I only managed to trade in 47 races this week so things were pretty grim again!
December 15th - 21st
I'm really not getting the time to put in a good few consistent days of trading atm so I'm kinda treading water. I'm juggling my trading with the more important needs of my business and visiting my mum up in London so I guess that things will be pretty quiet until we hit the longer days in late Spring.
The snowy and icy weather decimated the racing this week. It also meant that I couldn't get out and work, so it was a case of doing a bit of housework along with lots of guitar twanging.
December 8th - 14th
I'm still juggling with my business and family commitments atm, so once again I've had very little quality time to sit down and trade. Unfortunately, when I do get some time to trade then I'm finding the markets either very tricky or severely lacking in liquidity and therefore action ... that's until the track players swoop in and hoover-up all of the tasty pickings!
December 1st - 7th
Family commitments had to come before trading this week and I only managed to find the time to trade in 37 races.
November 22nd - 30th
It's frustrating when all you want to do is sit down and improve your game, but life will throw you curveballs every now and then and all you can do is stay patient and wait for better days.
The third week of November was pretty much the same as the second week! To be fair, I didn't have much time to trade due to work and other family commitments, so things were haphazard at best.
November 15th - 21st
The second week of November was quite frustrating. Quite a few of the markets seemed impossible to read and other seemed to desperately lack any sort of liquidity. It's frustrating when you're trading with just £50 a click and there's literally just fivers and tenners available, and sometimes only £2 at various prices.
On a couple of days I got off to a relatively bad start and this tends to make me shout and scream quite a bit, although fortunately I very rarely go on tilt and it's just a case of being patient and avoiding making the same mistake or learning on why you just lost your money!
One of the reasons for the paltry total was that I only traded 4 days which amounted to 49 markets as I was busy elsewhere.
November 8th - 14th
I was a bit busier with my business during the first week of November and this meant that I had less quality time to trade. Additionally, there are a few tracks that I tend to avoid at the moment, such as Doncaster and Newcastle, so the pickings were quite slim.
November 1st - 8th
Obviously there's a lot less racing during the winter months but it's an ideal time to work on my new strategies and get myself back up to speed with regards to monthly profits.
14/10/2022
Well, it looks like I may be back!
After a very long hiatus from Betfair (the Wi-Fi is crap in Pentonville) I decided to log onto BF to see if anything had changed in the last few years.
After a quick fact finding mission on the good old forum it was apparent that, if anything, things were worse than ever!
However, I just had to have a crack, for old times' sake, and I fired up the Geeks Toy and set my stakes to £2 a click. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before I realised that:
a) I'd completely forgotten how to trade and
b) the markets were crap
c) I've become a slow old cunt
Over a period of 7 days I traded a few races and here are the results ...
It was obvious that I was better off sticking to the day job .....
To be continued .....
20/10/2022
The fundamental mistake that I made when having another look at the markets was that I immediately adopted the same old routine that I was using back in the day. Now, things have moved on and the opportunities that were previously available have gradually became less lucrative over time, eventually leading to my decision to knock the trading on the head.
The single most important factor of being a successful trader is finding that angle or edge that then allows you to make a consistent profit. As I traded a few races using my old redundant 'techniques' I began to notice an obvious opportunity that arose time and time again in many of the races that I was trading. Funnily enough it was an observation that I had noted thousands of times previously whilst pretty much trading every single horse race every day of the year for a few years! However, to take advantage of this apparent opportunity required that I change the way in which I trade each race and most importantly that I need to become a lot less risk adverse. Pretty much all of my profits to date have been based on being risk adverse, having as many winning trades as possible while at the same time keeping losing trades to a bare minimum. Unfortunately, this is what led to me being fucked by the Premium Charge!
When you are looking for that elusive edge it makes sense to keep your stakes to a minimum as you test different strategies. There's nothing worse than jumping in and doing your bollox early doors! So, I set my stakes to something like £3 a click and set about trying to make some sort of consistent profit using a consistent strategy. Here's my initial results:
September 1st - 7th
So, I ended up trading in 55 races over a 7-day period and won £22.44. Now that might seem like a total waste of time, but in fact it was time well spent. The more that I traded the more potential opportunities I could see!
The main challenge was now to become less risk adverse and to trade in more races as I was still missing opportunities by being too cautious. As I'm still on the 40% premium charge I need to turnover much more in order to negate the weekly charges. For instance, the way to win a premium charge free £100 a week is to win £800 and lose £700. By doing this you've already paid the 40% in commission 😀
21/10/2022
Nowadays I do run my own business and I'm also in a relationship with a gorgeous woman who makes relentless demands upon my body so my spare time can sometimes be limited. However, that trading bug is still there so I endeavoured to squeeze in as much trading as possible during the second week of September.
September 8th - 15th
This time around I traded 58 races and amassed a staggering profit of £7.97! Despite this underwhelming effort I could still see potential and to be honest I was still finding my feet after not trading for quite a few years. I had to remember simple things like the fact that different venues trade differently along with the basic rules of when and when not to enter the market. So, in hindsight the £7.97 profit was irrelevant as I felt as if I was starting to understand the markets again along with learning how to trade in a completely different way in what I had done previously.
On the plus side of things, I have finally stopped watching Emmerdale as it's complete bollox!
25/10/2022
I've just realised that these latest posts may be somewhat confusing as I'm currently writing them at the end of October and reporting on my progress during September.
Anyway, onto a few days of trading between 16th-22nd of September ...
