The Sports Trader

Thursday 4th January 2007

Today was the first day of this New Year that I have been able to concentrate fully on my job of Sports Trading. No parties, no visitors, sky fully working, my twins at nursery school, Au pair back at work to look after Zoe, and a reasonable afternoon of racing.

I ended up trading in 13 races and started with the 12:40 at Fontwell where I had a very small profitable trade on the favourite and winner Benetwood. My next race was the 12:55 at Thurles and here I had a big lay on Lace your Boots of £523 @ 4.50 when making the second of his three mistakes over the fences. I then backed him for £100 @ 5.50, £100 @ 5.40, £75 @ 5.03 and a further £52 @ 4.10, before he made his final mistake an unseated his jockey, to leave me with a very good profit of £195.

I then had a small, profitable trade in the 13:00 at Lingfield before my only losing trade of the day at Thurles in the 13:25 where I had backed Our Ben for £45 @ 1.20, when well in the lead, and just before the final fence, when he fell and cost me my £45.

In the 13:30 at Lingfield I laid Climate Change for £50 @ 3.40 when weakening out of contention between the last two hurdles to give me a profit of £50. I then had another five small winning trades.

Next up was the 15:40 at Fontwell where I laid the favourite, Owlesbury Dream for £387 at about a furlong out when being caught by the eventual, and easy, winner Princess Flame to give me another very good profit of £387. I followed this up with my final trade in the next race, the 15:50, at Wolverhampton, where I laid Shrewd Dude for £153 @ 4.80 whilst being overtaken by the Favourite Global Traffic to round my good day off with a further £153 profit. In total I finished the day with a profit of £757.

With no football on tv tonight my attention was caught by the trading on the new Glasgow Rangers Manager. After the very early departure of Paul Le Guen, the shortest serving manager for the club. The bookies favourite for the position at present is Walter Smith.  I like Walter a lot as most Rangers and now Scotland supporters do. My own personal opinion, for what it is worth, is that Walter will not be taking over the reigns again. I can not see him wanting to, or being allowed to, leave his Scotland job when he has done such a good job for the SFA. There is a lot of talk about Ally McCoist being involved, but I think he realises he is doing very well where he is with several part time jobs in the media and with the SFA.  I would like to see Terry Butcher come back to the club, but that will probably not happen either. Anyway I have laid Walter Smith for £300 with the view of backing him when the price gets up to 3.00. Wish me luck.

Wednesday 3rd January 2007

I had a dual role today and racing had to take a back seat as alongside being a sports trader I was also the proud father of my 6 year old daughter, Zoe, on her birthday. Zoe had invited her best 10 friends for a party and I had to do most of the preparation and organisation of the party.

I only managed to trade in 4 races and my first was the 12:20 at Wetherby, where I backed All For Luck for £50 @ 1.10, whilst well in the lead and in the last furlong, to give me a profit of £5. My next trade was in the 13:15 at Kempton. Here I backed Earl Kraul for £135 @ 1.25 just after he had swept to the lead with one furlong to go, to net me another £34 profit.

My third racing trade of the day was in the 13:25 at Wetherby and here I laid Ellway Prospect for £3 @ 20.00 with two hurdles to jump when being ridden hard to stay in the race. I also backed the winner, Smoothly Does It, for £100 @ 1.01 just before the line to give me a £4 profit. My last race of the day was the 14:30 at Wetherby where I backed Tabora for £135 @ 1.35 with two furlongs to go and when well in the lead. I did lay off @ 1.12 to net me a profit of £31. So I had finished my very short racing day with a profit of £74.

Tonights televised football match was the game between Grays Athletic and Gravesend of the Nationwide Conference League. I backed the under 2.5 goals market for £200 @ 1.80 just before kick off. I then started to lay off in £25 lots from 1.68 down to my 7th lot of £25 @ 1.27 just before the 1st goal was scored in the 41st minute. So I now had a liability of £25 and backed the unders again for £195 @ 1.74 as soon as the market was reformed. I laid my first £120 off at 1.62 and then laid off in £25 lots from 1.53 down to 1.30. I then started to green up with lays at 1.25,1.21,1.16 and 1.10 to leave me with a profit of £87 whatever the result. I also had a little dabble in the correct score and backed the 1 - 0 scoreline for £127 @ 1.21 with four minutes on the clock. I managed to lay off £122 @ 1.16 within two minutes and then the second goal came to leave me with my only loss on the day of £5. The total result for the match was therefore a profit of £82 and this left me with a profit from all trading on the day of £155.

I have now had over 10,000 visitors to this blog since I started it back on the 13th November 2006. I would like to thank everyone that has visited and hope that you have managed to gain something from my daily ramblings. I do have some very regular readers and they come from at least 25 countries all over the World, as you can see by clicking on the visitor location map, on the right-hand column of the blog. I have tried to make this blog as interesting as possible but am aware that on my quieter days it can read a little boring, so if you have any suggestions for added content or new links that could make this a better experience please just send me a comment and I will try to include your ideas.

