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!
