The month of May

May's profit/loss: +£74.74

This first month of trading has produced a great result for me to work on. It has taken a long time to get there (384 horse races to be precise) but I have profit in the bank and am happy with the learning process I have made so far.

Since 5th May when I started and deposited £100 in to the Betfair bank, I have won on 240 races with a grand total of +£211.89 and lost on 144 races equating to -£148.63.

My monthly strike rate has been 62.50% overall and if it had been 50% I would have made a loss as the average losing trade has been -£1.03 against the average winning trade +£0.88.

The big plan of mine is to increase my balance up to £200 and will probably start withdrawing any profit out of betfair either weekly or monthly! This is basically so that I will keep the stakes low and minimise the risk of blowing everything I have made.

I have gone from £50 to £1100 before using Betfair's holdem game in 2008/9 and then lost it all, I was not happy but that's another storey! Lesson learned there and although it was expensive I have learnt that lesson well and truly so doubt I will be doing that again soon!

If you have any suggestions for topics to post up here, let me know ;)

1066, Battle of Hastings!

Today's profit/loss: +£10.66

Today felt like a battle with the pre-horse markets. I made some stupid mistakes but overall was a much better performance than the last few days.

I had spent some time yesterday setting up my trading screen and decided to make a desktop wall paper with some 'Trading Rules' on it that are permanently there to remind me not to get carried away - look at the video below to see them!

I think my trading screen setup is good now, not too much information to overload me but enough to see what the market is doing. On my seperate screen I just have a chart with the top 4 horse trading prices and possibly the Betfair website open.



Also I recorded just one race out of boredom whilst waiting for it to start and made over £1 off of it (nothing proud to show off yet!) :D I've just tried to upload it but the quality is rubbish so will look at getting some proper software sometime.

I traded 36 markets today with an average p/l per race of just +29.6p. I only lost out on 6/36 races and the losses equalled £7.09 making an average loss of £1.18 which is far too high.

Anyway today my goal was to make some profit and I did that so can't complain too much!

Leave a comment below if you wish!

A minor bump!!

Yesterday's profit/loss: +£2.44

Day before Yesterday profit/loss: -£6.54

The last couple of days my trading has just gone completely kaput!!

I have had no confidence to enter trades and my perception on the market was all over the place.

At the moment I don't know why this is happening and I can only keep on trading to build experience and try to improve my view of the markets.

Being -£12 down a couple of days ago at one point, and -£10 down yesterday, my head has been all over the place and quite worryingly I found myself to be chasing my losses which was stupid. Fortunately I did not do any extra damage to my bank and managed to pull a bit of the loss back.

I must say a big thanks to the guys at TradeSharks blog for talking me down from doing anything stupid that I would regret when trading yesterday. Its great to chat to people online while trading as I have already found it a lonely place. I recommend you check it out (http://www.tradesharktennis.com/chat.htm) - So thanks for your help guys!!

Anyway onwards and upwards!!

I may be trading the horses tomorrow as the past two Saturdays have been good for me but will have to see if I am doing anything else.

Good luck trading.

Tiredness can kill, take a break

Today's profit/loss: -£4.68

Once again I was working during the day today and decided to try trading in the evening for a couple of hours when I got back home.

I managed to get through 13 markets but being tired and having had trading on my mind for the past month (even regularly in my sleep!!) I think it was a warning sign of something like this result to come.

The overall outcome wasn't helped on a couple of occasions with someone walking in my room which took me completely out the zone and lost me a whopping £1.10 because of it!

Due to my performance recently, I am going to take a day off trading tomorrow and focus on Wednesday to hopefully pull in a decent result, and may even try out more stakes of £15-£20 to get me off the £10 stakes I am currently working with.

Until then, hope you have a good week :)

Quick Update

Today's profit/loss: +£5.32

Just a quick update.

Only traded a few races this evening after getting back from work.

I had a problem with my wireless internet connection that I am currently using, as my make shift trading room is too far from my router.

The connection has been quite bad at times and on a few occasions trades get matched before the information is passed on to me!! - I really need to get hard wired before I lose a large chunk of my bank through this.

Also I have been thinking about redundancy measures for if my internet connection disconnects or a power cut hits my house.

I think a laptop with a dongle would be perfect or possibly even an Ipad from what I have seen here, http://www.youtube.com/user/betangeltv#p/u/25/c-UGIGDVzFE that looks great.

I have invested £100 to trading and am not going to invest any more, if I make a crazy purchase of something like an Ipad (that I would never generally do!) it would come out of any profit made from trading so I have to work for it and look after my bank.

