Sunday 29 August 2010

Goal setting

Was a good day! Felt more concentrated than ever and was certainly 100% disciplined. Traded on the horses/footy and got a small win off the cricket (still learning it), any pointers please post below :D.
Took a loss on the Liverpool and Man City games, as i didn't fancy leaving them go past half-time didn't have a good feeling about it and wanted to concentrate on the horses and it payed off. Managed to nearly completely scratch my loss in the football in one horse race so was all good.

I've decided to set my self a little goal ( just a little one to start off with). Had £100 in my account Thursday, now i have £127, from 2 days trading. So my goal is to reach £200 before the 10th of September. So that's about £6 a day as of tomorrow. It is conservative but i just want to start off with a small goal and hopefully achieve it then build on to bigger goals when i feel confident.
So will be trying to post everyday my P&L, feel free to follow me on my small goal.

Today's P&L: £15.47

Friday 27 August 2010

Proper Bank


Leaving warm sunny Lanzarote today (31'C) today :(. Trying to get the last of the sunshine!
Past few days have been pretty decent. I started trading properly with a bank of £20 around the middle of July, i've now managed to get up to a bank of £110 so am happy with that and it has been an on going learning process. The past few days i have been getting back into poker a small bit, as i've been trying to make the most of the sun over here, so have missed most on the horses during the day. Started doing 4 tables at once with just $5 buy-in (sit-and-go). Have tried to double up at least 2 of the tables and keep the other two tables steady not losing much at all. Have been doing that successfully the past couple of days, just stayig disciplined along the way. Also i think having four tables open, personally keeps my attention level up and i become even more disciplined.
I am going to try start keeping a proper P&L account using my £110 bank, starting from Monday (well will proberly trade on the games at the weekend but will keep track of it as of Monday) Look forward to seeing how i do with a bigger bank.
Anywho off for a dip! May as well make the most of it and keep the misses happy!
See you back in Shiver-vill.

Saturday 21 August 2010

Quick profit good times

Writing this from sunny Lanzarote, around 30'C today got a nice base tan :D.
Ye ended up taking the laptop, didn't really have any choice to be honest with all the premiership games on the weekend!
Only had a few trades on the horses today, showing my brother how to trade and trying to explain to my mum that it's not gambling! My dad doesn't care as he loves a flutter!
Only managed to trade the Chelsea game today, i got in 20mins after kick off and saw it was still 0-0, so put £12 on around the 5.9 mark, laying the draw. Malouda scored the 34th minute, so was lovely jubbly! Didn't bother waiting till the 2nd half so managed to trade out for £9.40 profit. Was happy to take it and just go jump in for a swim!
Off out now in a bit to try some spanish cuisine (will probably end up in a chinese).

Going to try trade some more games over the weekend but will have to see!

21/08/10 : £14.52 (not bad for small stakes and 30mins work)

Thursday 19 August 2010

Hol-i-dayyy celebrateee!

Off on holidays tomorrow for a week so just a short-ish one to let you know how I'm getting on. Looking forward to catching some rays !
The last few days have shown me some strengths and weaknesses in my trading. Have traded the last 4 days, my stakes this week in the horses have been ranging from £5-£8. I've also been trading on the footy, am really loving trading on the football now as i find it easier to predict and i make a game plan before kick-off. Have also had a few trades on Tennis matches, still learning on the tennis to be honest. I've just been backing the server if i know he is good at holding his serve.
P&L:
Monday: £7.81
Tuesday: £10.90
Wednesday: £ 11.29
Thursday (today): £ 15.84

Currently waiting on the Liverpool game to finish to collect ME winnings! Layed the draw and was riding the correct score market for 25mins at the start ( 0-0, 1-0, 0-1) managed to get quite a bit.
So things are looking steady at the moment, just going to keep steadily raising my stakes when i feel comfortable with it, as now and again i still feel i need to be more disciplined.

Had a flutter today as well just the one, on the 19:10 Killarney. Have kept my eye on Davey Russel and saw he was riding GoneBeyondRecall, always know Davey is going to be there or there abouts. Had a look at his form and was looking good. When I'm having a punt, i first use timeform to have a look at all the horses and see how their recent results have been, then i try and assess everything from ground, every horses preferred ground, preferred jockey, weight....the whole hog basically. Put £20 on @ 6.1. Davey ran away with it, as the commentator said "And the other horses are no where to be seen" < that's always a good thing to hear when i couldn't manage to watch it online!
Anyway off on holidays tomorrow, in two minds whether to take my laptop or not to trade on the prem games at the weekend. Shall see what i feel like in the morning.
P.s. Have been enjoying reading everyones blogs, best of luck to everyone for the rest of the week!

Ciao!

