The Sports Trader

Friday 19th September 2008

This was a very quite day or trading for the Sports Trader. I only traded on 11 horse races and 1 golf tournament.

My first 8 race trades resulted in 7 small profits and 1 small loss. Then in the 17:20 at Listowel I backed Baltiman for £943 @ 1.11, when well clear and approaching the final fence, to result in a profit of £104. I followed this with another small winning trade and then my final trade came in the 20:20 at Wolverhampton where I laid Girl of Pangaea for £78 @ 15.5, when coming under pressure with no response, about 2 furlongs from the finish  to give me a profit of £78.

So my race trading had finished with a profit of £194.

Late in the evening I watched the Ryder Cup and had a very small trade on the Mickelson/Kim v Harrington/McDowell game where I finished with a profit of £6.

So I had finished this day with a profit of £200.

Thursday 18th September 2008

It was a much better day for The Sports Trader. I traded 10 horse races, 1 football match and 1 snooker game, but I had no child care again as our au-pair was off ill.

I started the day with a couple of small winning trades at Listowel and Ayr. My first significant trade was in the 14:25 at Listowel where I backed Holly Trade for £888 @ 1.08 to return a profit of £72. After a break when picking the children up from school I laid Kahuna for £25 @ 25.0 in the 15:55 at Listowel to result in a profit of £25. I followed this with a small winning trade.

My next trade was in the 16:30 at Pontefract where I laid Tribe for £39 @ 20 to give me a profit of £39. I followed this with 4 more small winning trades.

My race trading had finished with a profit of £158.

As soon as the racing had finished I turned my attention to the Tottenham v Wisla Krakow football match. The match was well into the second half and I backed the under 2.5 goals for £98 @ 2.30 and a further £57 @ 2.21. I had just entered some lays on The Daq when the third goal was scored, which left me with a loss of £155,  so I was on a recovery mission using the under 3.5 goals market where I backed the unders for £320 @ 1.60 and laid off between 1.36 and 1.04 which left me with a profit of £150 on the under 3.5 goals market. So my football trading had resulted in a loss of £5.

In the late evening I watched the Premier League snooker match between Ronnie O Sullivan and Joe Perry. Joe had got into a 2 frame lead when I backed him for £374 @ 1.42 and laid off @ 1.32. With Ronnie clawing his way back to 3 -2 down and looking good to secure a draw there were some very tasty prices on offer and it made for a great match to trade. I later backed Perry for £400 @ 2.25 and £242 @ 2.00 before laying this off @ 1.4 to 1.54. then with Perry taking the match ball I backed him again for £500 @ 1.41 to leave myself with a profit of £630 on the match. A great and very satisfying result, it is always good to trade in matches with Ronnie being behind as most people think he will make yet another great escape.

My day had therefore finished with a profit of £782.

 

Wednesday 17th September 2008

The Sports Trader had a bad day today and it was caused through a momentary lack of concentration, will I ever learn. I only traded on 5 horse races. One small loss, three small gains and one big loss.

The loss came as I was trading on the 14:35 at Beverley. My son Oliver had come to see me for a while and we were deep in conversation about family matters when I saw the chance of backing what I thought was Spiritofthewest so I duly clicked the mouse and backed for £555 @ 1.35, when in fact I had got the colours wrong and had backed the favourite, Kingship Spirit. An easy way to lose £555. It was, of course, totally my own fault I should have been concentrating 100% which is imperative when trading in-running horse races. I should say another lesson learnt but in reality this type of thing is bound to happen on occasions.

Later in the day I traded the match result on the Celtic v AaB football match. I only caught the last 10 minutes of the match but I did manage to back the draw for £882 @ 1.45 and then proceeded to lay off at prices ranging from 1.39 down to 1.22 to leave me with a profit of £163.

My day had ended with a loss of £390.

Tuesday 16th September 2008

It has been another very short trading day for the Sports Trader due to visitors, the school run and then more visitors.

I only traded 4 horse races with 3 resulting in small profits. The best trade of the day was in the 15:50 at Lingfield where I managed to back Cool Art for £941 @ 1.50, well inside the final furlong, to result in a profit in the race of £470.

I missed all the evening football trading, again due to visitors, so I ended the day with a profit of £476.

Earlier today one of my readers, Carolyn,  left a comment which included a very good youtube clip, relating to the new Premium Charges over at Betfair Towers, it's well worth a look.

