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.

Any Profit Is Better Than A Loss

Daily P/L: £14.49
Monthly P/L: £32.80

My life is a little hectic at the moment. Just before Christmas I gained quite a big promotion with the company I work for and although my official start date for the new position isn't until 5th February it's already having an effect on my spare time.

For the last 2 and a half years I've been fortunate (depends which way you look at it!) to work with my Fiancee - I say fortunate as we've been able to get by with having just the one car and get to see each other without any hassle. This is now going to change as I'll be working in a seperate office in Cardiff Bay so today we've had to go car hunting. Ended up finding something that will do the job and I pick the new motor up on Monday. Things aren't that simple though as now my Fiance also wants a new car as the one we had is "not good enough". This means that I'll have to go car hunting again over the next week and it's clear that my life/trading balance is sloping the wrong way!

These events ended up cutting down my involvement in the BDO Darts but I got involved briefly. The liquidity in the match odds markets wasn't anywhere near the levels of the PDC event last week so I played cautiously and lowered my trading stakes just in case I got into a position I couldn't get out of.

In the end I managed a £14.49 profit which moves me closer to my monthly target but I know I'll have to step it up a bit over the next 7 days.

I'm off to a wedding reception tonight but if I'm sober enough then on my return I hope to take a look at the Dallas @ Seattle NFL game that kicks off at 1am......mmm....drink and a late night.....maybe not a good idea....we shall see.