Friday 7 March 2008

2 lessons learned!

Daily Profit £3.81

Similar to yesterday, I did pretty well in most races but I made 2 massive errors which wiped out most of the day’s profits.

I don’t always want to dwell on the negatives, so a quick word on the good things today. I traded 11 races, won 7, lost 3 and break-even on 1. Out of the 7 winning races, 3 races created hedged profits of £6 or more.

Again, doesn’t sound spectacular but I only used £10 or £20 stakes all day. On one race, I did 8 successful trades on the favourite at £20 each and I created £16 risk free on the fav. Once I’d hedged, it gave me about £7 profit.

This was easily my most satisfying race thus far from trading. If I could just do that on more races, I’d feel much happier with increasing my stakes and looking to gain higher profits but I’m still liable to throw in the odd nightmare of a race.

I suffered 2 nightmares today. For any people reading this who are pretty good at trading, you are going to chuckle at what happened to me……

Firstly, I traded a race tonight and only had a profit of about £1 on the race. So, I thought I’d watch the race and look to back a horse in running if one appeared.

So I was watching the race and I thought I’d back a horse at about 1.5 as it was cruising with 2 furlongs left. I quickly tried to snap up the 1.5 available. All of a sudden, a positive £10 appeared against every other horse in the race! I had somehow managed to lay the horse instead of backing it….

I forgot that I was using the 1 tick profit function in BA Pro and when I placed my bet, it automatically tried to lay it off for 1 tick lower! I didn’t get my 1.5 bet matched but not surprisingly, I got the lay at 1.49 matched! WHOOPS!

Well, it was another lesson learned and it cost me £5 as the horse did go on to win in a photo. This was the 1st race at Wolv last night. I got most of it back in the next race though, so I stopped the day there and kept my small profit.

Earlier in the day, my other error was again in a big field. I think I’m starting to learn to stop trading these large fields until I gain more experience. I was trading the front 2 in the betting and I missed the fact that others were being heavily backed. I ended up with a few large red numbers on the front 2 which I traded on and I hedged this for an £8 loss. Again, lesson learned!

I’m glad to say I can end this post on a high note. I’d like to say thanks to the person who laid me £2 at 1000 for Todd Hamilton. It’s true that Hamilton’s pretty poor nowadays but he was due a decent round. Also thanks to the person(s) who snapped up my lays from 70-120. He was in 2nd place at one stage yesterday, so they maybe thought he would do OK. After they snapped up my lays, he then decided to plummet down the leaderboard…..

My exposure on the golf from my initial bets (£21) is now £2 although I have placed a £10 lay on Ernie Els. He seemed far too short a price when he kicked off his round last night and now he’s twice the odds!

I will now be disappointed if I can’t now make a small profit on the golf from this position!

Trading tomorrow again on the horses, so I’ll see how it goes. If tomorrow goes OK, I’ll look to increase my stakes a little from next week as it’s slightly frustrating winning small amounts from trading knowing that I can scale these up from using higher stakes.

1 comment:

leonthefixer said...

Well done agaon on another successful day! A profit is a profit and with the stakes you are currently using you made a good profit in percentage terms!

We all make errors it is how you learn from them that will make the difference. You are going to make many more errors I am sure, I know I do, this is why it is important when starting out to use small stakes, you can then make the errors without them not costing you to much.

It seems as though you are starting to find something that works for you on the trading - well done and good luck today!