Monday 15th September 2008

As Bob Geldolf once sang, I don't like Monday's. This is the most difficult day for me to trade as I now have no child care on Monday's. We have also recently moved house but the children all go to the same school as before so I have to leave home at 2:55 to pick them up and by the time I get back it is around 3:35 and this is all five week day's. I also interviewed a young Brazilian lady for my new live-in Au-pair job. Once the Au-pair is in place I will have cover most days and will not have to miss an important time of the day for trading on horse races.

I therefore only managed to trade on 4 horse races, which, after a loss of £40 on my first trade left me with a profit of £10.

In the evening I traded in the last 10 minutes of the Spurs v Aston Villa football match which resulted in a profit of £44.

My day had finished with a profit of £54.

Another good piece of news filtering out of Betdaq today is that their Exchange Forum should be up and running within the next few days.

I Predict a U-Turn on the Betfair Premium Charges

This is probably the biggest story about Betting Exchanges since their inception 8 years ago. I do have to sympathise with the 0.5% (who do they think they are kidding) of Betfair customers that are to be hit with retrospective charges on the profits they have earned over the past 60 weeks.

Of course Betfair will either water down or drop these outrageous charges over the next few days. The accountants may well have a say but to let them ruin what has been a brilliant business with an act of total greed would be sheer folly.

It is great to see so many new people jumping aboard the Betdaq Exchange. I have often spoken about the need for realistic competition in these markets and now we are going to see it. Liquidity has been improving over the past few months but is now set to reach levels that no amount of advertising by the Board of Directors at Betdaq would have been able to attain.

Betdaq will give, to anybody opening a new account, a fixed 2% commission until the end of this year. From January you will then enjoy the much fairer commission scale of between 2 and 5% depending on your level of turnover. There will be no Premium Charges.

The whole ethos of a Betting Exchange is to provide a piece of software and technology that allows people to match wagers with each other, in the same way as the Stock Market allows individuals, traders and companies to match share sales and purchases. 

It is accepted practise that the bigger the trade and the higher the turnover the lower the commission rate should be. This is essentially because the exchange platform is there right from the start but as the exchange grows you get greater efficiency due to economies of scale. It is therefore quite right that the more liquidity you provide the lower you should be charged.

To alienate many of the longer term traders, by penalising them for being good at their job,  is surely flying in the face of the whole principle of Betting Exchanges.

On Betfairs own forum tonight there has been a thread by, CLYDEBANK29, that highlights the case where he may well now be paying four times as much commission on a wager struck under the old terms and conditions. Some relevant parts of the said T&C's have also been pasted on to the thread with the most relevant part being: Any bets matched prior to the time of amendment and notification of the changed terms and conditions will be subject to the pre-existing Terms and Conditions.

It would be interesting to hear the views of Warren Buffet or George Soros if their preferred Stock Market was to say to them ' Thank you for your business over the past 60 weeks, but we have decided to charge you between 4 and 10 times the amount of commission that we have already charged you as a Premium Charge because your account costs us more to operate than our smaller customers accounts'.

 

Alive and Kicking

The Sports Trader is back and I intend, once again, to give a short summary of my days trading and promote a little discussion on anything that is connected to Sports Trading.

I thank all the loyal readers that have kept in touch over the past 9 months since my last blog entry.

I have continued trading on Betdaq throughout this period of silence and have seen steady profits. I started the year off very slowly due to my problems that I have written about earlier within my blog. These profits have been steadily growing over the past few months. My trading style has changed and you will see that I conduct fewer trades / day.

If any reader would like to discuss a particular subject please just add a comment on my blog and I will try to include your suggestions over the coming days.

New Blog Address

The address for this blog is now http://thesportstrader.typepad.co.uk/the_sports_trader/ I do intend to resurrect the blog soon and look forward to keeping in touch with so many great readers.

Merry Christmas

The Sports Trader would just like to wish a Very Merry Christmas to all readers and fellow traders. I hope you all get what you have asked for at Christmas and the very best of luck with your trading in the future.

Whilst on here I will just update my trading results for the last two weeks.

Week Ending 16th December 2007 -  This proved to be a very tough week of trading for me and I had to miss quite a lot of trading due to family commitments. I did still end the week with a profit of £539.

