Progress

Win over last 2 days


First the update for yesterday a very good win and to be honest going into the day's trading I was expecting this. Late on the 26th I was reading the Experiment another trading blog. Let me briefly say without the following 4 blogs I would have given up a long time before this as they were proof to me that this could be done and the whole thing wasn't just a waste of time. These blogs to me are gold when it comes to learning about trading. Better than ebay ebooks and training courses in my opinion. In fact if these blogs had been published as betting diaries or ebay for dummies I would happily have paid £20 each. You need to read the whole blogs to find gems but believe me there are many. I have picked up at least two solid trading ideas from all of them and they are all free

http://thebetfairtrader.blogspot.com/
http://dontgiveupyourjob.blogspot.com/
http://betyourlife.blogspot.com/
http://www.betangel.com/blog/

Anyway I was reading the experiment, I normally download blogs to a text file and read on the train into work or at home, and something struck me. It also struck me that this same principle was applied by all the other blog authors and even on the Peter Webb bet angel videos. I had read/seen all this before but it had never registered. It was a real light bulb moment and I was pretty sure this last little trick would move me from break even to profits.

One thing I had always struggled with was how come these guys had so few losses usually less than 20% of trades while for me it was more like 50/50 ? The answer - They always asked for a price and never took what was available in the market. I almost couldn't sleep and I sat up and redrafted all my strategies. I already knew 9 times out of 10 I could tell which way the market was going yet I was still losing 50% of my trades. So what would it mean if I asked for a price instead of taking what was available. The reason I often did this was my indicators would be screaming DRIFT and I wouldn't want to miss the move. So I rejigged all my systems to test this.

I knew this would mean I would be frustrated a lot as I would miss a lot of good trades. This would also mean I would spend a lot of time without being able to trade and I would need to be super patient.

Anyway how did things pan out. I brought back a system we will call E that I put on the back burner for some time

So the systems were
A - Swing, 1 bet won, 3 break even
B - Breakout, 2 losses
E - Trend pull back, 7 bets no loss
C- Laying system

I also try to only identify horses to lay as I feel there is more potential here. Not tested in any way just a feeling I have.

Not bad at all

Unfortunately 28 dec was not so good

All bets were system E won 4 lost 4 although I was 0-2 down and 2-4 down so won't complain

I am just going to put today down to just bad luck and keep systems the way they are. I have managed to overcome a lot of my emotional demons but one I am still struggling with is letting my profits run. I am actually slightly down in terms of £ today as i took a couple of 1 tick profits where patience would have got 3. Luckily 2 of my losses were at 2 ticks instead of 3.

3 of my losses came from Catterick but I don't know what to make of this except in the first two the liquidity was really low and I don't like the volatilty this causes. In fact on those 2 with wider stops I would have made money but the number 1 principle, the cornerstone of my betting and the reason why I have survived about 3 years is i always keep my losses as small as possible.

I am going to take an enforced break now as I go back to work tomorrow. There are a couple of fixes i need to do to my spreadsheet so will do that and also keep blog updated as I will still identify possible lays and if i find an place bet on my XDA

I may take a look at the dogs tonight for the first time just watching no bets