January Analysis

Well, that's January done and dusted! ... well nearly.

One of the reasons for this blog is so that I can keep a track on my progress through 2012. So, how have I done this month, what have I achieved and where do I need more work?

I have to face the fact that on some days I will lose. Now my worst day this month was actually on my birthday! I lost £305.29 and felt a bit down in the dumps. I backed Tinshu to place at 2.06 (finished 4th and then came 2nd two weeks later in a higher grade race), layed Water Garden (probably not one of my best bets having seen the replay, finished 4th to scrape a place) and layed Al Freej on the AW without knowing anything about the horse. Now I has a fantastic evening and the loss became so insignificant that it was soon forgot.

From February onwards I really need to be putting at least £600 on the line every day. This doesn't mean that I should steam in and back or lay everything in sight, it just means that I need to realise that a £600 loss on any day is not going to effect my yearly profit. I need to realise that if I don't play in this sort of league then £200K will be out of reach. I need to be clicking with this in mind, and going in double strong where appropriate. I now have the added advantage in that my AW notes are coming together nicely and my subscription to Timeform is giving me an easy and quick way to identify which horses to be with and those to be against.

My preparation each day has vastly improved over what I was doing towards the end of last year. I have been getting into the office well before 09:00 on most days and I've used this time to study form using the Racing Post video replays. I've also been spending 20 minutes or so each morning in the steam room or sauna where I can relax and prepare myself mentally for the day ahead. This works really well and now I'll be visualising really moving my game up to another level. I'm excited just thinking about it!

I must admit that I'm still not perfectly relaxed when trading, although my concentration levels have improved. So once again I need to work on this and break away from my old cautious style of playing. Once I have achieved this then I'll really start to see the profits that I know I can achieve.

I am gradually changing my style from being almost exclusively a layer to being a backer as well. This is progressing at a slow pace, but once again I'll be looking to really get stuck-in to more backing in the coming weeks.

I've decided, for the time being, that I will put the football trading on the back burner. I feel that my time will be best spent studying form and working on ways to improve my confidence and aggressiveness. I'm also still in the process of compiling a list of the strengths and weaknesses of some of the traders that I know ... and there's one or 2 interesting facts that I discovered and will publish shortly.

And don't forget ... 'see it ... click it'.

Cheers - Dave.