Sunday 15 August 2010

Horses, Football and blooming tennis! (and a side of Golf)

Today's trading was good, apart from a loss on the Tennis market (Murray Vs Federer). I had worked out my strategy to back the server, as both players had around a 88% success rate of holding their serves. Oh this went wrong! Backed Federer at the start at around 3.4 for £8. I was looking to trade out at around the 2.8 mark with a tidy profit but Federer went and lost his first game to enthusiastic Murray. I traded out at the end of Federer's game because i felt that on the form Murray started at there was no way he was going to lose his game, which he held comfortably. I managed to scrape back some of my loss, the game was stopped for around an hour due to rain, so i chose to stop and take my loss then. I knew i wasn't in the right mindset so i chose to take my loss, as some singer said "On to the next one!"

Had a good day on the horses profiting from 5 of the 7 i traded and managed to make or lose nothing in the other two. I'll take them all day! I made sure i stuck to all the rules i have learnt from starting to trade and by doing so this put me in good stead. I also managed to up the stakes when i felt i could, I'm confident now in using bigger stakes and if i get into any trouble i make sure i get out asap!

Traded on the Arsenal/Liverpool match. First off i layed the draw as all of there matches in my recent memory have all had goals in, i also checked out there head to head stats using this site > http://livescore.football-data.co.uk/ I have a few other websites which i also check, i will make a link on the right with some more useful ones. I traded on the correct score market making quite a decent profit and i also traded on the under/over 2.5 goals market. I'm starting to get the hang of it all now with all the different markets. It got to half time 0-0 and i was tempted to cut my losses but i was sure that either team would score second half especially after Joe Cole seeing red! However in the future i will have to take into account the 10 mans team's defence, as Liverpool looked solid and somehow Ngog banged one in so i managed to trade out with a small profit but was happy to take this as i knew Arsenal would buck up their ideas. (I'm a Arsenal fan having been born 20mins from the ground and I'm sure I'm not the only Arsenal fan saying this right now, but please god Wenger sign a keeper! Almunia makes me nervous. Shay Given perhaps!!!?)
So even though i didn't manage to make a big profit on the lay the draw method i did manage to make a small profit on the other markets. I'm certainly looking forward to the premiership this year :D. Am going to be trading on the Man Utd/Newcastle game tomorrow. I've got a little routine now before each match in order to work out what markets i am going to trade on in-play, goes a little like this:
1) Head to head results
2) Recent results (depending on opposition this can be a eye opener)
3) Current betting odds
At the moment i am liking laying the draw, especially as it is the start to the season, teams want to prove themselves and this can lead to mistakes, and mistakes can lead to goals :) (just like Reina showed today!)

That's me for now, Oh on the PGA i managed to make a profit of £10 trading out all positions in play as Jason Day managed to have a cracking start, but i assumed that he couldn't stick it with the bigger boys so i traded out. Have just seen that its gone into a playoff but there is some issue with someone being disqualified! Looking forward to finding out whats going on!
Good trading people. Hope this week serves you well!
Current Bank: £64 (just waiting for the golf to finish to cash in from that)

(Tip of the day: if you are just gathering info on trading, i strongly recommend that you just throw yourself in to trading. Start off with small stakes and just learn from your mistakes. I'm still on a steep learning curve but i see it just like learning to swim. If you don't get in the water you will never know if you can do it. Good luck)

Thursday 12 August 2010

PGA lay off in play

Just placed £30 on the PGA. £2 Stakes on 15 golfers all over 70/1 odds

I selected my golfers from personal preference to golfers and by analysing the respective graphs of each golfer. This will be my first in play trading on golfing, having previously only gambled on the ryder cup and irish open. So this will no doubt be a learning experience!! Shall see how it goes.

Got a interview sorted with US Airways today at London Heathrow for next Tuesday things are looking good. Bit random, i sorted out a telephone interview with them and a New Yorker rang me up asking me standard questions in a New Yorker style and at the end of it she just goes "I think you're the shit im going to get you a interview sorted out." Lets just say i wasn't expecting her to say that!

Anyway off to trade for the day now, confident trading!

Wednesday 11 August 2010

Ups, Downs and Wembley!