Week Ending 23rd December 2007 - A much better week of trading but again many missed trading opportunities due to my children's busy social commitments for the festive period. I finished the week with a profit of £1206.

As many of you know I do trade on the under 2.5 goals market quite heavily. I have over the past two weeks been looking at trading this market in a different way, which, to date, has been giving some very good results. I will continue using small stakes with this method and if the results continue to be consistent I will raise stakes and detail the method on my blog. I will also look to totally automate this method of trading, but to do this I will need the help of one of the many Bot experts that are around.  

Sunday 9th December 2007

The Sports Trader has had another good week after a slow start. I have not been as busy outside of my trading which has left me feeling much more relaxed through the week. Even though I have not been updating my blog every day it is good to see that the number of readers is still strong and I am answering around 30 emails a week from readers with questions about why and how I trade and about my IT set up.

Monday 3rd December  - I started the week off with 7 race trades and 2 under 2.5 goal football trades with no losses. Most of my profits came from the football trading. I ended the day with a profit of £70.

Tuesday 4th December  - This was one of my quietest days of trading for a while. I only traded on 7 horse races and 1 football match and again most of my days £43 profit came from the football.

Wednesday 5th December -  A much more interesting day of trading with some good National Hunt racing. I traded on 1 cricket match, 12 horse races and 1 football match. I started the day off in the morning on the Sri Lanka v England Test match. The match was coming to an end and as England lost their 7th wicket I laid the draw for £211 @ 2.10. I then backed the draw for £56 @ 4.00 and to cancel out my liability  and partially green up, I laid Sri Lanka for £110 @ 1.39 to leave myself a profit of £114.

My horse race trading had been profitable right up until my last trade in the 20:40 at Dundalk. I was trading on the Newcastle v Arsenal match and switched to the Dundalk race when the race was in the final furlong. I had not had time to study the Jockeys colours and made the stupid mistake of trusting the race commentator and ended up backing Strike An Ark for £300 as I thought the horse crossed the line only to find out a few seconds later that the commentator had got the horses mixed up which cost me £300. I do not blame the commentator, it is was my own fault for not checking the colours.

In the football match I traded quite heavily on the under 2.5 goals and managed to finish the match with an all green £210 which brought my day to a close with a profit of £82.

Thursday 6th December - I had a meeting in the morning with my accountant which took longer than I had planned so I missed the early races. I ended up trading on 7 horse races and 1 football match, with no losing trades. Once again football trading provided me with most of my £126 profit on the day. I traded on the Anderlecht v Spurs game along with my son, Oliver. We started with a back of the unders pre kick off and gradually laid off through the first half. We both had an all green position by about the 35th minute, with my son managing a little over 3% gain on his bank and I made £70.

Friday 7th December - A day where I traded on 9 horse races and 1 football match, with no losing trades. The football match that I traded on was between Borussia Dortmund and Arminia Bielefeld, all the pre match predictions were for plenty of goals so the price on the under 2.5 goals was very high. I backed the unders for £200 @ 3.25 and laid all off between 2.87 and 2.60 to leave me with a small profit on the overs and a potential profit of £50 on the unders before the goal feast came. The match finished at 6 -1 so I finished with a small profit to add to my race trading profits which left me with a profit of £52 on the day.

Saturday 8th December - I traded on 14 horse races and 3 football matches with just 1 very small loss on a horse race. My day finished with a profit of £231.

Sunday 9th December - This proved to be the best day's trading of the week for me. I traded on 11 horse races and 2 football matches with no losing trades. My horse racing resulted in a profit of £424 and I made £136 on the football trades to leave me with a profit on the day of £560.

My week finished with a total profit of £1164.

Sunday 2nd December 2007

It has been another very busy week for the Sports Trader, not only on the trading front but also personally as on Friday my eldest daughter, Jenny,  got the keys to her new flat and moved in over the weekend. Below is a summary of the weeks trading.

Monday 26th November - It was a good start to the week with 15 horse races and 1 football match traded and only 1 losing trade. I ended up with a profit of £80 on the racing and £83 on the football to result in a profit of £163 on the day.

Tuesday 27th November - Another good day with 12 horse races and 2 football matches traded and again with just the 1 loss although this was a big one. My day started off well with the 12:10 at Kempton where I laid Procas de Thaix for £2306 @ 1.30 quite early in the race and then backed back £1720 @ 1.57 to leave myself with a profit of £290. My race trading finished with a profit of £357. I ended up losing £320 on the Sevilla v Arsenal match after some very quick goals were scored but I did make back £150 on the Man U v Sporting game to result in a profit on the day of £187.

