Hope I'm onto something

I've been trying out my new strategy again and it's working quite well - I think I could be onto something. As mentioned before, it basically tries to recognise horses that are being backed or layed and then goes with the flow. So when the price moves in either direction by a certain percent, it them becomes a back or lay. It doesn't always work but it's alerted me to some big swings which usually make up for the small losses (I have a fairly tight stop loss).

The main problem was trying to keep an eye on all the prices and trying to work out how much they have moved by so I automated it in a spreadsheet today.

Basically, the spreadsheet links in with Betfair through Betting Assistant and the live prices are displayed in the spreadsheet. I've set the spreadsheet up to alert me to back or lay by turning blue or pink once the market has changed. I'm getting better with excel and this is proving very handy!

Productive weekend

I wasn't trading over the weekend - I went away to Oslo with herself for the weekend. Had a great time although it's damn expensive over there!  It worked out at €11 for a pint - thank God for the duty free on the way over. It's a lovely city though - very clean and I found the people there very nice.

Being away, I got plenty of time to think about trading and do some reading. I was thinking more about Friday's big loss: I don't actually feel that there's anything wrong with my strategies, having reflected on it, I still reckon it was 'just one of those days'.

Still though, I figured that it wouldn't hurt to have a few new strategies (I'm mainly using the same 3 or 4 strategies to place my trades) in the armoury. So I came up with a 'momentum' based strategy which roughly mimics a strategy given by Richard Farleigh in Taming The Lion.

I've adapted it for the sports markets but it work on the 'trend is your friend' principle. Without going into too much detail, once the market moves a certain % amount, it's time to buy or sell (or in my case, back or lay). It's fairly simple and aims to go with the flow - I've set it up with stops etc and the good news is that it worked well today and a profit of €44 was shown using this strategy. I only lost in one out of 14 markets and caught some lovely swings along the way. The stakes were not too big so this gives me some encouragement, although it's very early days so I ain't counting any chickens.

Still though, it's good to get time to reflect after a big loss and rethink some strategies and come up with new ideas. I think the break did me good.

I've two pictures below - one is today's p&l and the other is me in Oslo standing beside the famous 'The Scream' painting:

Oh dear...

What an absolutely horrible day. I hadn't traded on Betfair in a while so I felt a little rusty but I'd thought I'd give a few markets a go regardless.

I started off by letting a race go in-running by accident and lost €275.  I think I should have just stopped there as my mind wasn't on it but I managed to earn a couple of bob before I had to go out for a few hours.

I came home and turned on the computer to trade some evening stuff - bad idea. I just don't know what went wrong - I was all over the place and every trade I placed seemed to go wrong. I should have really quit as I wasn't thinking straight as a loss of 96, then 144, then 88 went in.

I changed tack and tried to trade a few short ones in the place market but that just went arseways aswell! There wasn't enough money to get out of some trades when the races were close to the off and that left me screwed!

All in all, a horrible day and I'm quitting for the evening before more damage is done. Can't quite put my finger on what went wrong but I just wasn't with it today. You have to take the bad with the good I suppose but today was particularly bad.  Such is life.

Self praise

My wife always tells me that 'self praise is no praise' but I'm pretty pleased with myself with my latest two gold trades.

I've often beat myself up on these pages when things go bad so sometimes it's important to pat oneself on the back for a job well done.

Don't get me wrong, I only made just under €60 in total, not a big amount - but I stuck to my plans and stops and it worked out.

I was tracking the price of gold today and moving my stop upwards as the price moved up. Generally, I was keeping the stop about $7 behind the market. When it hit $1522, I put the stop at $1514.90 and left it be as I had stuff to do.

The price came down and my order was matched -  I briefly kicked myself as I had considered selling at $1522 - but you can never expect to catch the top of the market to be honest and as the price dropped down again to the $1500 mark, I realised that it was a very good trade after all.

When I first started trading, I'd be obsessed with catching the top or bottom of the market but this is folly of the highest order. Once you realise that there is money to be made in-between, you stop getting so worked up about it. You can't really expect to bet at the 'right' prices (the top and bottom) all the time - indeed, I remember reading a good quote from a trader who said he had made his fortune betting at the 'wrong' prices.

I'm no longer obsessed with catching the top and bottom and it's refreshing when you release yourself from it.

As I say, it's not a huge amount of money but it was one of those trades where I had a get out price, I had an opinion, I had a plan and I had a bit of bottle when the price went bad - so I'm quite pleased with it. 

Speaking of fortunes, I'm going to need a small one this weekend as I'm off to Oslo with herself. We'll be leaving on Saturday morning - it's meant to be a great city but apparently, it's the most expensive city in the world!  It's about ten euro for a pint so I'll definitely be stocking up in the duty free on the way over!



This week's closed trades:

Trailing stop

I've decided to put a trailing stop on that gold trade - well, it's not an automaitc trailing stop, I'm more or less doing it manually as I'm checking the market quite often. At the moment, the trade is worth nearly €50 with the gold trading at $1515 so I've set the stop at $1509 which will ensure a reasonable return.

I know it's not a huge amount but pennies make pounds and pounds make scores, and it all adds up. I don't have a strong opinion on how gold will go over the next few days so I'm glad to just sit it out with the stop in place. Hopefully it goes up though!

I've recently moved some cash from my Betfair accounts to some non-sports trading accounts but I'm still a little nervous about this and will take it slowly. 

Open trade on marketspreads:

Not so bad timing

It's funny the difference a couple of days can make on the markets. The other day, I wondered if I'd got in at a bad time on gold as it lost a big amount on Thursday.

However, it recovered today and is back up around $1512 .

I said to the wife last night that I had a feeling that the markets would open positive on gold and I was happy about it - there was a fair bit going on over the weekend to push the prices up.

As mentioned, I had two open trades - I sold out on the first one, the $1503 bet. I saw the price hit $1508 or thereabouts and got out for a profit of 12 quid.

The second one, the one I bought for $1491 remains open and is currently in profit of 40 quid or so

I've set a stop loss around $1499 just to be sure I can't lose now. The higher it goes, the better now.

Fair enough, it's not an earth shattering amount of money but I'm still very pleased as on Thursday, those two trades were nearly €140 in the red - so it's a nice swing to see some profit on that now.

My open trade:

Bad timing?

Well, I got involved with gold again when it dropped to €1503. I figured it might bounce off the $1500 mark but boy was I wrong! It collapsed through and I thought it would bottom out around $1490 so I bought some more. 

Wrong again!

As I type this, it currently trades around $1470  - however, I’m not too concerned just yet.

While commodities in general had their biggest drop since 2009, I’m still happy enough with gold and the overall direction it is going and I’m not going to panic for the time being. Besides, I only bought a small amount – just 50c and 30c so at the moment, I’m around €135 in the red.

I’ll probably set a stop loss soon but I’m happy to hold out on this and I reckon we’ll be back up above $1500 once the panic selling stops and some other news story gives reason for people to buy.

Could be wrong though – watch this space!

Today’s trades, which are currently in the red: