telly) and decided that I would try and make back a 21p loss by using the Bet Angel 'Fill or Kill' automation and so I placed a £2 on 2nd favorite, looking for a quick 2 tick profit, when I was happy the price was steaming in consistently.


As soon as it got filled, the steam was up and turned in to a one way train shooting off the top of the computer screen! I decided to leave it as I thought it may come back but obviously never did!


So what was looking like a good profit on the day, ended abruptly with a fraction of the profit left.


Lesson 3/300 learned!

"I think from now on I will leave the in-play traders to do their stuff and stick to what I know!"


Talk about shooting myself in the foot!

Crawling back

I just got back from work an hour ago and decided to get the laptop out.

I have said to myself I need to get back to basics and use small stakes (£5 max) where I do not panic if the markets go against me and trades go wrong.

From 5 markets, I was able to finish in green giving me a 100% strike rate today!

Although I was using very small stakes, I said in a previous post I would like to be able to make £5 a day and to see some consistency at a small level - and then move on.

If I were to trade 25 races a day and the profit and loss for each looked like tonights below, then its nearly £5 so I may just stick to £5 and see what happens!

Hopefully will trade a few tomorrow.

No, its not the end of the blog!

Not had time for any more trading in the last few days unfortunately.

Looks like I may have to put the trading on the back burner for a couple of weeks until I have the time off again.

Its sods law that when you have some time off, everything suddenly happens at once!

Keep linked to the blog, I will be back to post some profits!

Until then...

Cudster

I should have stayed at work

I went in to work this morning and was pleased to be told I had the option of going home as it was going to be a quiet day. I decided it was going to be another full days trading.

The first couple of races started off with small profits in the 30p's and with two profits I decided to up my stakes considerably and see what I could make up.

At the end I was using stakes to produce tick sizes of £1.25 - what a birk!

It was completely the wrong thing to do. I was seeing red all over the place and my mindset had totally gone.

I lost money yet again, and every day it is getting -redder. My mindset today was all over the place, I think in the morning I was feeling too confident and as soon as the third race came I was prepared to try and make the markets work for me - not waiting for the right opportunities.

I decided to stop trading before it got any worse today, and am thankful to still have some bank to play around with.

I am not too sure what to do from this point. In some races I seem to be 'in sync' with the markets and I can see a definite trend, but when I get it wrong it costs me badly.

The weight of money caught me out with someone putting £6k in the market. I was very wary and cancelled my positions when it was put in, but then came to the conclusion it was genuine money as it was there for a good length of time and it was being filled, I jumped back in the market and suddenly it disappeared and the market dived.

Well I live and learn...on to the next day!

1st full trading day

Today was my first ever full day of trading. I had a good English cuppa tea (PG Tips!) and sat down to trade the majority of markets from 13:30 till now (20:00) and finished £4.18 worse off! I asked myself what was the point!?

The answer I keep telling myself is that it was a good step in my trading life. I stuck to most of my strategy laid out in a previous post, and was very happy that I have not yet gone in play.

There were three big losses today that put me at a stage about -£7 in the red at one stage - and felt like stopping there for the day.

A lot of the markets I traded were basically scatched, a few pence here and there.

My problem was these big losses and I need to find out what caused them.

They came in the first half of the trading day when I wasn't that tierd with watching numbers see-sawing up and down, and generally I was patient to only trade when I saw the right oportunity.

I did increase my stakes on a few races to £20 and for one race I used £20 stakes at a price of 5.0+ which caused a big loss.

Another large loss was after I went two races without even clicking once. I thought I would be waiting all day at that rate so I jumped in the markets for the hell of it. - Wrong thing to do!

All in all the day was mixed, lots of nice little profits, some sensible scratches and an overall loss that is paid for a good lesson learnt; to be patient and to use sensible stakes at various prices.

I am working now through to atleast Friday unfortunately, but atleast I have a guarnateed income with that for now!

I will try and trade the later races if I can make them and will try and keep on the right side of my bank balance and hopefully have it back to £85 by the end of next week.

Quick update

The last couple of days I have been working and not had much time to trade unfortunately.

I looked at the markets last night but did not trade.

Today I am hoping to trade as many horse races as I can and am hoping to put my bank in to profit.

My first ever trade was on the F1 Monaco Grand Prix (im a big fan!) and I actually made a few pounds from it using just betfair's website and the live timings provided by the FIA. With absolutely no knowledge of trading at the time, I found that the comments made my Martin Brundel had an impact on the prices of the racers - whether they actually did or not I could not say for 100%. I will have to find out possibly next season!

F1 is one sport that I would actually love to trade as it is something I enjoy watching.
Today I will be keeping an eye on the F1 market to see how much liquidity it provided for the qualifying in Italy today.

Saying that, my trading from now on will be purely trading the horse markets before the off. If things go well I would like to look at expanding my trading markets... but until then im glued to the horses!

I will post later on today.
Good luck to you all.

Distractions!!

After work today I sat down to do some trading and decided to up my game abit after getting used to the markets yesterday.