Wednesday 28th November 2007 - The day started off well after trading on 11 horse races with a profit of £218 but then I gave it all away and then some more with some poor trading on two football matches. I ended the day with a loss of £31.

Thursday 29th November 2007 - This was a much better day. I traded on 18 horse races with 1 loss to result in a profit of £224. In the evening I traded on 2 football matches with a profit of £53 to give me a profit of £277 on the day.

Friday 30th November 2007 - I had a very short day of trading as there were many things to do with Jenny in preparation for her getting hold of the keys to her flat. I only traded on 6 horse races but still managed a profit of £256.

Saturday 1st December 2007 - This was a good day of trading and also the main day for moving Jenny so I missed the first few races. I ended up trading on 17 horse races for a profit of £524. In the evening I traded on 3 parts of football matches which resulted in a profit of £39 and later I made a further £36 on the Hendry v O'Sullivan snooker match to end my day with a profit of £599.

Sunday 2nd December 2007 - This turned out to be the best trading day of the week for me after trading on 17 horse races where I made a profit of £710 and 1 football match which resulted in a profit of £20 to leave me with a profit of £730 on the day.

After a very good week of trading I managed to make a profit of £2181.

This week also saw the end on my November trading where I made a total profit of £5962.

Sunday 25th November 2007

It has been a difficult week of trading for the Sports Trader and due to the pressures of time I am only going to summarise my weeks trading here.

Monday 19th November - As already reported I was having a good day only to blow £494 on a darts match to leave me with a loss on the day of £279.

Tuesday 20th November - I traded on 6 horse races 2 darts matches and 2 football matches with no losing trades. The highlight of my day was my first horse race trade where I made £161. My day finished with a profit of £253.

Wednesday 21st November - This has to go down as a bad day not just for English football but also for my erratic trading. I traded on 15 horse races, 1 football match and 1 darts match. I had a £500 loss on a horse race due to me getting the colours of two jockey's mixed up. In the England football match I managed to lose almost £400 as I didn't stick to my normal mode of operation, needless to say if I had done as normal I would have made a profit. My day finished with a hefty £1050 loss.

Thursday 22nd November - Back to proper trading today. I traded 10 horse races, 1 darts match and 2 football matches with no losing trades. My son Oliver came round to continue with his under 2.5 goals trading and he made another profit of 4% of his bank. I traded my normal way on the same match and made £160 on the match. My day finished with a profit of £239.

Friday 23rd November - Another solid day but only after yet another mistake in a horse race which cost me £227. I traded on 14 horse races and 2 darts matches with 2 losing trades. The best trade of my day was in the Phil Taylor v John Part darts match where I made £436. My day finished with a profit of £367.

Saturday 24th November - A good day of trading with 18 horse races, 2 football matches and 1 darts match traded with just 1 losing trade on the day.  My best trade was in the 12:45 at Ascot where I laid Potts of Magic for £350 @ 5.29 and backed back £165 @ 4.00 to result in a profit of £176. My day had finished with a profit of £480.

Sunday 25th November 2007 - A very good solid day of trading to finish the week off well. I traded on 14 horse races, 3 football matches and the darts Grand Slam Final with no losing trades. The best trade of my day was on the darts where I backed The Power to win on the handicap betting with -6.5 legs for £1332 @ 1.25 and laid off within a minute @ 1.20 to result in a profit of £155. My day finished with a profit of £720.

Well this week started off as a bit of a comedy of errors as my mind has just not been properly focused on my trading and by Wednesday night I was down almost £1100, but with some very solid trading, from Thursday onwards, I have managed to finish the week with a respectable £730 profit.

Monday 19th November 2007

The Sports Trader was having a good day until the last trade of the day which plunged me into losses. I traded on 7 horse races and 4 darts matches with just the one loss.

My day started off very slowly with 4 small but winning trades. The best result of my day came in the 15:10 at Leicester where I laid Kelv for £50 @ 2.10 before backing back £48 @ 2.16. I then backed the eventual winner, Meadow Hawk for £85 @ 2.00 and laid off £20 @ 1.20 to result in a profit of £83.

