D.I.Y

Yep Do It Yourself. Not in any way related to trading but I thought that I'd put up a new post that will cover my upcoming DIY project.

Once again I've become a lazy bum. Staying up late (albeit watching trading vids) and lying in bed in the morning (not watching trading vids) has meant that I'm doing little else than sit at my desk all day. Now my bedroom is literally falling down around our ears. It was previously our kids room when they were young and the floorboards are still red, yellow and green and the ceiling is painted yellow! The ceiling is falling down and the kids knocked holes in the stud wall (maybe the psychadelic colour scheme had some sort of weird effect on them) when they were teenagers (yep punched holes in the fucking wall ... what retards!).


So now it's time for a bit of DIY. As from Saturday 26/10 I will be:

• taking down the remains of the old plasterboard/plaster/lathe ceiling (it's gonna be messy!)
• removing the crumbling plaster from 2 walls
• cutting out and replacing the 'punch holes' in the stud wall
• re-boarding the ceiling
• replacing the floorboards
• hanging a door
• ... or hanging myself if I lose my patience which is probably about 1.5 at the moment!

I'll give myself a week and if it all goes pear shaped then I'll call in the professionals!

23/10

+£70.08. Rachel Riley got a mention in one of the posts on here this week so that's a good enough excuse to stick up a pic of the little vixen!

Fucking gorgeous or what?

No doubt if I sent her a screenshot of today's P&L she'd be mine!

24/10

+£32.21. A pretty abysmal effort today. Lots of distractions and didn't really get involved in the racing. Dabbled on the dogs in the evening and tried a new approach which failed miserably so all in all a complete waste of a day.

I felt like kicking a hole in the wall ... but it seems as though one of my kids has already beaten to to that!

25/10

+£127.20. Had a few good chances today and managed to nick a few quid before things dried-up somewhat in the evening.

One of the 'punch holes' cut out and ready to be filled with new plasterboard (notice the smaller 'punch hole' a bit further along). Not too sure at this point whether to line over the existing chipboard paper or strip off, although as you can probably see the original boarding isn't exactly nice and straight. My plastering is not to brilliant so I doubt whether I'll give it a skim, so it looks like heavy lining paper over the top and a couple of coats of silk maybe? 

26/10

+£104.72. Started the day with a colossal argument with my missus with regards to commencing the DIY on our bedroom. She didn't want me to start ... but I did! So that gave me the raving asshole and as I sat down to trade all I was really looking for was £50 for the day. The racing came thick and fast and I didn't really enjoy it as my missus had REALLY pissed me off .... so much that I even started looking for accomodation just for myself down on the coast!

The floorboards in our current (formerly kids) room. Probably the reason why my kids have grown-up like they have ...

27/10

-£72.01. OK the DIY has been put on hold. My eldest girl, her partner and daughter are moving into there own place in a few days time which means I can move my stuff back into that spare bedroom, leaving me free to pull the ceiling down in the mulicoloured room! I did however manage to make  a start yesterday and started to pull off the old plaster at the end of the room. It was quite messy but I got a fair bit done in a short space of time The current plan is to clean and re-point the brickwork and seal with a PVA mix.

Somehow managed to throw away £70 today without really trying. Wasn't really concentrating fully to be honest and before I knew it I was down and out. A pretty dissapointing end to the week!

28/10

+£56.56. The weather killed the racing today so it was a case of trying to nibble a few quid at Naas and Galway, which is easier said than done! Topped-up the winnings with a good effort on the dogs and with a little more effort and patience I might be able to get the dogging profits up top a reasonable level.

 

29/10

-£32.67. Today I had an immediate return to trading like a wanker. Here are a few of the mistakes that I still keep making:

• trying to trade too many selections in one race, i.e. I have positions on the top 3 and then when the market goes crazy it's just too complex to monitor all of these positions.
• trading 4 horse races without realising that there's only 4 runners. Yep I keep doing this! I only have 4 ladders and it's crazy the amount of time I jump into a race totally oblivious to the fact that there are only 4 runners and therefore their prices ar all very closely linked.
• getting a bit click happy and going in a bit too strong.
• trying to add orders at the pointy end of the market when I already have orders in the queue that are effectively limiting me from entering these orders, i.e. my exposure limit has been exceeded.
• not adopting a relevant strategy at tracks live Wolverhampton.
• not being patient enough, especially with my initial position. 
  
