Which Direction?

Daily P/L: £22.98
Monthly P/L: £22.98

I've had a really hectic week and it's taken me until today to recover. My flight to Vienna on Wednesday night was cancelled due to high winds so this meant an early start on Thursday morning - I was literally on the plane, in a meeting and then back on the plane home and my body is just not used to it.

This fatigue meant that even though I'd got back home in time to catch half of the Premier League Darts I just wasn't up to trading. This is an important point - trading when you're tired just doesn't work. No matter how good the opportunity looks, the odds on you messing up with a 'slip of the mind' greatly increases and this can start a nasty downward spiral of events, so don't do it.

There wasn't a huge deal on today so I limited my trading to taking a look at Leicester v Harlequins and a small play on the Horse Racing. Horse Racing is a great sport and I know quite a bit about it but I don't find it easy to trade. It can be done, as many will testify, but even though there's loads of liquidity I just don't feel comfortable in opening up trades when there's only a few minutes before the start of a race. Why? The main reason is the thought of technical faliure - Betfair crashing, losing my internet connection, my laptop freezing etc. All these are possible scenarios and as risk management is high on my list of priorities, trading high sums of money on a market that will end shortly doesn't inspire me with confidence. So today I dabbled with in-running strategies. This can be suicidal if you don't know what you're doing, and may appear to go completely against what I've just said but it was a low risk experiment where I ended slightly up.

It's a good job for the rugby. Again I was able to trade the match well and make enough of a profit to leave the second half alone. I'm a little worried though. It appears that my Winter can be made up of Darts and Rugby Union but to be successful all year round I need to make Cricket and Golf work for me during the Summer.

This leads me nicely onto the PGA Tour Honda Classic. Tomorrow sees the 4th round and it promises to offer some very good trading opportunities. A lot of factors come into play; no Tiger Woods in the field (he's a machine and is way too reliable), a difficult course, inexperience/nerves from the leaders and the field is tightly grouped. All of these things point to potential big swings in the market which if approached correctly could lead to a nice profit.

This is the real start to my Golf season so I hope it starts well.