This week's results made for better reading both in terms of profit and the number of races that I was able to trade. I actually traded in 63 races, which is still way too low for 7 days of racing, but it was certainly heading in the right direction. I'm guessing that at this time of the year I should be aiming to trade in at least 100 races every week.
One main factor to consider when trading is when to trust your own judgement when the market is moving against your position.
This can initially seem somewhat tricky but when you take a closer look you can usually spot the difference between a genuine move against your position as opposed to a panic in the market caused by traders trying to minimize their losses. It's always a pain in the arse when you trust your judgement and hold onto a position when it's obvious that the market knows otherwise and also when you initially trust your decision but bail for a loss when the market moves wildly against you for no apparent reason. Learning to differentiate the difference and act accordingly makes a huge difference to your P&L.
26/10/2022
I was quite shocked when I looked back on my P&L for this 8-day period at the end of September. However, I immediately realised, just by looking at the P&L report, that I had gone back to my old ways of trading and was therefore totally missing out on trading in the most lucrative parts of each race. Quite often in this game you can't see the wood from the trees and all you do is end up banging your head against a brick wall.
The good thing about looking back over your P&L reports is that you should be able to see what is working and what isn't!
September 23rd - 30th
26/10/2022
It seems that the start of October may have been a turning point in terms of settling into my new trading style, albeit that my stakes are still only a combination of £5 or £22 a click, and for the majority of the time I'm still only clicking once per race!
October 1st - 7th
As mentioned previously I'm naturally a risk-adverse person and this is quite a hard habit to adjust but it's a gradual process and I think that I'm heading in the right direction. I've even asked my gf to tell me at every opportunity to 'grow some bollox Dave!'
26/10/2022
I still only managed to trade in 77 races during this second week of October, although I did have one day off, so there's still work to be done in that area and more potential for increased profits.
October 8th - 14th
My stakes were still relatively meagre at either £5 or £25 per click depending on the situation and stage of the race, so once again more potential for greater P&L once I scale these up to a reasonable level.
Out of interest I searched for trading groups on Facebook and joined a couple. It still surprises me that people are still looking for 'systems' or guaranteed ways of making a consistent profit. If you have the willpower to read through this entire blog, and some apparently have, hopefully you can pick up on some nuggets of wisdom that may help steer you in the right direction. However, if you just need a quick guide on the do's and don'ts of trading horse racing in-running then I'll post a tip on each of my blog posts as I merrily blog away.
Tip 1
When starting out or finding your feet in any new market ALWAYS start with minimum stakes! Apparently, the minimum stake on BF is now just £1 so that's ideal. This gives you the opportunity to try different approaches without the worry of doing your bollox before you've even had a chance to find out how the markets operate.
This might seem to be a very simple and obvious tip, but I've seen many a punter start to chase their losses when things get a bit hairy, and things usually end up messy accompanied by plenty of xxx rated language!
27/10/2022
If there is one thing that I am guilty of then it's definitely procrastination! Now, having previously mentioned that you need to start with small stakes and then gradually build up as your confidence increases .... well, it can take me bloody ages to get to a stage where I'm playing with decent stakes in order to make a decent profit.
October 15th - 21st
The problem that I find with increasing your stakes is that the overriding fear is that it's now easily possible to wipe-out a few days profit in just one single bad trade. I still let this fear prevent me from realising the full potential of what is available.
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Tip 2
Make sure that you have a suitable trading environment. This means having a nice quiet place where you can trade without any distractions. Quite often in the past when trading from home I've been distracted by screaming kids, a nagging wife, barking dogs or just plain wandering off into the internet between races. It's amazing just how many times I done my bollox when this happened!
Additionally, you also need to have your PC and screens setup in a user-friendly way along with your trading software, I use Geeks Toy. Ideally you also need to have a nice clear full screen picture of the racing so that you're not struggling to see things as they unfold.
Basically, when you sit down to work you want to ensure that you are in a nice environment and that your setup is tailored to how you want to trade.
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28/10/2022
I had a right old mixed bag of results over the last 7 days. This was combined with an initial enthusiasm that was tempered by frustration as the week progressed. I managed to trade in 93 races with my stakes now set at either £5, £10 or £30 a click. I'm currently trading with a bank of anywhere between £60 - £100.
It was one of those periods where everything seemed impossible, progress was mind-numbingly slow, and mistakes and errors of judgement were coming thick and fast. The only thing that you can do in this situation is to stay calm and have the patience of a saint. If you can stay in a chilled-out zone then it's a lot easier to avoid going on tilt and it's also a lot easier to identify missed opportunities or areas where you just completely fucked up!
October 22nd - 28th
I realised that I still have some way to go before I can start to expect regular and bigger profits with some sort of confidence. Having said that, I'm literally going to smash the fuck out of things over the next 7 days ....
31/10/2022
So, October was a pretty eventful month in terms of progress and dealing with the usual challenges, such as finding the time to trade, getting back up to speed with the idiosyncrasies of the markets, identifying opportunities and taking advantage of them, cutting out mistakes and the increasing stakes ... phew!
I did actually go to the London version of Oktoberfest way back in the day. I was out on an afternoon sesh with work colleagues and we ended-up at a big Marquis in a park somewhere. The only thing that I remember is being helped-up off the floor at some point having fallen over. I managed to stagger to the local tube station where I burst into tears whilst waiting for the train and then chucked some beggar bloke off the tube at some point (fortunately not between stops). Alas my days of heavy drinking (somewhat highlighted in this very blog) are way behind me ... but I did have fun! Ah the good old days 😂
October 29th - 31st