   

So the Camtasia will definitely be primed tomorrow and if and when I make a balls-up I will make myself watch it over and over 100 times as punishment! So with all of this in mind tomorrow I will record a masterclass of pre-race trading and stick it up on YouTube. Bring it on ....




30/10

-£20.30. Oh what a day ....

All explained here ...

Anyway on a good note we have the local estate agents coming over tomorrow to give us an indication of what our house is worth and depending on that, my missus finding a job, getting rid of my kids and finding a suitable place then we might find ourselves living down on the south-east coast come next summer.

31/10

+£115.87. Felt like ages since I had a winning day. It's impossible to record any of my trading during the day as my house is absolutely manic at the moment and it's probably no wonder that my results have been generally crap over the last few days. There's a mass exodus in the coming days so it should be nice and quiet from Monday onwards .... hopefully!

Bombs Away!

08/10

+£69.37. So the 'Bomber' has returned eh? The last few days have seem him wreak havoc in the markets as he drops his wads of cash in and just keeps moving it down until it's matched.

The 'Bomber' after the last race at Wolves this evening!

It can be a pain in the ass, as if you are trading 'normally' and he comes along then all of a sudden you could find yourself in deep shite as everyone scrambles to jump in front of his £20k back on the favourite. However, if you spot him early on in the day and expect him to stay around then by changing your game you should be able to catch some easy cash.

09/10

+£69.73. A pretty uneventful day and still couldn't get get to grips with the evening racing at Kempton, which back in the day was in fact one of my favourite tracks to play in-running but nowadays it's fucking useless!

10/10

+£46.32. Pretty hopeless today!. My pre-race trading was a bag of shite and the annoying thing is that I haven't a clue what went wrong! Only managed to salvage something from the day late on at Kempton ... must try harder!

11/10

-£125.10. I haven't done a video for a while so thought I'd do a quick one on the first four races today with the main emphasis on trying not to make a balls-up and win a few pennies as my last couple of days have been somewhat hit and miss. It's probably a bit boring and there were one or two chances that I missed but it kind of served a purpose.

Four races in a row ... four small wins

Oh dear! So after doing the video above I stumbled into a mini-meltdown and had a run of races where I was nothing less than fucking hopeless! Everything I touched turned to shit and before I knew it I was over £150 down and not very happy.

My in-running was just unfortunate (laying something right out the back in a 7F race only to see it sprout wings in the final furlong) but my pre-race was embarassingly bad. I kept getting lured into the market way too early and my biggest pre-race loss came when I was in for practically all of my bank ..... fuck me I only usually play £66 a click so I got a bit trigger happy on that one! Once I had settled down I steadied the ship and managed not to throw any more cash down the drain.

So an annoying day but another lesson learnt ... don't trade like a prick.

Saturday here we come!!



12/10

+£124.07. Well nearly got it all back! Managed to avoid any silly bets and played the pre-race very cautiously so felt a lot better at the end of the day, in stark contrast to how I felt at around 18:00 yesterday. The dog trading is picking-up ever so slowly and I just need to push the stakes a bit higher, although as mentioned previously the liquidity in some of the non-televised races is at an all time low, so low in fact that I don't know why Betfair even bother as they must be making pennies.

13/10

+£65.11. Yet another typical Sunday where you take what you can get!

14/10

+£54.66. Not much to say about today. Just another average Monday for this time of the year.

I've been really strict with my diet over the last few days and I'm fucking starving! It doesn't help that every other program on the TV has something to do with food and I have to sit here and watch the rest of my family tuck into loads of tasty grub! If you look at my body transfmation blog though my aim is to hit 80kg by mid January so I'm gong to have to be super strict between now and then if I'm to stand any chance of getting lean and mean.

My pre-race trading has been a bit hit and miss over the last few days and during a quiet moment today (I don't get many of those in my house) I realised that I possibly need to be more selective on when I trade, and when I do trade I need to be somewhat more aggressive in terms of staking. Sometimes the market feels right for a nice swing and when the signs are strong I need to get stuck-in ... so watch this space and I'll attempt to get a few more trading vids up of me making a bit more cash.



15/10

+£318.83. Blimey just like the old days!

Breaking Through a Strong Resistance Point

16/10

+£249.61. Just like the old days ... again!

