Sunday 18th February 2007

I have had another decent day with a reasonable quality of horse racing. I ended up trading in 17 races with no losing trades, although most of my trades where quite small. I had my best friend Graeme and his family coming down from Aberdeen to stay with me tonight so I had little time to trade in the evening. I had to prepare a meal for all of us of Chicken Balmoral which is chicken fillets filled with haggis.

I started with 3 small and profitable trades. My first reasonably sized trade was in the 14:30 at Fontwell where I backed Backed Turko for £50 @ 1.80 before laying off @ 1.60 to land a profit of £10.

In the 15:00 at Fontwell I backed Superrollercoaster for just over £7 @ 3.40 to earn another £18 profit. I then had a further 2 small and profitable trades.

In the 15:30 at Fontwell I backed United for £45 @ 1.40 before laying off @ 1.25. I had another very small back on United to net me a total profit of £21. My next trade was a small, profitable one.

In the 15:50 at Towcester I got matched for £41 @ 1.88 on Whitford Don to secure a profit of £36. My next race was the 16:00 at Fontwell. I started with a lay of Vinnie Boy for £67 @ 3.50 before backing back £40 @ 4.30 and £7 @ 6.00. I then had further lays on him at 7.90 for £20, 10.00 for £10 and 20.00 for £2 to result in a profit on the race of £52.

I had a further 7 trades that were all small but profitable. This left me with a race trading profit of £168 on the day.

I did have a couple of very small trades on the early evening match between Valencia and Barcelona which resulted in a very small profit. I have therefore ended another solid week with no losing days and a total profit of £1810 and I have only had to pay a total of £12 in commissions due to the great Betdaq offer of 0% commission on in-running UK horse racing markets.

Comments

[Rob]

Hi Ray
Another amazing week for you, I had a bit of a bad weekend but all in all could have been a lot worse....its a strange how one loss leads to others!

Ps..I wouldn't imagine Betdaq will keep up the 0% for too long, £12 :-O doesn't pay many bills while you coin £1800 ;-)
GL Rob

[Ray]

Hi Rob,
Thanks for your comments. Sorry you weekend wasn't too good, but we have started a new week , so let's hope things get better.
The 0% commission doesn't really cost Betdaq a great deal but is a real good headline way to attract new customers who will also trade pre race. Good Luck for the coming week.
Ray

[humble]

fantastic Profits this week Ray must be one of your best for a while.well done can i ask when you first started did you seem to make the same mistakes quite a few times over and sometimes getting over confident and taking chances you know you shouldnt be taking.i have suffered from all of the above lately lol but i do improve after every mistake and learn from it.

[Ray]

Hi Ron,
Thanks for your comments. That was my best week since the first week in January.
I made plenty of mistakes in the early days. As you know I started with a single deposit of £200. It took ages to get that figure growing and at one stage I got it to around £3000 then went back to under £1000 all due to lack of discipline and achasing losing trades. That dramatic fall shook me to the core and I was starting to think I would never make money on the exchanges. But I kept going and learnt from those early lessons anf gradually my balance started to grow. At the same time my confidence grew and I never really looked back again. I hope it works out this way for you, Good Luck.
Ray

[humble]

Thanks Ray just the answer i needed it certainly is 2 steps forward and 1 back most of the time when you first start.got myself a decent stategy but its bloody sticking to it lol.i think when you have a really good day you start to expect it every day and it doesnt work like that does it.i am doing very well but as i say it only takes a moment of greed and lack of patientce/discipline and you are knocked back.thanks again Ray

[Dupy]

Top blog mate, looks like you are doing well for yourself :) Do you trade full time and if so how long for?

Does betdaq have inplay football? I've just checked on site but can only find inplay for the Champions League, therefore do I taek it they only provide inplay for the bigger matches?

