Managing Your Positions

21/01

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

Hi, my name is Dave. I'm a fucking good trader and it's about time I grew some bollox and started to give myself the chance to win some proper cash.

+£69.22. It felt nice to have a winning day today!

Managing Your In-Running Positions

It might be an obvious thing to state but managing your entry and exit positions is the one of the main factors in making this game pay. At the moment I'm pretty sure of the best times to enter the market (for my particular style of trading), and I tend to follow these rules:

identify the selection(s) that I'm looking to trade: this depends on a horses running style (I keep abbreviated notes on Gruss), where it is lining-up at the start of the race, it's demeanour on the track and also horses whose prices are fluctuating wildly during the race (especially in NH races where there is more time to jump in and out of the market).

enter the market at the right point: I tend to enter the market just before the off, or as soon as possible when the market has gone in-running. In shorter races on the ATR tracks it's sometimes very hard to get matched early at the correct price, as the track players have that 2 or 3 second advantage, but it is sometimes possible. However, much like the pre-race market it's pointless chasing a price in the early frantic rush as you'll nearly always end-up with a bad entry point.

As an example, you want to lay a horse that is usually slow away or held-up over 7F and it's trading at 4.0 pre-race. If, at the start of the race, the horse does indeed miss the break then you want to lay as close to 4.0 as possible. If you miss this and the price moves to 4.5 and you try again only for the price to move to 5.0 then it's pretty pointless in trying to get on at all costs and maybe laying at 5.5 as you have already missed the value. Also remember that the traders who have layed at 4.0 are looking for the right time to bail-out of their positions and throw in some back bets. If the selection then improves it's position it'll possibly go sub 4.0 and you have just layed at 5.5! I do sometimes succumb to this problem, as in the heat of the in-running battle it's easy to chase that price and instead of backing something early at maybe 10.0 I find that I've chased the price and backed at maybe 7.0, which is a big difference!


I'm still wrestling with my exit points. I do tend to phase-out my positions, but I seem to be missing quite a few greens in the £5-£30 range as I tend to hold on to my position maybe a bit too long? Even on a day with only 3 meetings you only need to get 6 or 7 of this type of trade to regularly earn over £100 per day. I think that the solution is to increase my initial position and then take my stake plus maybe £5-£10 out of the trade and then phase-out the remainder?

 


22/01

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

+£69.42. Another day of just chipping away. With a bit more effort the £100+ days will soon start rolling in!

23/01


State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

+£100.79. Well that was quite an enjoyable day after my recent poor form. I'm still excited about the potential of trading in the win market, so it would be nice to string a few good days together. I finished the day just short of the £100 mark, so jumped into the evening dog markets to get the extra few pennies that took me into 3 figures!

24/01

+£121.26. Traded well today, but I'm still on the cautious side, when in fact I should be getting stuck-in. However it would be nice to achieve just a gradual increase in daily profits and gently ease up to winning £150+ per day .... as always we'll see how it goes.

I always love looking at Adam Heathcote's spreadsheet (see below). OK, it was back in the day where making money was MUCH easier (but fuck me £2K a day!!), but it's still good to see, and don't forget that Caan is having a similar sort of progression in the pre-race market.

I didn't do particularly well last Saturday so we'll have to wait and see how the markets play tomorrow.

  

17:30: I'm sitting here updating my notes for the evening racing and fuck me it's SO boring! I'm not going to complain, but it is very tedious going through the form of EVERY runner and then typing the abbreviations into Gruss. It's not too bad if you're winning, but if you're having a mediocre or bad day all you want to day is grab a beer from the fridge and watch the TV!

I suppose that we have been quite lucky with the weather so far this year, but it looks as though we're going to lose a few meetings this week due to tracks being waterlogged and more rain forecast, so it could be a lean finish to January. Let's hope that we don't lose too much as I have to pay the bills!

 

25/01

State of mind: cautiously optimistic.

11:56 and I'm a bit behind on my horse notes for today, but luckily I'm only having to add a few notes here and there as I've made a good effort over the last few weeks and a large percentage of runners already have a note.

I think that I'm going to play somewhat cautiously today. There are quite a few big fields at Leopardstown so I might be able to spot a few big priced selections over there and hopefully nick a few quid.

+£43.77. I did in fact play cautiously today and before I knew it the racing was all over. Once again I missed a few great opportunities by a gnats cock where the track players were beating me to the punch by a nanosecond and I passed on an early £50+ green in Ireland where I'd backed one at 1000 and it seemed to be going well, so I held on expecting a lot more ... then it's legs literally fell off!

