Didn't go exactly to plan!

Well September didn't really go to plan, as soon as I was setup for trading, new setup, some holiday booked I was looking forward to trading the whole month and seeing if I could cope in the betfair markets.

Unfortunately work came back to bite me in the arse because some colleagues decided to call in sick for a good few weeks at the same time.

Tonight I got home slightly early and over the past few days I have been trying new things in my strategy.

I have been looking for the small swings and making sure I have a good position in the money que.

Today I have used stakes of £7 upto odds of 5 and £4 stakes above and strangely it seems to rack up my profits very well! - (Not that I am complaining ;) )

I think my profits from today maybe due to 30 minutes between the later races and I have been steadily trading throughout the time.

Over 10 markets I racked up a small profit of £2.91.

I am working through to thursday at least and depending on whether someone comes back from sick leave I may well buy bet angel for another month and spend a lot more time trading.

September was basically a write off for me in terms of trading, finishing with a large chunk of my bank gone but im hoping that I can try and trade 30 days straight at some point and really give it a bash.

Through the very few races I traded there was a good amount learned and for the last couple of days I have started to see nice profits, a few over £1.50 using stakes up to £10 and the odd £30 to see how I handle them! - Not too bad in general.

The last couple of days I have also managed to cut my losses and work with my profits, maybe just a fluke but only time and a trades will tell!

I will keep the blog updated when I come back to trade for a good few weeks in a row and think I may give myself a new bank amount of £100 this time and give myself a few targets - nothing too drastic - maybe £20 a week to start with.. open to any suggestions!

Until then good afternoon, good evening and good night!

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.