Tuesday 4 March 2008

Mr Consistent

Daily Loss £22.89

Well, if Paul Mckenna can sell books teaching people how to lose pounds, then I could be on my way to writing a best-seller!

5 days of trading on horse-racing, 5 losses.

Being honest, today was not about trading. I actually did Ok trading and I'm slowly starting to get the hang of this. My problems again concerned my Dutching.

I gambled on 19 races today, and only won on 7. As I've said previously, I can't expect to make a profit when my strike rate is this low. In reality, I did pretty well to only lose the amount I did as I was playing with very small stakes, so it could have been much, much worse. I actually had 8 straight losses which is quite an achievement. The average odds of these 8 bets came to around 6/4, so it's quite a poor run.

The only thing that gives me a bit of encouragement was that I was slightly unlucky in one of the races. I managed to create a riskfree bet on a horse which returned around £50 (was 20/1) but it finished 2nd. I did lay off a little part of the bet in running for a small profit on the race but if that had managed to win, I would have made a decent profit on the day.

Clearly, my confidence at the moment is at an all time low with regards to picking winners through Dutching, so I'll maybe have a break from Dutching tomorrow.

I still feel I can make decent returns from Dutching but it's just not happening for me at the moment. I can't pick a winner.

I'll look to try to trade tomorrow as it's lower risk and I'm really needing to try to get a profit to get me some confidence.

I made the decision to start off with very small stakes for The Experiment and it's probably proving a good decision. If I had been playing with the sort of stakes I ultimately want to, I would have bust my £1,000 bank on the first day as 8 straight losses at 6/4 would wipe me out no matter which staking plan I was using!

I'm starting to chuckle to myself about how bad this horse-racing gambling is going, so things can only get better.

Bring on this week's golf......

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Graeme,
can i suggest you trade on say 5 horse races to start with and concentrate really hard and just aim not to make a loss. that's how i started. you will find that when you are just starting out you will lose concentration really quickly and the losses will definitely start piling up half way through the day...which will sap your confidence very very quickly. Also I think it is good to start with a more meaningful amount which will hurt you a little or make you more conscious of your move (say 500 pounds). Using small stakes and saying that you're losing with just small stakes will cause you to continue with the same mistakes when you increase your stake. Also if you are just trading, all you need is to concentrate on the price movement on the ladder plus maybe a bit watchful of the graph..don't lose your concentration with other stuff like the racing channel, betfair radio, email..concentrate on the 5 races..its only maybe 40 minutes of your life and when you succeed, you can then increase the number of races. Hope that helps.

Cassini said...

Hi Graeme,
Me again. Where's your edge? What are you doing that others with far more experience are not doing? Definitely do not increase your stakes until you are consistently able to make profits. When I started a £2 loss hurt. Any loss hurt. It was the fact that it was a loss that was important, not the size of it. I really can't see how you can entertain thoughts of doing this professionally. If it was that easy, the whole world would be doing it. There are easier markets than horse-racing to make money in. I'd recommend that you research those, but it takes time. It took me 18 months before I was able to make regular profits. Don't expect it all to happen quickly, but don't give up. Good luck.