Monday 9 April 2007

A Mixed Bag

Since Last Post P/L: £85.15
Monthly P/L: £174.81

I traded poorly over the weekend as I was trying to 'push it'. Luckily, I managed to stay on the right side of my profit & loss but it does concern me that a lack of discipline crept into my approach. I know why this is - I was forced into trading sports I'm still learning to trade but my expectation levels were the same as if I was trading all rugby and darts matches. As my results weren't hitting my expectations I felt the need to force things and 'over-trade' which we all know is the wrong way to go. I now need to spend more time analysing cricket and golf to come up with an edge that will see me through the summer.

Bristol v Worcester
After the treat of European rugby over recent months it appears the good times are over as the liquidity in this game was very low. This meant less opportunities and therefore a smaller profit. I was out of the game by half time with an all round green figure of £20.62.

Enzo Macaranelli v Bobby Gunn
Saturday night promised a boxing extravaganza and even though it didn't live up to expectations I thought I'd spotted an opportunity in this fight. Macaranelli is an excellent boxer but to me his trading price of 1.09 before the fight was too short. As the fight was going in-play my strategy was to get out after 5-6 rounds when I'd try and back him for around 1.20. It didn't turn out this way as Bobby 'The Machine' Gunn turned out to be more of a 'Tumble Dryer' and fell to the canvas soon after the fight started. My low liability meant I only made a small loss of £9.90.

Australia v England
I convinced myself that England had a chance in this one and that proved costly. After posting a score of 247 the general opinion on the Betfair forum was that England hadn't scored enough and even though I agreed I didn't think it was as bad as many thought. I'd previously jotted down that a par score would be around 265 so if England could take a couple of early wickets it'd be 'match on'. They didn't and they also struggled to peg the Australian score back (mainly due to an expensive Mahmood) and once Ponting got settled an English victory was never on the cards. My delay in realising this meant a loss of £30.84.

US Masters
The course at Augusta is a beast. It's very long and very difficult and this meant it was impossible to identify a winner until the final holes. The key point for me was Zach Johnson's shot to the par 3 16th. As soon as it landed 10 feet away from the pin I lumped on him at 1.80 and this proved to be a wise move. The 16th hole has ended many dreams in the past and as soon as he made birdie I guessed he'd done enough to take the green jacket. Tiger Woods made me sweat a little but it wasn't to be his day and even though Johnson made a bogey on the 17th he'd done enough to take victory. I ended up with a flattering profit of £105.27 on the tournament.

I'm doing the garden tomorrow and it's back to the day job on Tuesday so my next trading action will be the darts on Thursday - where am I going to make profits after that finishes?!?

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just came across this site. Looks very interesting and I look forward to following your progress

Mark Iverson said...

Thanks Lon987,

It's nice to know I have some readers!

All the best

Mark

www.stanjames.com