Monday 30th April 2007

It has been a very slow and uneventful day for the Sports Trader today. I only managed to trade in 6 horse races and 1 football match, but I had no losing trades. I have noticed recently that I am just missing a lot more trades than usual and, after analysing my set up, I have come to the conclusion that there are at least 5 factors contributing to this, they are:

1: My broadband connection has been slower recently. I check my connection speed regularly with a very good utility programme called Speedtest.net. All speed tests are archived so you can compare your connection speed with all past results you have had and also against all other tests by other users connections.

2: My computer is slowing down. It is just over a year ago that I had my new system built and although I religiously defragment my hard drive and clear out all temporary files every single night, my machine is definitely slowing down. In particular I notice that when my machine was new I would click my mouse and almost instantaneously my computer would respond, now I find that on occasions I can wait up to a second before anything happens.  This slow down has become a lot more noticeable over the last month.

3: In part due to my writing this blog, there are a lot more users on the Betdaq site and some may have faster pictures than me or better computers/ internet connections than me. Some may simply just be better than I am at trading.

4: As regular readers are aware I have been having serious personal problems recently and this has meant that my mind has not been just as focused on trading as it should have been.

5: Recent changes in the way that the Betdaq site accepts trades has taken away some of my edge. This obviously effects all users of the site but we all trade in our own way so it may impact on some styles of trading more than others. 

So, as I am not the type of person to allow the grass grow under my feet, I have made several decisions today about the way to tackle some of these problems. Firstly I have arranged BT to install a new telephone line into my house. This will allow me to take advantage of the fastest broadband connection available in th UK at present from Be Broadband.com. This is an unlimited download, 24MB connection with up to 2.5 MB upload speed and is like greased lightening.

I have also started researching the newest and fastest computer processors and motherboards available and will have a new machine built within the next 4 weeks. I will then use my present computer for all emailing and surfing the net etc, using a cable broadband connection and use my new machine for only trading on Betdaq with my new broadband connection. This will also give me the security that if my local BT exchange has a fault,  which would affect most broadband services, I will still have my other machine connected to cable to enable me to get out of trades that I may have.

I know some will say this is over kill, but to me it is just me using all possible diligence to ensure I have as fast and reliable set up as possible. This is no longer a game or hobby to me as it once was, it is a serious business where one click of the mouse can make several thousand pounds. So to spend around a thousand making sure my system is extremely efficient is money well spent. 

To overcome the problems identified in points 3 - 5 above will be much harder, but you can rest assured that I am addressing these and will do all that I can to ensure I regain or keep the edge that I have had over the past 16 months of full-time trading. 

Back to today's trading, my first 4 trades were all small but profitable trades. In the 16:30 at Wolverhampton I laid Tutor for £14 @ 2.00 to result in a £14 profit. My final race trade was in the 19:40 at Windsor which also resulted in a small profit.

So that was it, one of my quietest race trading days, which left me with a profit of £30. 

In the evening I had a few trades in the Reading v Newcastle football match. I started soon after the goal was score with a back of the under 2.5 goals market for £43 @ 1.89 which I laid off @ 1.77. Next I backed the unders again for £107 @ 1.66 and laid this off @ 1.57. Finally I backed the unders for £181 @ 1.10 with 5 minutes of play left, which I didn't lay off. This resulted in a profit of £33. Also, with 4 minutes of injury time already played, I backed Reading to win for £100 @ 1.06 to result in another £6 profit.

My day finished with a profit of £68.

Comments

[Ian]

Ray,

I do a regular adware check and it makes a big difference to speed. I use the free version of AVG anti-spyware.

Cheers
Ian

[Ray]

Hi Ian,

I have Norton 360 on my computer which should deal with these threats but just in case I have also just downloaded the AVG anti-spyware kit and nothing was found.

Ray

[humble]

Great post Ray very proffesional and something i will have a look at myself.i seem to be missing a lot of trades lately and some of the problems you mentioned will have something to do with it.I notice when i go to the exchange shop their internet speed is lightning fast so it helps a lot and they have very few things installed on the computers.I have ben working on a new strategy for trading in running on the flat targeting certain horses "as i only traded on the longer races before" and i think there is something in it.will let you know how i get on.i havent been updating my blog recently but i will start again tonight as its good to look back and learn.thanks for all the advice/guidence Ray and good luck today.

[Ray]

Hi Humble,

Good to hear from you again. I think that the best set up is a computer dedicated to only the trading that way you are not downloading any problems. Good Luck with your new strategy.

Ray

[ramps]

I have not upgraded my pc in a while, so I too have decided to start looking. A few years ago I would have know what to buy as I kept right upto date with everything but now I am a novice.

I am thinking of being lazy and getting one prebuilt.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-041-OK&groupid=43&catid=781&subcat=