I have achieved what I set out to do with this blog, which was to try and build a group of good friends and colleagues that have a place to interact with like minded people and have the ability to bounce ideas off each other. For this I am very grateful.

Tuesday 2nd January 2006

The Sports Trader is in much better humour today as at 9:30 a local ex-Sky engineer turned up and pointed my dish in the right direction and he charged me less than Sky wanted to. So it was business as usual today.

My first trade of any significance was in the 12:50 at Southwell, where I managed to back Charlie Delta for £97 @ 2.20 with a furlong to go and with him just in front to give me a profit of £117. I then had three races with small trades resulting in a small loss.

In the 14:45 at Ayr I backed Letham Air for £60 @ 1.30 when well in the lead an with the race at his mercy. However his stamina just seemed to give way on the run in and I ended up losing my £60. I then had another three very small profitable trades.

Next up was the 15:45 at Ayr, and here I laid Sea Laughter for £13 @ 12.50 when a good 10 lengths behind the eventual winner and in the final furlong. I also backed the winner, Em's Royalty, for £1000 @ 1.01 just before the finishing line to net me a total profit of £26 in the race. That was it for me today as I had to look after the children myself all afternoon so it was a case of just snatching a few minutes away from time to time. I ended up with a days racing profit of £78.

Tonight's live match on Sky was the Aston Villa v Chelsea game. I backed the under 2.5 goal market for £100 @ 1.93 before kick off. I waited for the price to drop to 1.82 before laying off £25. then a further £25 @ 1.73, £25 @ 1.63 and the final £25 at 1.52. this was finished well before half time. In the second half I just watched the market for any decent opportunity to make a few more £'s. I decided to trade on the under 1.5 goal market with 15 minutes to go. I backed the unders for £130 @ 1.35 and laid off £96 @ 1.14 five minutes later. I put up a lay of £34 to trade out @ 1.05 but cancelled before it was taken as the game was nearing the end and it would have been pretty unlikely that more than one goal would be scored.  I also had a small trade on the match result market with a back of the draw for £198 @ 1.20 with 3 minutes on the clock, which I laid off @ 1.16 within 40 seconds. I then backed the draw again for £105 @ 1.05 in the final minute of injury time and laid off @ 1.01. In total I made £70 on the match. To leave me with a profit on the day of £147.

I also downloaded the most recent Sports Traders Workstation (STW) today. I am intending to get to grips with this excellent bit of software over the next few weeks. Many readers of this blog advise me that if I can make money without using software, I will make a good deal more when using it, so I will give it a go. In particular I would like to get to grips with the IRIS software which you can only use along with the STW. If you would like to see IRIS in action just click on this link to view a demo of a race at Newbury along with commentary.

Monday 1st January 2007

The Sports Trader has very little to report today due to the fact that I had no Sky TV today. I rang Sky last night to report the problem and was told that they would not except any request for engineers visits until the storm had calmed down. So I rang at 8:30 this morning and was initially told that I could get an engineer to visit my home on the 9th of February........2007, just in case you where wondering. You can probably work out exactly where I told them they could put their Sky service. Apparently Sky need to send a special heights team to realign my satellite dish aerial. Now I think Sky engineers must be a right bunch of nancy's as I live in a bungalow. I explained this to the customer services desk and was then offered a date of the 4th of January 2007. A lot better but would still mean that I would miss 3 to 4 days of work. So I rang a few local sky engineers, on New Years Day, and therefore not expecting to speak to anyone. I left a couple of messages and by 10:30 a very nice man called me and said he will be with me by 9:00 on Tuesday 2nd Jan. That's pretty good service especially in Scotland at New Year.

My trading was limited to the Channel 4 coverage of  a few races at Cheltenham, Exeter and Catterick. I did watch the price movements on races where I had no TV coverage and I did have a couple of trades, just to see if it was possible. It's not for me, but I know some people do trade this way.  I will not bore you with my trades as they where all pretty small and I ended the race day with a small loss of £12.

I then looked at the Portmouth v Spurs match statistics and decided I would trade a little even though I did not have live pictures. I missed the whole of the first half and started trading with the score at 1 - 1 by backing the under 2.5 goals for £80 @ 1.90 and a further £20 @ 1.73. I held on until the price had fallen to 1.50 before laying off £40 and another £40 @ 1.40. Towards the end of the match I backed the unders for £26 @ 1.22 and then laid off £3 @ 1.14. That is all I did but it did leave me with a profit of £55 for the match. That left me with a profit of £44 on the Day.

I had been looking forward to the PDC World Darts Final tonight, but of course, missed it due to the Sky problem. I did follow the match via The Sporting Life website. It looks like I missed one hell of a game of darts and well done Barney.