Thursday 24th May 2007

The Sports Trader has made more progress on my new IT set up today as a very decent BT engineer came round today and installed my new line. As soon as he had finished I completed an on-line application for the  Be.com 24 Meg broadband service, which is the fastest in the UK, and within an hour they had emailed, and sent me a text message, saying that the new service would be installed in 7 days time. I thought that was brilliant service. I am looking forward to using my new system next week and it looks like there may well be a lot more liquidity on Betdaq by then as many Betfair customers are taking the new increased commission structure very badly and are plotting to boycott the Betfair site. I can not see their rationale for increasing commission rates as surely increased turnover at the same rate is the way to get better profits.

I traded in 11 horse races today with 2 losing trades and my first trade was in the 14:10 at Bangor where I laid Go Solo for £13 @ 6.00 and Barton Legend for £19 @ 9.00 before backing back £8 @ 15 on Barton Legend to result in a profit of £24. My next two trades where both small winning trades.

My first loss of the day came in the 15:20 at Bangor as I laid Ice Tea for £9 @ 6.00 when in sixth place and looking held but I had got this one wrong and could not trade out so I suffered a loss of £48. I followed this with two more small winning trades.

In the 16:30 at Bangor I backed Johnston's Swallow for £150 @ 2.60 before laying off @ 2.40. Next I backed him again for £100 @ 2.00 and laid this off @ 1.59 to result in a profit of £71.

The next at Bangor was the 17:05 and here I laid Beau Nash for £50 @ 25.00 and backed Eleazar for £24 @ 1.50 to give me a profit of £62. Next was a small winning trade.

My second and final loss on the day came in the 19:30 at Clonmel where I backed Warrior Drive for £7 @ 2.62 which I laid off @ 2.00. Later I backed him again whilst leading for £25 @ 1.75 only to see him fall at the 2nd last to cost me a £25 loss.

My final trade of the day was also my best and was in the 20:00 at Clonmel. I backed Prince Massini for £2034 @ 1.88 whilst in the lead and looking to be going very well. I also had in mind the way the price had shortened up just before the start of the race and the fact that my favourite jockey, Ruby Walsh, was on board. Soon after my back I started to lay off @ 1.75 for £70, £861 @ 1.66, a further £792 @ 1.66 and £7 @ 1.28 before I cancelled the rest of my lays to leave me with a profit of £638 on the race.

So I had finished a good day with a profit of £737.

Comments

[Ian]

Ray,
How many monitors are you using on the new set up. By the way I am coming over there in a month to get away from the harsh Australian winter currently 23c degrees, I might have to find some shade.

Be happy.

[Ray]

Hi Ian,

I will have 2, 19" monitors on the new machine for my trading and 2, 19" monitors on my other machine for market data etc. Your harsh winter is better than most of our summer. Good Luck.

Ray

[ian smith]

Hi Ray ... just catching up with your log. Nice big bet on Prince Massini - were you tempted to let it run? Also do you think you will need to look at increasing bet size to maintain winnings?

regards

Ian

[Ray]

Hi Ian,

I felt uncomfortable whith such a large liability on this trade and therefore was keen to off load some of it.

In hindsight I do wish I had not laid as much off, but then with hindsight we would all be millionaires.

Most of my trades are governed by the amount on offer on a horse at the time of me deciding to trade, so the size is a little out of my hands, but I have made an effort recently to increase stakes. I think when I get my new computer set up later this week I will loo at increasing stakes further when I can.

God Luck

Ray