Carling outside 'The Village' (now closed) @ Plaistow

Call me sad but I do switch over to RPGTV on channel 212 in the evening and trade the dogs, albeit for very small profits. The liquidity isn't too bad and I think it's possible to nick a few quid but it can be annoying whe my daughter changes the channel to watch Gogglebox. Have you seen the absolute shite that they put on the TV these days? It's no wonder that we're a nation of retarded lazy fuckwits.




17/10

+£61.65. Had a mediocre day today and struggled again with Kempton until I spotted a move and made a decisive trade (see below). I purposely keep my bank to less than £1k but this sometimes has me unable to enter a trade quickly, especially if it's a lay, as I sometimes have lays already in the queue at lower prices and that causes that fucking annoying box to pop-up (that box that informs you that you don't have enough funds) and by the time I get rid of that and cancel my other lays the price has already shifted 2 or 3 ticks!

How to Win £17.70

I need to invest in a new mic as the one that I use is a piece of shit and makes me sound like I'm talking with a whistle in my gob. eBay here I come ...

How to Win £3.30 on the Dogs

18/10

+£84.46. Played mostly in-running again today as the races were coming quite thick and fast. Did have a chance to dabble in the evening meetings at Wolves an Dundalk but fancied a beer and after a glass or 2 felt a bit merry so choked down to £5 a click so as not to do my bollox. Followed this with a crack on the dogs in an attempt to get the total over £100 but went a bit click happy in one race which failed abysmaly and halted the slow progress so had to settle for just under £100 for the day.

 Stella Artois in the beer garden of 'The Honeysuckle Inn' @ Ramsgate

19/10

-£98.73. Had a look at this mornings dog racing but the liquidity seemed painfully low so decided to give that venture a wide berth.

Recently I've been replying to a few posts issued by Dean over at 'Sports Trading ... A Journey of Discovery' and mentioned the fact that every now and then you're bound to make a 'user error' mistake, and hey presto the second race at Catterick and I lay the wrong horse in a 5 runner race and drop £180 in one go! What a fucking penis!

Stella Artois in the beer garden of 'The Deal Cutter' @ Ramsgate

 

So it was a case of not going mad and carrying on as normal. Slowly chipped away and as I got closer to taking the loss down to less than 3 figures I jumped into the late dog markets, accompanied by another Hoegaarden (yep the diet has taken a  bit of a knock over the last 2 days). Just squeezed under a loss of £100 so strangely felt quite satisfied as it was only the early balls-up that saw me losing £100 instead of winning £80.



20/10

+£1244.61. If my name was Peter and I was from Paris then I could have won even more!

Started the day in a really bad mood as my wife had given me the raving arsehole! Dumped over £50 almost immediately and then had to try really hard to avoid having a meltdown as I felt so pisssed-off. Then along came 'Peter From Paris' and all of a sudden the world seemed a rosier place!

It's funny that after the intial elation and checking my trades I kind of felt a big aggrieved as I'd actually backed it initially to win over £4k! However at that point in time I was only looking to nick a few quid out of the trade and I was actually lucky as I'd entered a lay to green-up for £50 odd quid and at some point I cancelled this as I though he was still going OK.

Simon asked if I could give a quick overview of how I use Gruss for my in-running in the place market. Well here it is ....

If I get the chance I will try and record 1 or 2 of my in-running races but to be honest you'll probably just see me click once and end up with a red or a green! I did record a few races at Cheltenham this year for Jack over at TFF and here is one I prepared earlier, as they say .....

Once again nothing mind-blowing but hopefully gives you the idea of how Gruss is generally used by in-running players. Note that I wan't using 'override odds' and I was using the right click option to place bets in the queue as opposed to actually taking prices.



21/10


-£21.58. I stayed up late last night to watch a few trading videos on YouTube and was gagging to get going today. However, this afternoon I was totally fucking useless! Actually I traded like a complete fuckwit and just couldn't get to grips with any of the markets. It felt like everytime I entered the market it immediately went against me, or moved in my direction for a few ticks and then reversed at the speed of light. So I was either seeing immediate reds or greens turning into reds in a split second. I then jumped into the dog markets and knocked out £10 in the first race - a world fucking record for me on the dogs!