[Ray]

Hi Dupy,
Thanks for your comments. I have traded full time for about 15 months, but was part time for 5 years before that, it was my hobby.
Yes Betdaq does offer in-running football matches everyday. Every night their will be a ninimum of 1 match covered and often a lot more. Most big matches are covered from around Europe.
Tonights match is the 1st Division clash between Brentford and Northampton.
good Luck
Ray

[andy]

Hi there, nice blog. Just wondering how you come to decide which horse to lay/back first. Do you watch it on tv, or just use stp? Thanks

[Ray]

Hi Andy,
I always watch every event that I trade on TV.
Then it is a case of watching for the little signs that either a horse is travelling well or not. I suppose you would call it race reading skills and these get better the more races you watch and trade. Good Luck.
Ray

[Dupy]

15 months full time, well done, that certainly gives me hope!

Could you provide a link to a Betdaq page that shows the inplay football matches for the whole day please (if such a thing exists)?

I would of liked to bet on Brentford and Northampton tonight as betfair was not offering this match but I couldn't find the in-play coupon on betdaq and didn't fancy going through all the matches.

Thank you and the best of luck

[Ray]

Hi Dupy,
The game has finished now so I can not give you the link but it was on the Betdaq main page. I did trade the game in a smallish way and came out on top to finish off a very good day.
I truely believe that anyone willing to work at this trading lark and starting with small stakes can nake it pay. I hope you manage.
Ray

[Dupy]

Oh no I wasn't expecting to make a bet tonight, I was inquiring for future reference.

On Betfair, each day there is a page called In-play Coupon which shows all the football matches on offer that day on the one page, just wondered if there was such a page on Betdaq and if so where please?

Do you still use Betfair at all or have you switched to Betdaq for all your trades?

How are you finding trading full time, still enjoying it? I would love to trade full time and I’m sure I will be able to one day, fingers crossed.

When I first started on the exchanges probably four years ago now I only bet on horses, however due to being a newbie punter and armed with the martingale system (oh dear, yes I learnt the hard way!) I managed to lose 17K in roughly 6 months! Hell of a lot of money to lose but no regrets as that was the start of a love affair for me and ever since then I go through periods of becoming a little professor locked away in my room homing my skills.

I must say I loved betting on the GG’s but I just wasn’t cutting the mustard so for the past year or so I have turn my attentions to football, however at some point would like to get back in to horse racing. From what you described above to Andy sounds a lot like one of Raj Patel’s system (from what I can gather as I would never pay that amount of money for a system/guide), have you ever read his guides and if so are they of any worth?

I have read many systems/guides/strategies over the years and while all of them are fundamentally floored they give me a great deal of ideas on how to improve or enable me to go on to create my own strategies. One type of trading that I have yet to try is on the horses in the way you do so well. Any tips you can give please?

I understand that a great deal of the success comes down to being able to read a race and knowledge of horse/jockey (likes to front run etc) etc, so my question is did you have much of this knowledge before you started trading or is this something you have learnt and improved over the years while trading? I think this knowledge is vitally important when trading mid race and while I can read races to a certain degree I have always been put off by the fact that you have to be so fast off the mark in order to trade successfully in this way (one of the reasons I enjoy trading on football as there much more time to play with).

Any guides, helpful tips would be much appreciated.

Thank you

[Ray]

Hi Dupy,
Sorry for my late reply but I have just finished my version of War & Peace on my blog for today.
Betdaq put the most prominent matches on it's front page and the others you need to find within the menu tree at the left hand side of their page.
I do still use Betfair but only very lightly in comparison to by Betdaq Trading.
I love full time trading, although because of my wife's serious health problem I had to stop my business to help look after our three young children and it was then that I turned full time, and hope I can continue for many years. It can get boring at times but as long as you keep your discipline you will succeed.
I have not bought systems or tips for horse racing since I started trading. I only know about Raj from the forums.
I really think race reading is the answer to my type of trading. I never take a view on a race before it starts and I never look at form. I simply watch what is happening. It is not an easy science to start with but with time you start to see those little signs as to wether a horse is travelling well or not.I would think the most successfull traders would be jockey's.
I know what you mean about football trading. As you will see I do trade football and have had some success but my real forte is the horses. I really knew nothing about horses when I first started except that they are expensive things to keep as I have an older daughter that used to ride in the Scotland team at Horse of the Year show. Please keep in touch and ask anything you want.
Ray