Sunday 26th August 2007

The Sports Trader had a day to forget with a major mistake late on to cost the whole weeks profits in one go. It was looking like a good week up until this point. I am writing this 3 days after the event and am still mad with myself for being such an amateur. I had traded on 4 horse races a football match and a golf tournament. My day started late as I had my daughter Josie and her friend Stacey to pick up from the airport. Their flight was due in at 10:30 am but didn't arrive until 14:00 and then it took another hour to get their baggage.

My day got underway with the 16:45 at Ballinrobe where I laid Corrieann for £46 @ 3.50 before backing back £30 @ 4.00 and £6 @ 5.00 to leave me with a profit of £10. My next 2 race3s both resulted in small profits.

The best result of my day was my last race trade of the day in the 17:50 at Ballinrobe where I backed Cuchulains Son for £224 @ 2.50 before laying off £134 @ 2.25 and £90 @ 1.25 to result in a profit of £146.

My race trading had finished with a profit of £164.

Now for my major blunder. I had decided to be quite aggressive on the under 2.5 goals in the Valencia v Villareal football match. So I went to back the unders for £1110 @ 1.87, which I thought was a good price. This was just before kick off and my intention was to lay off within 15 minutes at an average price of around 1.65. Well the theory was correct but what I actually did was to somehow back Valencia on the Asian handicap - 0.5 goals market. I had all the markets up on one screen and had simply entered my trade in the wrong field. Looking back, I was in a hurry to get involved on this match and had been busy doing a thousand and one other things with the children, hence my mistake. Mistake number two was not to quickly trade out of the situation. As soon as the markets went in-play I noticed that my bet was not showing up on the under 2.5 goal market, it was then that I realised my mistake. At this point I started to get pretty mad with myself for being such an idiot. The market that I had inadvertently traded does not turn in-play so I could not do a simple reverse trade. What I should have done was to lay Valencia in the match result market but by the time I had calmed down and realised what I should do the price that I could get would have meant me losing £100. So like an idiot I thought Valencia will score first and I will then trade out. Well they didn't and once Villareal had scored I was looking at a big loss and decided to just hold on to my position. The rest is history, Valencia lost their local derby match 3 - 0 and I lost £1110.

To make my week finish in the red I then backed KJ Choi in the Barclays Open golf event for £305 @ 5.00 with 2 holes to go in an attempt to get back my losses on the day. Stricker went on to win by 2 shots to cost me another £305.

My day had finished with a loss of £1250.

My decent looking week had been blown apart and I ended up losing £100.

Comments

[The Gambler.]

Sorry to hear that Ray. You will get it back. Slowly slowly catchee monkey.

[Ray]

Hi John,

Thanks, I will get it back soon but it is still so annoying that after doing this job for so long I can still make stupid mistakes.

Good Luck with your trading.

Ray

[Nick]

Ray ,

If you have the time, do read the
"Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders" books (there are several of them)

These books have some interesting paragraphs about these situations.

Hopefully you'll re-adjust the balance next week...

[Ray]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for your comments and advice. I will take a look at the book.

Good Luck.

Ray