Trading versus "Real work"

Horse Racing: £71.95  Total P&L:  £71.95

So I've managed to get myself a "real" job. I've had a training week this week for it, which has really eaten up my "trading time". However the days have only been from 10am till 2pm (the goodside), the downside to this is i don't get home till 3pm as its a bit of a drive. Amazingly though my profits for this week are a bit mad......I had £0 in my Betfair account as i had withdrawn my previous bank, as i needed the money to tie me over. So Sunday night i decided to put £30 in, so that when i got home from work i could trade on a few horse's and "unwind". 

So basically this week i have managed to trade Monday (3pm-4pm), Tuesday (4pm-4:30pm), Wednesday (3pm-3:45pm) and today (3:20pm -16:40pm). So not a crazy amount of hours, just a total of 215mins if you add it up! While this week i have worked 16hours (960mins). So I've worked 4.4 times the amount i have traded. Here's what I've made from each:

Trading: £175

Job: £103 (minus taxes and the rest!!) So around the £77 pound mark

So to recap!

215minutes of trading has = + £175 

and

960minutes of slave labour has = + £77 (minus the tax)

Need i say more......

I've found it crazy this week as I've been clock watching at work, in order to get home and do some trading. After looking at the figures of it I'm pretty astonished that I've only made £77 working versus the £175 trading. The thing that shocks me the most is the amount of time i have spent on each and the difference in the payout.

Trading this week for me has averaged out at approximately £50 per hour, whereas working has equaled out to £6.43 per hour (or £4.81 minus tax).

Crazy times!

If i could ensure that profit every week on trading its a no brainer.

Mucho love hope everyones well. 

Hope some people are reading this and that my A-level Maths hasn't gone to waste! Feel free to correct me on my sums! 

"I didn't know ITV show rape...."

Horse Racing: £49.17 | Soccer: £23.23  Total P&L: £72.40

Another good trading day. Managed to make £49 off the horse's. Two trades in-running amounted to 50% of the profit. My basic strategy for in-running is quite simple, i basically analyse the stats of the horse (maybe two horses) that i am going to trade on in-running. I mostly try and find front-running horse's as these horse's odds tend to drop 5/10 ticks after the first 2 furlongs. Of course there are occasions when the horse's odds don't drop, there are a few reasons for this, but the main one i find is that there is either a clear favourite who is most likely a back-runner, therefore this effects the rest of the horse's odds. If you haven't tried in-running trading i would recommend to give it a go, with small stakes that you can afford to lose, but make sure that you don't have a trade placed before the horse's break, as there are a number of things that could happen at the start of the race. Also make sure you check the horse's in-running odds (Highest odds/Lowest odds). This gives you an idea of what the horse  runs like. Only way you can learn is by experiencing it.

Traded the Inter/Spurs game tonight as well, what a crazy game!! Only watched the first 15minutes but wow!

I had my strategy in place before the match. I decided to back over 2.5 goals for £50 and cover myself on the lower scores. 0-0 = £3, 1-0 = £8, 1-1 = £5 and 2-0 = £10. So i had most positions covered. I was prepared to watch the game for 60mins/ish because i thought it was going to be a bit of a tight game, with Spurs lining up with a more defensive formation. Well that thought was blown out the window in the first minute!! Before i knew it, it was 3-0 and i had a tidy profit. I was shocked to be honest, but was happy as a pig rolling in S**t. As it meant i could go play some poker! *I was on facebook after 20minutes of the game and was looking at my mates status's (many of them LOL'ing etc), one of my mates just had his status as "Didn't know they showed rape on itv...". Needless to say i "liked" this!

Speaking of poker....have started playing head's up quite a bit now, but......i think I'm going to stop. There are to many poker sharks in like 10 tables just waiting for suckers (like myself) to stroll along and whack $20/30 on the table and before i know it I've been robbed. Really want to play a few live games soon so may take a trip into London sometime soon.

Anyway that's it for now! 

On a side note I've opened a demo account for trading Forex. Have threw myself in the deep end and I'm learning as i go along, only way to do it. If you're interested, or just want a good read, here's a decent site about it. http://www.trade2win.com/

Oh Rooney Rooney..

Horse Racing: £14.36  Total P&L:  £14.36
Nice and steady does it!
Traded on 6 races today, 5/6 being profitable. The one loss amounted to just 86p so was happy to take it.

Traded the Blackburn game last night, was a boring 0-0 draw. Managed to scrape £5 profit out of it by adjusting my positions during the game. Mainly by laying off the 2-2 scoreline in the 40th minute.

Haven't managed to trade any of the games tonight, Arsenal are 5-0 up right now woop woop!

Rooney, Rooney, Rooney...who knows what that guy is thinking...personally i think the misses may have had a word! Could understand her getting pissed off with all the media attention because of Rooney's "frolics".
 Would say he's most likely to hop over to Spain, rather than Man City/Chelsea. Can't see him being that "disloyal".

My approach

Horse Racing: £12.97  Total P&L:  £12.97
Just a small profit today on the horse's, but was happy as i only had one losing trade of a quid and was only trading on half or less of the races.

Looking at trading the Blackburn V's Sunderland game tonight @ 8pm as it's on sky sports.
Thought i would just give a little summary of my thought process before trading the match and figuring out what strategy i would use. First of all i use www.soccerstats.com to get an idea of how both teams are doing, mainly looking at what their home/away record is and when they score/concede the most goals. In Blackburn's case they have scored 57% of their goals between 16-30mins and have conceded 63% of their goals just after half time 46-60mins. Sunderland on the other hand have a range of goal times, but the main time they tend to concede is 76-90min (57% of their goals). This gives me an idea of the "danger" time's, even though every minute on the pitch from 10seconds in till the 90th minute is a possible danger time.

The next website i check is http://www.h2hstats.com/soccer/hhpage.php?home=BROV&away=SFC&fxdate=2010-10-18

( ^^That's a direct link to the head to head stats) I use this site just to see the average amount of goals that have been scored between the two sides in previous meetings. In the case of Blackburn and Sunderland, most of the games have either been draws or win's by 1 goal.

After doing all this i think of the best approach that i could use for this game.

Personally i am going to trade on a few correct scores and adjust my position during the game.
I was thinking of trading on the 0-0, 1-0, 0-1 for the first 15minutes as i didn't think either team would score straight from the off. So i would lay all scores off at the 15minute mark and make a tidy profit. However, I'm not a great fan of this approach as if there is an early goal you automatically lose 2/3 trades. So i think i will give it a miss tonight.

My trade: 0-0 = £4 @ 9.4
               1-1 = £4 @ 7
               1-2 = £3 @ 16
               2-1 = £4 @ 10
               2-2 = £3 @ 20 (will try get 21's)

This gives me a lot of room for manoeuvring my positions during the match if either team scores. Personally, i fancy Sunderland to nick it but we shall see!!

Bit of this bit of that..

Not to much to say really. Have been getting back into my hold em poker recently. Managed to make around £45 in the past two days from it. Got down to the last 100 in a $8000 tournament. Got knocked out 89th needed to be top 54 to get payed so was rather annoyed! As there were 800 odd people at the start. Oh well life goes on and all that.

Only managed to trade today on the horse's squeezed £20 out of it. Found it a bit odd today the markets but was probably my own fault as i wasn't really 100% focused.
Managed to trade the Swindon V's Bristol game. Used my little trade strategy, have only been using small stakes to get the feel for it but managed to make a £2 profit within 15minutes so was all gravy.

Have been looking for some good forums and chat rooms recently on sports trading but can't find anything worthwhile. So please feel free to link me some if you have any!

Total P&L: £601.50

Safe investment??