26/01

+£8.57. Sunday today and dragged my arse down to Tesco's. Now I'm an Asda man, and fuck me Tesco is a fucking rip-off! Everything was more expensive and I only got dragged down there by my wife and youngest son who are both vegetarians. I said to them 'why not cook some fucking nice fresh vegetables instead of eating that packaged shite?', but they're obviously too lazy and don't have enough time between drinking gallons of beer and smoking marijuana.

Anyway, the trading opportunities were poor and I was a bit behind on my notes so had to settle for any profit.

 

I have been trying to get back into the diet and training regime but I've been obsessed with trying my hand at making curries over the last couple of weeks. After viewing a few YouTube videos explaining how to make the type of curry that you get in a British Indian restaurant I've made a lamb and spinach curry, a mince vindaloo, a chicken bhuna, mushroom bhaji, a vegetable curry, bombay potato, sag aloo, bhindi bhaji and a today I made a chicken korma. I must say that they have all tasted fucking brilliant and quite a few portions have ended up in my wife's workplace where the feedback so far has been positive. Next on the list is a chicken balti.

... and I might just have loads of time to cook curries this week as it looks as though the rain is going to continue with some snow and ice thrown-in for good measure!



27/01

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

+£6.27. We only have 2 meetings today (that's 14 races) so it's going to be a case of taking what's available and not trying to push too hard to make up for the loss of the cancelled meeting.

28/01

+£3.69. There wasn't much happening today, as seen by my P&L, and I've just had a look at tomorrow's cards and there is only one meeting left standing .... the AW meeting at Kempton tomorrow night. So what the fuck am I supposed to do during the day?

29/01

+£17.48. Well we only had the evening meeeting at Kempton today so I spent most of the day doing the houseld chores (pretty much like I do every day). I'd like to say that my missus does her fair share ... but I can't. She often finds it hard to squeeze in any domestic duties between sleeping, drinking beer, shopping for clothes or watching DVDs.

30/01

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

+£84.10. We had a preety normal day's worth of racing today, despite the bad weather, and I managed to snaffle a few quid.

31/01

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

+£80.78. Nearly hit 3 figures today but took a small loss in the last race

01/02

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

11:55 and a bit behind on my horse notes for today. I assumed that we would lose the jumps meeting to the rain, but they are all on, so I should have dragged myself out of bed a bit earlier

12:34 there's like 40 odd races today so I'm going to get stuck in and average at least £5 per race .... let's see how it goes.

+£76.61. I tried really hard today and pushed quite a bit but I found the races coming a bit too quickly and I found myself rushing a few times. It seemed like a case of 2 steps forward 1 step back. I also missed a great opportunity when the wankers at Lingfield didn't wait for the completion of the previous race and I missed the start by a few seconds and therefore missed a great back to lay. They can never seem to decide when to hold races back and if it's the BHA who control this then all I can say is that they're fucking useless!

02/02

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

12:43 I'll press again today and see what happens ...

+£39.13. Well I chipped away as usual and then made a balls-up and threw away almost £90 backing something in fifth thinking it was in fourth .....doh what a prick! I cracked-on though and eventually moved into profit after a good trade in the last at Kempton.

03/02

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

Hi, my name is Dave. I'm a fucking good trader and it's about time I grew some bollox and started to give myself the chance to win some proper cash.

12:11 Have almost updated all of my horse notes for today and I'm ready for some action.

+£84.57. Dare I say it but it felt quite easy to win today and I chose my races and selections quite carefully. I also think that I could scale up to at least 2 or 3 times what my stakes are at the moment and still have no problems getting matched.

I do rely quite a bit on my horse notes so I'd like to get tomorrow's cards done tonight so that I can get out in my jungle of a garden tomorrow and try and complete what I started last year!

 


04/02

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

10:25 I think that today's racing should carry a wealth warning. I've never seen so many races with horses that have wildly variable run styles, horses switching from the jumps to flat, unexposed horses, those having there first run, those having been off the track for ages and all mixed in with the fact that I hate Southwell as an in-running track! I think that a cautious approach may be in order for today.

+£35.18. As expected today was pretty pants but I suppose it's better than geting frustrated and losing eh?

05/02

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

10:56 Just finished updating my horse notes for today and it only took about 30 minutes which is a relief as it's fucking tedious. I still need to do Kempton's evening card but that shouldn't take too long.

