Monday

Only got home from work around six so by the time I helped my daughter do her homework (she's in an all-Irish school and my wife's not Irish so I usually help her with the homework) and have dinner, it was near seven o clock so I only got to trade for an hour or so - there was only one Irish meeting on anyway so it wasn't too hectic.

Sometimes I'm wary when there's only one meeting on - am I mostly pitting my wits against other traders? If there's not many causal punters out there, sometimes that can be the case. The volumes were a bit more than usual for a small Irish meeting so I'm guessing that there were a fair few traders providing liquidity. That can be hard sometimes as were are all trying to get one up on each other and there's not much general 'punter' money floating around for the taking.

Still, I'm happy with a profit of just over a score on the three races that I did actually trade. Once again, I was using my new strategy and it's still going well thankfully. Actually, from here on in, I think I'll call it 'momentum' trading, just for simplicity. It goes with the flow, so that's as good a name as any.

New strategy working well

I decided to set aside €500 today and test my new strategy again for the day. I done 23 markets and I'm very pleased with the profit of €73.95.  That's an excellent return on the €500 I was using to test and I'm getting more confident that it works. I still need to do some more testing but if it continues to do well, I can start using bigger sums than the €500 test bank.

It's funny because up until now, I was always a scalper and took a tick or two here and there when I could - but this is more of a swing trade strategy and I'm enjoying the new experience.

A few people emailed me asking how it works. As I said to them, it's under test - so I'm NOT SUGGESTING IT WILL BE PROFITABLE in the future - I could be just lucky.  But with those health warnings in place, I can briefly describe what I've been upto.

The idea is that when a horse starts steaming or drifting, people often underestimate how low or high the price can go. So you wait until there is some momentum behind a move, and then simply go with it. It aint rocket science, it's just simply the old 'trend is your friend' principle.

How do you decide when to jump on? Well, at the moment, I'm using a price move of 5 percent as a guide. I may change this in the future but that's what I've been testing.

So then, if a horse is priced 6.0 for example, I simply wait until the price either comes in, or drifts, by five percent.  If the price moves down to 5.7, that's a five percent move. Likewise, if the horse drifts out to 6.3, that's a five percent move.

So let's say it hits 5.7, I then back it and hope the trend continues. At the moment, I'm using a stop loss of the original price - in this case, the stop would be 6.0.

In case you all think I'm amazing at maths and can quickly work out the percentages of a number of horses in an instant, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed!  I've set up a spreadsheet to help me out. This is where having two screens on my computer (pictured below) can really help. Firstly, I get Betting Assistant to display the live prices in the spreadsheet. At any given time, I copy and paste a list of the 'last prices matched' into a column which works out what a 5 percent price move on each horse would equate to.

This spreadsheet is on my screen on the right, and my Betting Assistant trading window is open on my left screen. I have the spreadsheet to change colour when the price has moved on a horse by 5 percent. It goes blue to alert me to back, or pink to alert me to lay.

At the moment, I'm only trading the top two in the betting - I may try more later on.

Anyway, that's about it really - I only had one race go really bad today costing me over fifty quid but the good news is that I could have redded up in that case for €11. Instead, I didn't and let it stand but the horse won. So the results should actually be a good deal better than the 74 quid or so earned.

I've finished up for the day as I want to enjoy the evening - The Munster/Leinster match is on - then the Barca/United match - and then I'm out with the missus for a meal. What's more, she got a voucher for the meal from some friends so I won't have to spend a penny.   :-)

Don't think I'll get to trade tomorrow as I've a shit load of stuff to do in the garden - including cutting hedges. Sigh!

meh...

Traded the evening races and while I should be happy to have made over €28, it was hard earned and the markets seemed tough tonight.

It wasn't a waste of time but it's minimum wage money when you work it out by the hour so I aint overjoyed either. All that said, it's better than losing and when I combine it with the silver commodity trades mentioned earlier, I managed to pull in a couple of ton which isn't a bad days work I suppose.

I should be a bit happier but I guess I still have last week's big loss on my mind somewhat and I'm sure I'll feel better when that has been recovered.

Gotta be careful not to get into 'chase your losses' mode though.

Tonight's Betfair P&L:

That was quick

Well, silver took a nice jump since yesterday - around $2 in total :-)

It was partly due to the likes of Goldman Sachs and others giving upbeat reports about commodities and I hit my get out point quick enough this afternoon. That was a nice easy trade it must be said!

