Recording Your Trading

27/06

+£52.40. Had a relatively enjoyable day today. Identified some nice moves but also got caught a few times. Most of the times where I got caught I realised after the event where I had gone wrong, so it's not as if I'm left scratching my head, like in the early days, and if anything I'm keener than ever to learn more and more (see post below).

28/06

+£52.26. I've been a lot more active in the pre-race markets this month and have realised that there is a lot to be gained from recording your trading during the day, using a screen capture software such as Camtasia. I sometimes find that when I trade a race poorly that it would be beneficial to see exactly where I went wrong. When you are sitting alone at the PC and in the heat of battle it's so easy to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again without realising. Obviously it is time consuming hitting the record/pause button every five minutes or so and it does take a lot of additional time to watch the pertinent recordings, but without doing this then I really do think that your progress is slow and limited. I'm away over the weekend (down to the coast to get smashed) so during July I'll be following this process and reporting my findings on here, and hopefully I will see a big improvement in my trading and subsequently my profits.

At this point in time I am concentrating more on identifying moves that will continue for at least three or more ticks and reversals in price movement that also give at least a three tick profit. I'm finding that in certain markets during the day that these are easy to spot and I am happy when I read a move correctly. I do, however, need to be a bit more flexible with my exit positions as these are quite often pre-defined, as in I have an order waiting in the queue to give me my green, and sometimes I find that as a move develops I could move my exit or phase my exit positions to create more green. 

The two areas that I know need improvement are my ability and speed to reverse my position when needed and I also need to work on identifying the best times/conditions in which to move more towards a scalping mode. Using these screen captures should help me improve in these two areas. Additionally I've also recently created problems for myself by having orders in on too many runners. Sometimes I will place orders for the top four horses in the betting and this can be a bastard to manage!

The markets seemed somewhat random today and then the Kamizaze Bomber turned-up and threw some hefty cash about in a few races, looked as though he done a chunk and then left! Had a nice green staring me in the face after he dropped his £20k bomb in one race and was just a tick or 2 away from locking-in the profit when he dropped a second bomb and sent me back to zero! The evening races were all over the shop and the fact that the Kamikaze Bomber might be around makes it a bit harder to trade 'normally' as when he comes in he can move the price quite dramatically.

Managed to record some uneventful races and will make an effort to watch these tonight to see if I can spot where I went right/wrong in my trades. Will have another bash tomorrow and try and nick some cash for my short coastal break.



29/06

+£82.32. Nicked a bit of beer money for my coast trip.