Tuesday 24 June 2008

"I'm packing it in!"

Daily Profit £111.47

Before I discuss tonight, I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has written a comment recently and in particular, for the 4 comments I received after my last post.

I’m going to reply to each of the comments tomorrow and I’ll do it on a post, so I’ll save my comments for then.

I managed to set aside an hour and a half to trade tonight and it’s been my first real night of trading for over a week. However, as you’ll tell by the daily profit and the title of the blog, tonight wasn’t a ‘normal’ trading night.

One thing I love about blogs is that people can write anything they want. I’d love to be able to say that I made over £100 profit tonight and it was a piece of cake but unfortunately, it wasn’t anything like that!

At 7.20pm tonight, Andrew came on MSN for a quick chat and my first words to him were “I’m packing it in.” I had traded 6 races, resulting in 4 losses and 2 break-even races and I was £83 down.

Taking into account the fact I’ve reduced my trading bank to £500, I had managed to lose over 15% of my new trading bank in 6 races and I was really, really down and annoyed with myself. I had backed 4 big drifters in these races and all 4 were not even in the first 3 home.

An example was in the first race at Newbury tonight. My opening play was £20 win at 14. My horse then started to drift. I ended up with £190 at average odds of 18. The horse was around 20 at the off and I laid off for a guaranteed loss of around £25 on the field and a small profit on my horse. The horse finished tailed off and I had managed to lose £25 in the first race.

I then had 2 break-even races before backing a horse at 12 which drifted to 28 at the off and this resulted in a £19 loss on the field again as my horse ran badly again.

2 more losses of around £20 meant that at 7.20pm, I was £83 down on the evening and thinking of stopping. If I had stopped then, I’m not confident I would have ever started again to be honest but I’m not too sure.

After a quick chat with Andrew and me bleating on about the fact I don’t know what’s wrong with my trading, I fancied the Henry Cecil horse in the 7.25pm and managed to do a quick trade to get me £19 riskfree on it. I didn’t lay a penny off and the horse won quite easily.

I then got a little riskfree bet on the Pipe hotpot and this gave me another £15 profit when it won.

Then came the defining moment of the night. It was 7.55 race at Newbury and I was very sweet on the Amanda Perrett horse. It had been backed from 20/1 to 4/1 on its debut but ran very badly. However, as I said to Andrew on MSN, horses from this stable are never expected to win first time out as a 3 year old and the fact it was well backed lets us know it is probably very decent.

It had been very steady at 12 all day and I asked for £50 at 13. I soon got matched and then sat and watched as it traded at 24! I put another £50 on at 22 and this meant I had £100 on at average odds of 17.

A horse was then withdrawn and after the Rule 4, I had £100 on at average odds of about 15. The horse was now trading at 17 and I was again looking at a substantial loss. Thankfully, others cottoned on the fact it was fancied last time and it was heavily backed down to around 12. I exited at 13 for a £190 riskfree bet at the off. I left a £30 lay at 2.5 and I won £145 as the horse romped home.

I had already said to Andrew I fancied one in the next and I managed to do a good trade to get a riskfree bet of £27 on it at the off. The horse was involved in a 2 horse battle about a mile from home and I managed to green up for a profit of £15 and I stopped there as I had to leave the house to pick up Denise.

In the space of 4 races over 40 minutes, I had picked 4 winners and turned an £83 loss into a £111 profit.

I joked with Andrew on MSN that I was going to write a blog post saying I had a 100% night and every trade I touched turned to gold and it was an easy £111 profit!

Clearly, I’ve got some major problems with my confidence at the moment and every trade appears to be turning against me. I was lucky tonight in the sense I picked 4 winners to bail me out of the brown stuff but I’m praying that I’ll push on from here.

Looking at my P&L tonight, I can see that I’ve past the £750 profit mark for the month which is absolutely amazing and I’m over the moon. It will be interesting when I look at the graph of my profit this month as I appeared to be heading for a £1,000 profit month quite easily before I went off the rails a bit but hopefully, I’m back on the straight and narrow now.

Thanks for all the support and I’ll reply to the recent comments tomorrow.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mate,
As I've said before, don't be so harsh on yourself ! Trust your judgement to pick horses and your ability to trade them - you have both...
I didn't realise that you managed to turn £190 risk into a guarenteed £25 loss in the first - I actually think this is a step forward. You can't expect to get every race right - but if you are able to limit the damage when things go wrong, I see this as a real positive.
You just need to be mindful that not all races/markets are the same. Previoulsy you were focusing on a particular type of horse/race - these markets tend to behave in a similar way. If you are going to branch out into other areas, then you need to be aware of the increased volatility and to adjust your stake/trading method accordingly...
Andrew.

Graeme Dand said...

Mate,

I’m fed up praising you on the blog and everyone will be thinking the only reason I’m winning money is because of you!

The fact that I was £83 down when you came on MSN and I was £111 up when you signed off an hour later is pure coincidence……Golden Boy can take more credit since he was shouting on that Perrett horse!

I said last night that I always go over the top. I’m either great or hopeless! I don’t see much middle ground when I trade. I did manage to limit the damage when things were going wrong last night and it came good at the end.

I think I just need to learn to chill a bit and not panic when things are not going as I like. With my strategy, losses are always going to occur and the secret to my success will be to control the losses when they happen and learn from it.

Later……

G

Anonymous said...

I'm sure your readers aren't perceptive enough to realise that all of your success is actually down to me ! I think this needs spelling out a bit more as it would greatly improve my chances of finding permanent employment as a betting coach - LOL !!