Reply to recent comments....

At the moment, I appear to be more of a writer instead of a trader but I’m finding it very therapeutic, so I’ll continue on with my week of blogging! Here's my thoughts on the comments posted to my thread last week......

Mark, thanks for the comment again. I took your advice, had a few days off and even now, I’m raring to go for Saturday. As you say, one losing month out of five isn’t that bad and I really think I’ve learnt more this month than any other month, so hopefully it will be money lent!

Steve, nice comment! It makes me smile when I read a comment that says many traders would swap their first 5 months with mines as I’m quite an impatient person in life, so I always want to be the best at everything I do as soon as possible! Andrew keeps telling me Rome wasn’t built in a day but my inexperience takes over too often and I get too many ideas of where I want to end up without doing my traineeship first!

Looking back now, it’s difficult to understand what caused me to lose £200+ on so many races. Maybe it was a concentration thing or something, not really sure. One thing that is clear is that I need to stop getting myself into these positions so often. In my first 4 months, I lost £200+ on one race and even then, that was very unlucky. This month, it’s happened at least 4 times and I need to stop it.

As you say, I’m not doing this for a living at the moment, and I don’t need the level of stress I had last week! Losing a week’s wage on a race trying to trade for a riskfree bet makes me laugh to be honest and I still don’t understand what I was doing. I’ll learn from it though, I’ll guarantee you that!

Keith, thanks for the comment. Nice to see you have been reading the blog in your spare time! I think you make some interesting points but I think you also talk a bit of bullshit yourself if I’m honest.

Firstly, some of the advice I’ve had from traders on the blog has been inspirational to say the least. The fact that successful traders drop by and leave me advice and support is amazing and I think you are wrong to belittle this in any way.

Secondly, to quote that I’ll never make it as a trader is bullshit in my opinion and I’m not sure how you can make this judgement. I don’t think reading my blog qualifies you to pass judgement on my trading skills and I definitely don’t think I’m wasting my time on Betfair. As I’ve said before to many people, I wouldn’t gamble or trade unless I thought I could win. That hasn’t changed just because I had one bad month.

Your point about drifters is a very valid point. As I’ve quoted on here many times, I always get drawn to trading drifters. This is to be expected though as when a horse drifts on Betfair, I see it as representing better value in many cases since I know it has a better chance than the Betfair odds indicate. This contradicts the view of traders as they see a drifter as something that will continue to drift and allow them to make money by laying it as it drifts.

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to a £50k betting bank to allow me to back every horse that traders wrongly push up the price on but I think I need to start being selective when I see these horses appearing. I should be happy to stake a small punt on horses that I believe are value from a betting perspective.

Thanks for the appreciation of my form knowledge. As I’ve learnt over the years, being able to read a formbook is one thing, being able to make a consistent profit is another thing.

I didn’t start this experiment to prove to anyone that I can make a profit to level stakes or to show off what I know about horse-racing. I know I can beat tipsters at their own game and I know I know more than most about finding winners. However, as my Grandfather told me on more than one occasion, if tipsters were any good at finding winners, they wouldn’t be selling the tips!

I agree that my form knowledge has led me to win over the past few months. I don’t dispute this. If you have had read some of my posts more clearly, I’ve commented a few times that my returns are ‘supernormal’ compared to other traders with my level of experience. Before January this year, I didn’t even know how Betfair worked!

To be able to win £2,500 from having a few months experience and a £500 starting bank is impressive but as I’ve said many times, I’m a complete novice at this game but I want to learn to trade. I admit my knowledge has led me to win more than my trading thus far but surely, as my trading experience grows, I can increase my profits.

As you say, I do trade to smooth the returns out and I’ve said that before on here. However, my ultimate aim is to be able to learn to trade properly and once I do that, I can maybe look to employ a trading strategy on some races and a gambling strategy on other races.

Your comments concerning my form-book reading are very flattening but it doesn’t prove anything to me. As I’ve stated previously, I don’t have the necessary capital to gamble to make it worth my while to spend hours looking at form. I would need a decent size bank to make it worthwhile or I would need to get paid to do it from people so that it is worthwhile for them.

The comment regarding a professional punter paying me for personal tips is bullshit again as if they have managed to make decent money from professional punting, I doubt they will listen to me.

Lastly, the rest of your comments are pretty much bullshit to be honest and saying I have no ambition just gets on my nerves big time, so I won’t be replying to your email. Thanks anyway!

Matt, as usual mate, you are spot on. At the moment, I can’t really work out what I am and as you have said before, trying to trade without having a clear mind will ultimately lead to poor trading and poor decisions.

I probably need to recognise different types of horses and races. If I see a horse that is weak and I want to back it, I should just watch the drift and wait until it reaches a value price. I should then just place a win bet for a small amount and forget about trying to trade it.

Likewise, if I see a horse that looks strong and likely to shorten, up my stake and back it to lay off pre-race. However, as soon as I realise the trade is against me, I need to exit the bet. I cannot continue to back it as it drifts! I need to learn this and quickly!

Steve, as usual, a few things for me to think through. I have said I don’t like trading but that’s more to do with the scalping aspect. I actually don’t mind trading when I’m trading a horse I think will win as I’ve got complete confidence in it. Trying to trade some random 2 year old unraced horse I find nearly impossible as I can’t read the market signals properly as I don’t have the necessary scalping skills.

I do enjoy spending time analysing handicaps but like you say, spending an hour on a race to have £10 win on a horse is not worth it. You may be on to something though with the tipster thing here as I can see this being beneficial to everyone concerned. Obviously, I get the incentive to look at races which means I can trade better and punters can then back my selection to win.

A few people have mentioned your level stakes return idea. Unfortunately, I don’t keep as detailed records as this and I don’t want to spend time going through historical races trying to find out what would have happened. As I said to Keith above, I don’t want to get into gambling if I can trade as I don’t have the necessary capital.

In the past, I’ve tracked level stakes returns and returns from staking 1 point to 3 points on selections that I fancy. I know I can make a decent return but I don’t have enough of an incentive to dedicate my time to reading form. I have a full-time job and this sort of thing takes too much time.

Mark, lol, nice analogy! I just need to find a way to use my knowledge to put me ahead of the game. Last month, the game beat me....

Andrew, my thoughts on Keith are outlined above. My conclusion is that he mostly talks bullshit right enough!

Nick, thanks for the comment. As you say, my strength is picking winners but I don’t like losing runs, so gambling is out. As you say, I use trading as a way of hedging and maybe this should be my long term strategy. I’m not sure yet.

Your comment about traders knowing nothing about form is what I need to exploit. They push up prices of horses in every race that start to drift and on Betfair, they just keep going! I need to be patient as I know I can exploit this but I’ve just not found the correct way yet. I will though…..

Alistair, thanks for a great comment. I agree about Keith and after studying his comment, he just annoys me!

I agree that understanding which horses are likely to run well isn’t helping my trading much but I should be gambling more on these horses. I shouldn’t be trading huge drifters that reach crazy prices. If I think a horse is 20 when it should be 10, I should put £10 win at 20. I should not have £50 on at 10 and then end up with £400 on when it gets to 20 as I’m in too deep then and can’t get out!

Your hedging idea sounds like a great idea and I’m coming around to that way of thinking myself for certain races and certain horses.

Anonymous, great comment and agree with it 100%!

Stan, nice easy thought provoking questions to answer…NOT! I’m going to save these 3 questions for my next post!

Overall, thanks for all the advice and suggestions and my mind is already starting to work overtime about where I should go from here. I’ll use my next coupe of posts to try to get things clear in my head….