So I traded the dogs but after a while got bored and reckless and was just putting in bets without really concentrating .... not very professional eh? I soon realised that I was being a tosser so I re-focussed and knuckled down to trying to suss out how the markets move in the fairly low liquid evening races and therefore find some sort of strategy on how to make a profit. I ended up recording two 15 minutes trading sessions and as I sit here now with a Hoegaaarden and feeeling knackered I'm about to watch them through and see if I can spot anything interesting. I have already spotted a certain market condition that helped me win the £10+ quid in one of the later races (and could have been a lot more) but if I divulged that info here that would be spilling the beans!

Carling in the beer garden of 'The Elephant & Castle' @ Ramsgate

So I need to start recording some of this shit again as it's only if you watch the same market again and again that you can determine how the market is moving and exactly why and where you (in this case ME) fucked it up! In fact I might just trade for £5 a click every race tomorrow and see how I perform. 

22:28 I've just sat through my earlier recordings and fuck knows what I was pressing but for some reason the fucking video keeps zooming-in on certain parts of the ladder, and usually just as I'm saying 'ooh look at that, that's very interesting' and I can't see fuck all as the poxxy software (Camtasia) has zoomed-in on some irrelevant part of the ladder! So fuck knows what I was presssing as I was recording (answers on a postcard please!).

PS I just had to Google 'camtasia zoom' and watched a YoutTube video explaining how it works. Now I was an MCSE (Microsoft Certified System Engineer) back in the day but fuck me this would have Steven Hawkins scratching his crust! I must be getting old .....
 

22/10

+£64.53. So following yesterdays dire performance I choked down to £5 a click and traded/recorded as many races as possible today. The only problem that I experienced was that Camtasia was taking ages to render my 15 minute videos so I only manged to get about 45-60 minutes of recording, but it should help. I do recall having one really wanky race but I think I had it recorded so that should be a good exercise.

 
It's definitely the case that in certain scenarios you will feel extra confident about price moves and they are they races when you should really push and get that mouse finger clicking. It's also the same for those races were you sit and think 'I'm really not too sure what is going on here' and therefore ease up a bit on the clicking finger .... or even sit out the race and just take a watching brief.


 
23/10

Well Wasn't That a Lovely Summer!

Well that was a fantastic summer in regards of the weather! I spent plenty of time down on the coast generally enjoying myself, cycling, sitting in the sun and getting pissed! I had the chance to visit a few new pubs along the way and I have to say that it was a very enjoyable experience. However, that's all behind us and now it's time to settle in for the hard winter graft.

There were 141 meetings during September and it looks like about 120 scheduled for October, so that's about a 15% reduction in the number of opportunities. From memory the summer months max out at around 180 meetings per month, so we have approximately 30% less meetings per month in the winter, and sometimes even less when we get cancellations due to adverse weather ... blimey we're all DOOMED!

Fortunately we can all go dogging when the horse racing finishes!

I normally do play all of the evening horse racing during the summer so instead of the horses I'll just switch to trading the dogs in the evening. The dogs are televised on Thu-Sun evenings where they show 2 meetings per night on RPGTV (channel 212). I'll also have a crack at the early morning dogs and see how that goes.

There's plenty of opportunities to be had over the jumps so I'll be updating my abbreviated horse notes which I keep stored on Gruss. These are invaluable and help in winning a few quid.

Anyway, let's crack-on in October and see what happens!

PS The diet is going OK but I really need to make a push in October to get down to maybe 90kg before the hard work starts in Nov/Dec and Jan!


01/10

+£119.18. A pretty good start to the month considering the amount and standard of racing today. Did OK during the day but got fuck-all at Kempton in the evening. However I was happy that I got over £10 on the dogs and if I can keep that going and maybe increase it a bit that'll get me a few quid on the month.

02/10

+£42.25. Pretty much nothing of interest happened today. Scraped a few quid from the dogs and I'll be pretty dissapointed if I don't get at least £300 from the dogs this month. I think that my understanding of the horse pre-race markets is gradually improving and maybe I need to be a bit more aggressive when I spot potential moves. We'll see ....

PS My diet is starting to kick-in and as I sit here typing this I'm FUCKING STARVING! I'll update my 'Body Transformation' blog when I hit 95kg ... which might be tomorrow if I avoid the biscuits on top of the freezer!.



