Form study, trading books, inplay trades

FORM STUDY

Well, I've hit 200 bets on the form study thingy I've been doing and it can be pretty much summed up in two lines:

First 100 bets = bloody amazing
Second 100 bets = bloody woeful

Perhaps I went through a really good spell and then a really bad one - but normally the good and bad bets are peppered more randomly throughout. The only thing to do is continue on for another 100 bets before I analyse the data as it seems a bit skewed. Where does that leave me?  In a much worse position than I was before Christmas. Here's where I'm at now:

Bets: 200
Wins: 94
Strike Rate: 47%
ROI: 3.32%
Average BSP: 2.95
Longest sequence of wins: 7
Longest sequence of losers: 6
Profit to €10 stake at Betfair SP (assuming commission is 5%): €66.70

As I say, it's a big letdown to see the profit dwindle down to six or seven points (having been five times that at one stage) but I'll keep plugging away. As luck would have it, I started proofing these just as the downside hit. Typical!  Anyway, we'll see what is around the corner, especially with the flat season starting in a couple of months. 

TRADING BOOKS

Just finished Trading in the Zone
 by Mark Douglas . I found it excellent. Those looking for strategies or systems will be disappointed as it's based purely on the mental side of trading. It does an excellent job at explaining why we fear trades, why we hold our losses, why we try to avoid pain (often by chasing/doubling up etc) and why we need to believe that any outcome is possible with a particular trade. While these things might seem obvious, it has cleared up a lot in my own brain and I've applied some of the principles to another area in my life where I was having some worries. I won't go into that here but all in all, an excellent book if you are willing to accept some of his unusual concepts.

I'm about to start reading Stop Orders: A practical guide to using stop orders for traders and investors
by Tony Loton.  I'm not quite sure how I stumbled across this one, and a book about stop losses seems a little bizarre - but it's got eleven 5 star reviews on amazon so it's got to be worth a look. I know some of those reviews can be dodgy but I'm a bit intrigued by this one so I'll have a read over the next few weeks. 

INPLAY TRADES

An odd day yesterday with some non-runners and I ended up with a couple of points loss. It's still well up after 116 bets which is excellent although I don't want to count my chickens as we've seen what happened to the form study.  I've been in touch with Mark from Gruss (Betting Assistant) to see if I can automate it with a spreadsheet. At the moment, you can only automate it to green up the book but I want to lay with double the back stake instead. It might be possible to automate it with the help of excel and if so it would be excellent as I can't always be around the PC each day. 

I've a few for today - best of luck with your trading/betting today:

External sites:

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