Very humbled!

As I had planned and said previously, I had a weekend’s break from trading and it felt very good. I wasn’t even on the computer all weekend which is unusual for me but I felt I needed a break from Betfair and from reading blogs!

Amazingly, I checked my blog this morning at work to see if there were any new comments and I’m absolutely speechless. I had read a few comments on Friday night that had been posted up but after reading through all of the comments there now, I do feel quite humbled.

I can’t believe that so many readers have given up some of their personal time to write such detailed comments to help me out and I really am speechless.

Some of the support, advice and encouragement I’ve had on here over the past few months has been amazing and it really makes having a blog worthwhile to say the least.

Even though I wasn’t trading at the weekend, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about the past month and how it went. Generally, I’m disappointed with myself and the lack of discipline I showed, particularly last week when I had taken some time off work to trade. What the hell I was doing last week, God only knows. I should be grateful that I didn’t lose anymore than I did and I fear even that’s down to luck and not skill.

I think it was Steve who commented on the fact that having my full trading bank on a horse to win in the first race of the day smacks of desperation. Being honest, it smacks of being a bloody fool and if Betfair had crashed, I would have been in a far worse position than I am now. Thankfully, that didn’t happen but I shouldn’t have ever got in that position.

So, what happens next?

Well, I’m not planning on doing anything on Betfair until Saturday now, so I have a week to get my head straightened out and to pin down exactly what my trading strategy is and how I will employ it. Some of the comments have given me some more things to think about and I want to do a few posts this week discussing a few of the points raised.

I’ll do a post with a review of this month and how much I lost and when! One thing that I always felt this month was that I was always chasing lost money all the time I traded and I’m sure my P&L graph for the month will show this. I’m sure that was eating away at me all the time and I probably let it get to me too much last week and it resulted in what happened last week when I appeared to lose the plot somewhat!

Once I’ve done my monthly review, I’ll respond to every comment on the last post and try to pick out a few common themes a few of you have picked up on. e.g. trading v gambling, attitude to losing etc. I’ll then do a post bringing together my views and hopefully that will help me get things clear in my head.

Thanks again for the comments and it's great to see that there are so many nice people out there willing to offer good advice and I'm glad some of you enjoy reading the blog so much. As Andrew has told me on more than occassion, my blog would be boring if I won everyday!