I started off well making good, small profits with £7 stakes until my mum walked in and started talking to me when I had £14 in the market. I suddenly lost concentration for a few seconds and ofcourse the money went against me without seeing it! I was down £1.23 on that race. She had been told that I am needed at work tomorrow and possibly Friday to cover someone who has gone off sick. Typical!

I then got back to trading as I felt in the mood despite my set back and made the two best trades so far using £7 stakes of over 80p!

To me at this stage that is a good result, considering I want to be able to trade up to £25 consistently this month if I can make £2 a race at the start of October then I would be very pleased with my performance.

The last race I entered today was almost identical to what happened before. My young brother came in, just as I upped the stakes to £10, when I was trading a race with 20mins to the off and I could not close out the position quickly enough and talk to him at the same time!

I have been waiting so long to finally have a month off to trade and when it does, unexpected things happen, back to work, doing the school run, working extra hours at work.

On the positive the few races I traded today without interuptions actually showed good returns.

I am just hoping that I will have Saturday off and be able to trade a full 5 days next week.

Hope you were more successful than me today!

A mixed start

Last night I was looking around the Bet Angel software and finding my feet whilst looking at the first horse race for today. I was clicking to practice using the software and placing trades when I pressed a button 'make market' and it placed a back and a lay bet at the current back and lay price! Already I was to start off today -40p!


I sat down today just under an hour before the first race which was a big mistake! I had itchy fingers and starting trading with 40mins to the off as I thought I saw a good opportunity! Needless to say the liquidity was very poor at this time and I would not get an exit trade in!


Despite these couple of errors on my part the trading day was a good start. I was only using £5 stakes and it was good to get a feel for the markets again. I could not trade the full day as I had to pick up my brother unexpectedly and heavy rain knocked out the tv signal and I decided not to risk losing the broadband connection too!


I stuck exactly to my strategy I laid out last week and for the first time I accepted any loss and did not feel the urge to make it up.


There was also one market where a £12,400 bet went in the wrong direction for me and the price dropped from about 5.9 to 5.2. I placed a £5 lay bet just before the move at 6.0 and watched the market dive to 5.2 - I did not close my position as I had read about this type of situation where the market generally over reacts and will come back. After 30 seconds or so it was back up to 5.6 so closed my position there, and was pleased with the small price to pay for a good lesson!


Tomorrow I am working until 3;30pm and hoping to catch the end of the days trading.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to make the £5 profit I set out to achieve this morning, but I think I learnt more today than I would have if I made a good profit.


Heres my trading history for today:
Click here to see a detailed summary of the profit and loss.

Bring it on!

I finished work today and from now on I will only be working on Wednesdays and Sundays - until 4:30pm at the latest. I am hoping that I will still be able to catch a bit of the races on those days to make the most of the month.

For the last few days I have been watching the betfair markets with The Geeks Toy and I have not been able to make it the software work as well as I would have liked. I just don't feel comfortable using it and getting the right setup.

I have seen many videos of Bet Angel and decided to use the £15 trial offer for a month. I did not want to invest a lot of money to start with so I have paid for it out of my trading bank, therefore I have reduced my starting bank to £85. Also, for the first couple of days I will be trading with relatively small stakes and looking to make a good, relative profit.

I have been speaking online with a fellow trader I have come to know through trading and he has suggested that for the first day to use £5 stakes and look to make a £5 profit on the day.

I think that is a good target for my first day so I will take him up on that and see what happens!

If I am going to get a lot out of this months trading I will need to keep focused and I know from previous experience that that is easier said than done! I hope from blogging daily I will be able to get enough feedback from fellow traders like yourself to keep me grounded through September!

My trading screens have been set up, but I am still not too sure what to put on the second screen, live bookie odds and maybe the Bet Angel charting??

Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

Will keep you posted.

My Strategy

Last night I put together all the main points about what I am and am not going to do and developed a strategy that I can use for disciplining myself and making sure I don't do anything stupid! - Watch this space!

Also I will be using the blog to record my trading activity and to have some feedback from fellow traders if anyone reads these posts!

My strategy I wrote out is:


Let me know what you think, it could well lead me in to a spiraling hole!

My laptop is being delivered on Monday for definite and I will start my trading on Tuesday. Have been waiting too long for this.

The excitement has kicked in! Lets hope it stays. :P

Setting Up

First of all welcome to my blog.

Yes its another one of those trading hopeful blogs, full of optimism and a healthy starting bank balance!

For over 18 months i've been interested in trading with Betfair and have dabbled with the markets, for a lot of the time just using the betfair website and constantly clicking the refresh button to watch the markets move!

This September I have set myself a goal of trying to go a month and at least keep the same bank balance that I am going to start with (£100). I am not here to start off making massive profits, but I am going to give it a go and not be afraid to use stakes of up to £20 when a good looking opportunity exists.

At the moment I am waiting for a new laptop to arrive that should be coming on Monday. I have a spare monitor that I will connect to it so that I have a two screen trading platform and at the moment I am slightly undecided on what trading software to trial for the month, I am tempted with Bet Angel but am open to your comments!

I have also had BT around to check the broadband as it was playing up recently. They have supplied a new router and the connection is working great.

Nearly all set to go!

Tim