In the 15:40 at Leicester I laid Haversham for £44 @ 6.00 to give me another profit of £44. My final race trade of the day resulted in a small profit.

My race trading had finished with a profit of £131.

The first of my darts trades was in the match between Andy Hamilton and  C Losper where I just managed a small profit.

In the Barney v Dennis Priestley match I started with a back of Barney for £500 @ 1.47 and then gradually laid off to result in a profit of £63.

Next was the McDine v Greatbatch match where I started by backing McDine for £50 @ 1.54 and laid off @ 1.22. I had another small back on him @ 1.10 to result in a profit of £19.

In the last trade of my day in the match between Nixon and OrreaI I had backed Nixon, with the score at 4 -0 and only wanting 1 more leg to secure victory, for £505 @ 1.08. Nixon was well in control of this match and his opponent was playing woefully so I thought my money was safe. But the best laid plans are always the ones that come and get you in the end. I did manage to back Orreal for £100 @ 1.10 to lessen my loss a little but in the end I lost £494 on this match.

My day had therefore ended with a loss of £279.

I do apologise for being a little late in updating my blog again but life is just not that easy at the moment. I do not want to bore you with my problems but I have had to spend a lot of time sorting mine and other peoples problems out this last while. However I do not want to offend my readers so I will try to catch up but if I find that not possible, I may just stop writing for a while.

Sunday 18th November 2007

Well I am not too happy. I have just spent the last 80 minutes writing up my trading for today and hit the preview button to make sure all was ok and I lost the whole post. So I will just give a summary of the days trading.

I traded on 20 UK horse races, 2 football matches and 1 darts match with just 2 small losing trades, both on the race trading.

My horse race trading produced a profit of £111.

I managed to make £78 with my football trading. I only managed to trade a part of both matches and I made £162 on the darts.

So my day had produced a profit of £351.

This week of trading has been a bit of a grind but I still managed a profit of £589 on the week.

Saturday 17th November 2007

It was a struggle for the Sports Trader today due to a couple of hefty losses early in the day but I did recover the situation in the evening. I traded on 14 UK horse races, 1 rugby match, 2 football matches and 2 darts matches.

My day started with a small winning trade. In the 12:45 at Punchestown I backed Never Compromise for £214 @ 1.33 to result in a profit of £71.

Then came the 12:55 at Cheltenham where I had laid Kia Kaha for £14 @ 3.75 and then went to lay again for £36 @ 3.80 when the odds changed just as I hit the submit button and I ended up laying @ 5.90. This cost me £214. I followed up with a small winning trade.

In the 13:45 at Wetherby I laid Charming Fellow for £50 @ 3.50 before backing back £48 @ 3.70 and then I managed to lay Super Road Train for £56 @ 4.00 to cost me another £167. I followed this with 2 more small winning trades.

My day then started to get better with the 14:35 Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham where I had laid Granit Jack for £37 @ 4.50 for a profit of £37. Next was a small winning trade.

In the 15:10 at Cheltenham I backed Sonnyanjoe for £80 @ 2.25 before laying all off @ 1.80 and then backed  him for a further 16 @ 1.50 to result in a profit of £44.

My next trade was again at Cheltenham where I backed Sir Rembrant for £50 @ 2.00 to result in a £50 profit.

In the 15:50 at Uttoxeter I backed Phoudamour for £50 @ 1.60 before laying all off @ 1.15 to result in a profit of £23. My final race trade resulted in a small loss.

My race trading had produced a loss of £154.

In the early evening I traded the final few minutes of the rugby match between Harlequins and Cardiff and managed to back the draw for £500 @ 1.33 to give me a profit of £165.

I watched the Scotland v Italy football match and traded on the under 2.5 goals and by the time the third goal was scored I was all green with a £25 profit on the overs, all be it a score of unders would have given me £50. I also backed the under 3.5 goals for £68 @ 1.04 to give me another £3 on the match.

Later I watched the end of the all important Israel v Russia football match and backed the under 3.5 goals for £300 @ 1.10 before laying off £245 @ 1.04 to return a profit of £20.

In the evenings darts matches I backed Adrian Lewis against Dennis Priestley for £120 @ 1.14 to result in a profit of £17. I then traded the Colin Lloyd v Ronnie Baxter match and produced another profit of £24.

Well that was the end of a real grind of a day where I turned around heavy early losses to a profit of £100.