As for today I need to make a bit more of a push and see if I can start to string a few £100+ days together as I really need to start winning a few more quid.

+£64.42. I tried to push a bit harder today, but maybe I need to push a bit more?

06/02

It could be another lean day today with only 3 meetings and some races with not a lot of form to analyze. What I have been doing though is to make sure that I'm updating my notes after every race has been run, either by watching the replay or recording the race and then replaying it in between subsequent races. My notes are coming together nicely now but I could imagine that come the start of the flat season I'll be up to midnight each night adding all the new runners and updating all the turf runners.

+£91.79. Had another day of nicking a few quid here and there, and although there were only 3 meetings it soon adds up, so I'm relatively happy.

07/02

+£1.62. To be honest I wasn't really focussed on the racing today. We only had one meeting during the day and 2 meetings in the evening and I still managed to miss a few races when I was cooking or washing-up ... so can't really complain about the result

08/02

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

Hi, my name is Dave. I'm a fucking good trader and it's about time I grew some bollox and started to give myself the chance to win some proper cash.

13:00 I feel like having a real good crack today .... so let's see how it goes ...

+£396.70. So there I was chugging along nicely and then I ran into a nice one late on at Wolverhampton. In fact there was much more to be had and in the good old days I probably could have taken closer to £1k out of it, but I hesitated as I thought that I was about to make a mistake before clicking a few times. As I say, there was over £1k sitting there waiting to be taken, literally for a few seconds, but this sort of scenario hasn't happened for quite a while and I had to double and treble check as I didn't want to dump a grand in one race!

09/02

+£100.63. I tried to continue where I left off yesterday and didn't do too bad. My main win actually went to £140+ green but I though that it had a bit more upside in it and probably failed to enter enough well positioned exit bets.

10/02

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money, although not expecting much today as we only have 2 meetings.

+£6.78. Only the 2 meetings today so I'll take this opportunity to record each race and update my notes for each runner, although most of today's runners already have notes, so it's just a case of keeping them up-to-date.

There's not much on offer tomorrow, possibly only Southwell on the AW, so I'm off to the scaffold yard to get some tubes so that I can put my heavy bag up in the garden and start smashing the fuck out of it!



11/02

+£42.13. We did actually have 2 meetings today and I nicked enough to pay for my scaffold tubes! All I need now is some dry weather so that I can get them in place, hang my heavy bag and get those left jabs flying.

12/02

State of mind: confident and ready to start giving myself the chance of winning some decent money.

13:12 We have 3 meetings today and I have all of my horse notes updated so it's time to try and win back the PC charge that BF took at lunchtime!

-£37.69. The IR markets seemed kind of strange today as they moved against me pretty much every time I entered. The losses weren't that great but it was still annoying to have a losing day!

13/02

+£46.90. I must admit that I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about today's racing. I struggled to get some of my notes done as it was just too fucking boring and then Kempton this evening seemed unplayable, so I'm just happy that I covered yesterday's losses.

Apparently the weather is going to be OK on the 16th so I'll be able to get my erection up and have a session on my bag ..... ooooerrr missus.




14/02

+£20.69. My BT Infinity has been fucking useless every evening for the past few weeks and it's obviously a DNS problem. BT support are a bag of shite and are always looking to blame it on your PC. Now I was a MCSE back in the day and have worked in the IT industry for over 20 years so I know when they are trying to blag. In the end I had to change my DNS server to Google at 8.8.8.8 but how the fuck would anybody with a limited knowledge on computers be able to do this themselves? Strangely enough BT still claim that there is no problem with their DNS server(s) .... pillocks!

15/02

State of mind: apprehensive.

13:08 I'm in that 'can't be bothered' state of mind at the moment. I don't find Saturday's lucrative, interesting, or suited to my style of trading and they can become rushed if you don't pick your races. So basically I'm not expecting much today and will probably be cautious and play tightly and nick what I can .....

+£65.11 No world record but happy since I wasn't expecting much today.



16/02

+£52.13. Sat here all day watching that bumpers for jumpers shite and won fuck all, but then got some free money in the last so it wasn't too bad.

It was a great day weatherwise today and I managed to get the frame for my heavy bag setup so I'll be out in the garden punching away for 30 minutes each day (when it stops raining) in order to fight the flab!



17/02

+£27.29. Not much to report from today as the racing was a bag of shite again. Oh roll on the Summer where it's nice and hot and we actually get the chance to win some proper cash!