X factor's live shows have just begun and with that so has betfair's special bet section for it.
Basically with each and every week going by, and with a contestant (or two) getting eliminated each week. The odds of each contestant to win the show will go down accordingly.
So basically this would be a longish "investment" as you wouldn't be able to see your money until around Christmas time.
I've chosen two acts who i think i may back tomorrow. Them being "One direction" and "Mary Byrne".
One directions odds are currently @ 6.2 and Mary's @ 14. I'm tempted to put £100 on each as i really can't see either act getting eliminated at least for another 5/6 weeks. And by this time their odd's would have gone down quite a significant way.
Just something to throw into the equation!

Haven't traded much the past few day's, but i'm £20 up since i last posted on here.

Ciao

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

Good evening people's!
Didn't get back from the job till 4pm so didn't have much time to trade on the horse's. Managed to trade a few though, sadly made a loss because i stupidly traded on a hurdle race. Can't remember the name of the horse but it was coming up to the last in the lead looking really good was trading @ 1.6 so i stupidly backed it as i couldn't see it losing. The horse of course (nice wee rhyme) managed to fall at the last losing me my stake of £30. Rather pissed! But learned another lesson i guess so won't be doing that again! (Unless the odds are good! NO DON'T DO IT!) So had a loss of £24 on the horses today in the few races that i traded. First loss in awhile :(.

Managed to trade a footy match tonight as well Carlisle v's Port Vale. Was trading on the Correct Score market, took a number of positions. Was mainly just trying a new tactic and seeing how it went really. I took positions around the 25min mark on 0-0, 1-0, 0-1, 1-1, 2-1, 1-2. Port Vale scored first thanks to an own goal. So this cancelled out my 0-0 trade and 1-0 trade. I took out a new position at 0-2. I then layed off some of my stake on 0-1, as i expected Carlisle to score at least one, so this increased my potential profit on my other scores. Port Vale then scored another. So this cancelled out my 1-1, 2-1 trade. At this point i took new positions out on 2-2 @ around 16's.
To cut a long story short Carlisle came back to 2-2 around the 75th minute. I then decided to green up at this point for a hard earned profit of £1.50! A lot of work for little reward, but certainly enjoyed the chase! Am sure i will be able to tweak my stakes a small bit and my positions i take in order to increase my profit. My main aim when looking at football matches to trade is to look for teams that both score and concede and hopefully don't score to many.

Anywho that's all for now, would love to hear about anyone else's strategies if you care to share.
Take care.
New Bank: £521.50

Been a wee bit!

Bank: £545

Haven't been able to past for the past few weeks as i've had a few job interviews and managed to land a side job to keep the money ticking in, good hours for trading though 7am-3pm.
Have only traded properly the past few days. Averaging a profit of around £30-40 a day. Nearly all of this has been pre-horse race trading. However i've been dabbling over the past few days with two things.
One has been a little strategy i've been playing around with for certain football matches. Have managed to have 8/10 profitable trades, over +£10 for 15-20mins work. Then the other two trades were one scratch trade managed to get out for a loss of 1p! And the other trade was one of the first trades i was trying, managed to lose £8 pound. Apart from that i have been tweaking it here and there to suit my style of trading and at the moment its looking pretty stable. So will keep trying that out to see how it goes!
The other thing i have been trying is in-running horse trading. I have done this before, but didn't really research the stats of the horse and was basically chancing my luck. I've started keeping track of a few horses, mainly front runners. I basically take 5-8 minutes before the race to go over the horse's stats. I only choose races with between 5-10 runners, as this lets me check all the horses stats before the off. If i'm happy to go ahead with the trade, i will back the horse @ the highest odds i can get and then depending on the length of the race (a few other factors) will place a lay order in where i see fit and will keep this trade for the in-play market. Also i only choose races that i can watch just encase i see that the horse is playing up in the gates etc, so i can cancel the trade. This has been going pretty successful for me so far. With 6/7 horse's i chose today managed to get me a profit.
Anyway off to work in the morning but will be trading on a few races after 3pm.

Hope everyones trading is going superdooper. Will try my best to update this daily.
Ciao