03/10

-£98.09. Started the day in a bad mood (no guesses for who put me in a bad mood). Upped my stakes in the morning dog racing and had a fucking nightmare. Instead of trading aggressively I suppose that I traded wildly. Just goes to show how your mood affects your trading.

Trading the Dogs Using a Highly Analytical Approach

I then continued my shite form into the afternoon so as to complete a fucking nightmare of a day. Managed to set light to £160 in one race in Ireland after which I had to go and stand in my garden before I fucking exploded! However this balls-up kind of stung me into action and I had a few good pre-race trades so there was some positives that came from the day.

I've finally realised that I'm sick and tired of poncing about, therefore I'm going to start crashing in, so expect a few days of £200+ intermingled with the odd three figure loss day.



04/10

+£22.74. Seemed to be running in treacle today and felt quite frustrated at the end of the afternoon. However, my pre-race game is really coming together and I'm feeling more and more comfortable when I'm trading. I'm beginning to get quite efficient at recognising good entry points and when to sit tight and when to exit quickly. It's Saturday tomorrow so maybe I can up my stakes a little and be a bit more aggressive, although having said that I find Saturday's to be busy in-running days so I might have to wait until Sunday before I have a good crack.

I had a go on the evening dogs but made a couple of silly mistakes late in the evening when I got involved way too early and fell straight into a couple of traps set by some crafty fuckers obviously manipulating the market and waiting for dozy twats like me to come along and fall straight into their trap ... fuckers!



05/10

-£16.34. Fucking pants today! Won pennies during the day and didn't really get the chance to do much pre-race trading. Knocked-out my meagre winnings backing a donkey at Wolves and then had a mini-meltdown and managed to turn a small green on the dogs into a bigger loss when it went in-running, entirely my fault, and the 6.0 shot that carried my red sprang out of trap one in a handicap and led all the way! (without that mistake I would have won around a pony on the dogs so that gives me some hope).

Tried pre-race at Wolverhampton but the markets were all over the place and I probably didn't use the right strategy so found them hard and frustrating. In fact I was so angry that I put on the gloves and smashed the fuck out of my heavy bag, even though it's not hanging. I just sat on a stool and punched! It's a professional 'Ringside' fully leather bad that weighs almost 50kg so it takes a pasting! PS The bag won ...

I've always known that I tend to prefer entering the market with a lay bet as my first trade. I've tried hard to rectify this but I'm still predominately looking to catch a move on a drifter as opposed to a horse that is shortening in the market. The one problem with entering the market with a lay trade is that your exposure is higher than if you had entered with a back trade, asssuming we're talking about odds of 2.0 and greater. It also restricts the full usage of your bank. For example, if your bank size is £100 then you can only enter a lay of £50 on a horse trading at 3.0. However you can enter a back of the full £100 if you think that the price is going down. Obviously you have to be careful in this situation as if the price moves against you then you will find yourself unable to take an equal red as you don't have enough funds the cover the relevant lay bet. It can also be unnerving if you lay first as your exposure could be quite high, and this is the time you don't want BF to crash, your PC to switch itself off or your internet to fail! So over the next few weeks I'll be looking to identify horses that are shortening as opposed to drifting and also going through some old market recordings to make sure that the signals that I look for in trying to predict a drifter are the same as spotting those about to, or in the processs, of shortening.



06/10

+£21.76. Although I've been trying to master this pre-race trading on and off for about a year now I find that I'm always learning ... and that's a good thing. On one of my posts above I mentioned that I was going to concentrate more on identifying swing trades or big moves, which initially seemed to be going well, until today. I don't know if it was just me, but the markets seemed totally random today, with prices jumping all over the place. The thing is I only realised that I had to adopt my style to these type of markets late on in the day, so I spent the first two hours poncing about looking for swing trades and not even realising that most of the markets seemed to be flying about within a broad range of 5 or 6 ticks or so, well that's what it seemed like to my novice eye.

I managed to capture a screenshot from the 16:35 at Uttoxeter (see below). This was one of the more sane races, but even so, take a look at the market overview graph!

I'm nothing but persistent, so I'm going to have a crack at the dogs tonight with my main aim of staying out of trouble and not going in-running!

07/10

+£38.25. A fairly typical Monday with very few races. The 'Bomber' seems to have re-surfaced which can cause havoc in the market, but get him right and there's money to be made!