Also what I would ideally like is a 24" monitor linked up to my laptop from which I trade off for now. It would fit perfectly in my set-up and I think it would be a lot easier to trade from and get an over all picture of the market.

Anyway I am rambling on and need to just concentrate on increasing my bank and getting experience for now before I think about re-investing any profit made.

I am currently up £64.13 from when I started trading on the 5th of this month using £10 stakes. Its not a very impressive figure but it has provided me with a starting point and the confidence that trading could one day replace my day job!! - Lets hope ;)

It pays to be patient

Today's profit/loss: +£9.64

Today was quite a successful trading day. I set out with a target of making £20 from about 30 races but was determined not to rush any trade and just make sensible decisions.

My strike rate today was a fantastic 70.79% from 39 markets traded, including a tennis match that went horribly wrong losing me just -£1.24 (as I do not know the tennis rules!) and I also made a loss of -£5.29 where I tried to use a £50 stake to see how hard it was to put it through the market and try to get a 1 tick profit. It bit me in the arse and I had to close out for a nasty loss.

However using the £50 stake I was prepared I could lose big and I basically accepted the loss before I put the trade in - but oh well, its worth the experience hopefully for things to come!!

Some statistics for today:

Average profit/loss per race: +31p

Strike rate: 70.79%

Number of market wins: 28

Total wins amounted to: +£23.32

Number of market losses: 11

Total losses amounted to: -£11.27 (including the -5.29 mentioned above)

Average winning trade amount: +£83p

Average losing trade amount: -£1.02

I think for my journey so far those stats are quite respectable but for instance the 'average losing trade amount' needs to be smaller than the 'average winning trade amount' but I just need to figure out when to cut my losses quicker for that.

Also today I traded for around 6 hours which got to me and I think fatigue was creeping in. The majority of my losses were later on in the day and I was losing focus and interest at that point. This is something again that I think can only be learnt/developed over time and with more experience so I will not let it bother me for now - I will just have to take it easy.

My stakes were still generally £10 despite the odd £20 flutter and that £50 stake I tried to use. I think I am better off sticking with £10 stakes for a bit longer until I am cutting my losses quicker and see some more profit in the bank before I try and get more out of the markets.

There is still plenty more available to take from the markets without needing to increase my stakes just yet so I will focus on that before risking any more money.

It has been a good day for experience and I think being patient was key to my profit today. The profits were not as big as my previous days but at least my strike rate was good that shows potential.

Get Out of Jail Free

Todays profit/loss: -£2.28

Well today was an absolute disaster - with a stroke of luck at the end...I can't believe my stupidity pulled off!!

I had the whole day off, did some gardening in the morning and was feeling ready to trade.

The first couple of races saw some nice profits using only £5 stakes managing +50p and +79p, yeah not huge, but I was going to build the stakes up.

Race three comes along and decide to go for it with and from there on my racing day was doomed.

I ended up very impatient today in the markets and the pre-horse race markets looked and felt like a trap full of false money. Nevertheless I still tried to trade around it and ended up getting hammered on 11 out of 23 markets today.

The lowest point today saw me down to -£12.50 by 6pm and I can not describe how I felt after the effort I have put in to trade this month.

I gave the trading a rest and sat outside for a bit and decided to come back to trading and to be patient, ignore the HUGE loss, and just try to trade normally from then on.

My best trade of the day was during this second stint using a £20 stake and just finding a good entry position with around 10 minutes to the off and waiting patiently for the odds to move towards my position where I knew I was at the front of the que. It worked well and I felt comfortable in that position.

My usual trading strategy until now seems to be scatter trades around the market on both sides of the trading ladder - but doing this I seem to find myself rushing looking at lots of information and trying to process and to make a sound judgement from it all which for me is impossible at this stage.

I think it would be much better for me to just sit back, see what is happening in the overall market, see how is the favourite doing, find a good entry position using larger stakes than my usual and sit there being patient until the opportunity arises. When I next trade I will try that out and see how it goes.

Get Out Of Jail Free Card

I decided to take another break once my profit/loss figure crawled back to -£10 and by mistake left a position open that got matched before the off.

I left a lay bet in the Tipperary 20:20 market on Nevada Knight which was £8 at 8.40.

Fortunately for me I came back to write this blog update and found my bank balance had increased significantly almost back to where I started the day. I checked my Betfair profit and loss for today to find this...

Any other day and SOD's Law would have sent my profit and loss for the day to -£69 but luckily someone was on my side and I live to fight another days trading!