Monday, 11th May

Starting bank: €1000 (beginning of May 2010)
Target for end May: €1050
Today’s opening bank: €1028.93
Today’s closing bank: €1043.45
Today’s turnover: €25,962.97

A pretty good day today with a profit of €14.52

I did commit one venial sin however, and let a race go in-running. I just didn’t fancy the horse and layed it with with a view backing out at a higher price. I think this is the problem when you are a horse racing fan. The traders out there that don’t know anything about racing have an advantage in some ways as they don’t get that overwhelming need to click pink about a horse that is underpriced.

Another thing I’ll have to thing about is making red books. In the past, I normally levelled the profit or loss on the trade. Recently, I’ve been greening up a good trade but taking a chance on the bad trades that the particular horse won’t win (if it loses, the book is settled at zero). In this way, most of the bad trades will be settled at zero but the horses that do go on to win will cost a fair whack. Perhaps I should just level up the book regardless? I dunno – I guess these things level out in the end.

I’m well on target for the month although it’s clear that I have one or two discipline issues that need checking again.

Good points for today:

* a decent profit was made
* I kept (most) of most of my stop losses – I moved one or two when it made sense (just outside a previous resistance point for example)
* I ignored any markets I couldn’t get my head around instead of looking for some action for the sake of it

Bad points for today:

* I brought my opinion on a horse’s chance into my trading. Although the trade went well, it could have wiped out the day’s profit
* I made one or two minor mistakes (forgot to click certain buttons etc). I have a check list for things I need to do when I set my software up for the day but I ignored it. It only cost me a couple of pence but it could have been worse


Without being too philosophical about the whole thing, trading makes you learn more about yourself and your personality. I’m finding it difficult to stick to certain rules and I’m surprised and disappointed about that as I always considered myself very disciplined. It’s weird because you sometimes find little quirks in yourself that you didn’t know were there. On the upside, I don’t mind my own company and I don’t seem to get as lonely/bored cooked up in a room all day as I did in the past. I mess around on the Interweb and do little bits of work in-between races I’m not trading.

I do get quite tired however and won’t trade the evening races. My eyes are sore from staring at the screen all day. Besides, I’ve a webinar with a financials company at 6pm as I’m trying to learn about trading stocks and shares (mainly to see if the principles can be applied to the exchanges).
Below are today’s profit and a graph showing the projected/actual profit for the month.