I sold it in three stages netting a total profit of €171.71 but I've held on to a small portion of it just so I'm not kicking myself if it keeps going higher. The amount I'm holding is currently in profit of €57.75 - but I've set a stop loss at $36 so I'm certain to make something no-matter what happens. It's not always this easy of course but as the A-Team used to say, "I love it when a plan comes together".

I've a few hours to spare this evening so I'm going to see if I can get a chance to trade some racing - although I'm going to play it cautious tonight and only bet when I'm absolutely confident. No fecking around like the last day. 

Today's silver trades:

Silver: As good as gold?

Bought some silver today at $35.77 per ounce and it has proved useful so far with my trade now in profit to the tune of €164.

Fair enough - it’s not a hell of a lot of money but I’m glad to be showing a profit on silver as I want to diversify a little and not rely so much on gold and oil. 


I’ve played around with pennies with silver before and generally made it pay so hopefully it will be a commodity that has been as good to me as gold has! The initial stake was only a couple of quid so with some leverage, it was good to get it up. 

I’m slightly bullish on silver at the moment but not overly opinionated. I think it will go forward a little more but I’m happy to sell most of it if it hits around $37.50 and keep a small amount in stock case it rockets. It did hit a whopping $48 per ounce last month so who knows where it will go. After it hit those highs, it quickly collapsed and apparently, one investor sold at least 1000 tonnes during that fall.  Serious stuff that and makes my couple of hundred euro look paltry – but hey, you gotta start somewhere and I’m still in learning mode on this metal. 

If you ask me, people are getting a little worried about European debt again - hence the rise in gold and silver. As I say, I’m not certain it will continue, who knows what big story will be next to change everything again – but if I can ride the wave for even a dollar or two price move and bag a couple of ton for myself, I’ll be happy enough. 

The missus won’t be too happy about this - but since I’ve been trading precious metals, I’ve become very, very reluctant to buy gold and silver (jewellery) in the shops as I know the real value behind the product! 

The mark-ups are shocking considering the impurity of most of the stuff on sale. Yes, I know it has to be refined, shaped, shipped and the shopkeeper needs a cut – but still and all, the prices seem pretty damn high in comparison to an ounce of the pure product. 

As for those gangsters that have set up shops around town buying gold for shocking prices off people that don’t know any better… .Well, all I’ll say is that it is daylight robbery off ordinary people that probably found themselves in a hole financially. 

These ‘We Buy Gold’ shops seem to be everywhere so they must be doing business. I suppose there’s no real problem if a person wants to sell some jewellery they no longer need but I’ve heard stories of people selling engagement rings etc out of desperation during this recession. I find that a little sad. 

I’ve also heard that they are after the stones in the rings too – and don’t always price them in when you sell. So be careful if you want to do business with them.

Then again, if there’s a market for what they do, I guess they are entitled to be there and trade their services, even if people are losing out in real terms. There might be a winner and a loser in these deals, but both parites agree as adults to the deal so there's nothing illegal about it. 

Even though I don’t like these shops, I’m not one to pass judgement really as for every successful trade I make, someone has to lose money so am I any different? And do you think I give a rats arse about the loser(s) at the end my winning trades? Not really. 

Why should I? Nobody gives a shit when I lose, to be perfectly honest (and that includes you readers!). 

That’s the murky world of capitalism for ya...

Reasonable profit, but my discipline slipped.

 Had a fairly good day today with a profit of over €80. Don't think I'll bother with any more evening stuff as I want to spend a bit of time with my daughter before she goes off to bed. 

I must admit that I was a bold boy on one race and let it go in-running rather than redding up for a loss. I was pissed off with myself for doing this as I had a big liability and even though I know it's wrong, there are times when you just become paralyzed and won't get out of your position. Sometimes it becomes ridiculous the positions we hold on to just hoping the price will come back.

As the potential loss was getting near 80 quid, I shook myself out of it and clicked the button to get out. Lucky for me, by the time the bet was fired in, the price had moved back in my direction and I only lost €27.28 on that race. What the fook was I thinking though?   Sometimes I surprise myself at such recklessness.

Other than that, it was a reasonably OK day today and I used a mixture of strategies to trade. It wasn't the easiest somehow and I got the sense that there were a few feckers with very big banks manipulating the markets somewhat. Sometimes this works in your favour, other times it doesn't - but it's a bit annoying to see 'fake' big orders getting pushed in then pulled out, especially on the quieter Irish races.

While the monetary profit today was good, I'm not entirely satisfied with myself today - I was a bit too nonchalant and wasn't as strict as I should have been. In truth, I probably over-traded a good bit today just looking for some action as I won't get a chance to trade over the weekend much.

I got away with it today but deep down, I know I should respect my bank a bit more.

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!