Was just using £3 stakes today.
Managed to trade 13 races today (15 markets). I'm really starting to get a fancy to the to be placed horse markets. I feel that there is more room for trading these markets and scalping.
I stupidly lost £2.92 at Sandown towards the end of my trading. I got caught by a drifter and again convinced myself to wait it out when i just should have took a 2/3 tick loss. I feel like writing down a hundred times, TAKE YOUR LOSS! But oh well live and learn!
Sadly lost £1.42 on the horses today mainly due to that loss.
However i managed to recover my losses Soccer (FOOTBALL!) and tennis markets. Football : £3.80. Tennis: £1.20. I just traded on one tennis match and on the English match, i layed the draw (Thank you Gerard!). I also picked up a wee bit in the over/under 2.5 goals market. Thought Fabio could have showed a bit of relief when Gerard banged one in and then after his second, he would make a good wax work. Oh and the Arsenal contingent are looking on form :D

Getting Sky+ installed on Friday with Sky sports One. Looking forward to the game Sunday, Laying the draw and definitely going to be watching the Over/Under 2.5 goals market.
Its been emotional people
x

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Just starting out.. + Rules

I've been reading and cramming as much info into my sponge of a brain over the past 2 months or so about trading. I first came across trading last summer by accident just by typing betfair into youtube, i blame youtube for leading me down this slippery slope!
I have only started trading 2 weeks ago semi full time. I'm currently using The Geeks Toy and personally i think it is amazing, you can modify it to your needs. As i only started trading properly 2 weeks ago, i have chose to start out with minimum stakes (£2), in order to get used the geeks toy first of all and just to get a feel for the market.
In the past 2 weeks i have picked up so many rules, which i scribble down on a notebook next to me when trading, i also keep a note of every trade i do, what time, what course and how much i closed out at +/-.
Starting off, Day 1, i traded 10 races and made a profit of 27p :D. I managed to profit from 7 of the 3 races and was quite happy with my very first day. However whenever there is just one loss, there is something to learn from there. My first loss, and my biggest loss of Day 1 was -46p, this loss came down to me letting the race go in-play, so this got scribbled down straight away in my notebook of wisdom! (RULE ONE: DO NOT LET THE RACE GO IN-PLAY!!)
My next to successive days however showed a loss, Day 2 (-25p) and Day 3 (-£1.90). My Day two was going swimmingly, i in total traded 25 races that day, i was on a 12 race winning streak and my confidence was high, so i decided why not try my hand at Greyhounds to, however the one thing that i forgot to do was to figure out what trading dogs was like in comparison to trading on horses. My first ever time trading dogs, i managed to come out with a £2.19 loss :(..i was over the moon as you can imagine. The reason for such a big loss was because i didn't know that greyhounds don't go to a in-play market (which i shouldn't have been going anywhere near according to RULE ONE!!!!) This loss shook me for quite a bit and i became over cautious, i then went on for next 8 races (trading on them all), only managing to come out with £0 every race, this was because i didn't trust my instincts after my previous loss. (RULE TWO: BE CONFIDENT and research the market your going to trade in before trading in it jackass!) However i went on to scrape back most of that loss and ended the day with a 25p loss. Which i was happy to take after "the dog incident". Day 3: This day yet again gave me some great rules to scribble down in anger on my notebook. I traded 10 races this day. I ended the day early because of one loss in a Brighton race. I backed the favourite @ 1.8, from analysing the graph and seeing the WOM (weight of money) was going in my favour. However! The horse started to drift slowly, it was just like a out of body experience, i could see the horse was starting to drift, but i convinced myself it would come back down, it had to right!! 2, 2.1,2.5, 2.8 GET OUT!!! It continued to drift out, so silly me decided to let it go in-play and make my money back that way :) oh clever me! The horse went on and won the race and i swear i saw him give me a wink...

Anywayyy i have to shorten this post as my girlfriend is getting restless! However here are some more rules that i have picked up and had the pleasure of scribbling in my little book (even though i already knew all these "rules", i think i just had to make the mistakes to actually instill them in my memory bank)
RULE THREE: TAKE YOUR LOSSES!!! but just try and minimise them
RULE FOUR: ONLY WATCH THE RACE UP UNTIL YOU ARE DONE TRADING, preferably around 20 seconds before the off or so, depending on your preference.
I feel that this rule will detach myself from my bias punter ways and not look at it as a gamble.
RULE FIVE: MAKE SURE YOU ENTER THE MARKET AT THE RIGHT TIME! watch that money!

That's all i can think of for now but I'm sure i will think of more in my later posts.
The rest of the days i traded i managed to make everyone profitable, by sticking to my rules and being confident about what i was doing, i even managed to up my stakes to £5 and £8 depending on the race.
 I will try to get some screenshots up sharpish, does anyone know if you can upload excel spreadsheets up here as i am keeping my trading logged day by day??
On a side note i have started dabbling in trading football and tennis and am loving it! Laying the draw is my favourite (in the right matches, RESEARCH WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO TRADE), also a fan of the under/over 2.5 goals market.

Anyway that's enough sorry for wrecking your brains! Posts will be more concise in future.

Rock n Roll peaches.
x

Sunday 8 August 2010

Blog up and running

Hey all,
Finally made a blog to keep myself in check! Just getting use to the layout and blogging shizzle.
Will be keeping this updated with my happy times and my (lesser hopefully) sad times.

Looking forward to it!