End Of Month

Daily P/L: £20.66
Monthly P/L: £137.22

Well, that's it for January. My trading has finished for the month and even though I've increased my bank by over 16% I'm well off my target. This is mainly down to my soccer farce. By desperately looking for a sport to trade I reverted back to soccer and incurred a big loss. My thinking was that by not trading I was missing out. How wrong I was. It took me over a week to get back to the same position and made making my monthly target mission impossible.

Lesson learnt - if there's not an event to trade then I'll simply go for a pint or switch on a film instead.

When it came to today it was all about picking up what I could.

As promised, I had a look at the Qatar Masters. Some things became apparent very quickly; liquidity is nowhere near the same level as PGA Tour events, scoring updates via the internet are around 5 minutes behind and information available on the course/players isn't half as comprehensive as the American equivalent. Despite these issues I entered the market at various points and successfully made a small profit. This trial run has given me the view that the PGA Tour still needs to be my main focus so I'm going to have to seriously consider Setanta as an option.

My other trading success came from the rugby match between Saracens and London Irish. I'm much better at reading games now and with the Six Nations starting next week this is hopefully a good omen.

To help me plan my trading schedule for February I'm using the Betfair sporting calendar - give it a go by visiting here.

PGA Tour Finds A New Home

Daily P/L: £12.03
Monthly P/L: £116.56

This is bad news. After looking at TV listings regarding upcoming golf tournaments I noticed that there was no mention of the PGA Tour on Sky Sports. Towards the end of last year I'd become very comfortable with trading on the sport and especially the PGA Tour. This is mainly due to all American sports having great resources of information available on the web which inevitably help any trader substantially. A quick scan over the sports pages of 'The Sun' ended up confirming my fears - PGA Tour coverage is now exclusively live on the Setanta Sports Channel.

This is detrimental for a number of reasons. Firstly, Setanta is a subscription channel that would put another £15 a month onto my overheads. As you can imagine, viewing the sport you want to trade is very important so my second concern is that liquidity in these markets will drop significantly as other Betfair users won't be prepared to shell-out for the coverage. Finally, if I'm unable to trade on what's potentially my most successful sport, then I'm going to have to work even harder to find a replacement.

So, what do I do?

I wasn't due to start my golf trading season until March so I've a little time to think things through. One option is to switch my attention to the European Tour which Sky Sports have picked up instead, but their tournaments don't supply as much free information.

To get a heads up, I may take a look at the Qatar Masters in the morning and see what happens.

Anyway, back to today. Thankfully, I stumbled across the One Day International between India and the West Indies. There was a moment when I thought I'd have to put my feet up for the weekend but fortunately a topsy turvey game gave me a chance to improve my profit & loss.

With India batting first they cruised into a very commanding position. After 36 overs they'd thumped 234 runs for 4 wickets and a score of well over 300 was on the cards. Their price was as low as 1.32 and the West Indies were struggling to peg them back but they then proceeded to throw the game away. Their middle order and tail end batsmen crumbled and they finished all out for 268. I'd already entered the market with a strong position on an Indian win as I felt any score in advance of 280 would be enough so with such a poor finish to the innings my confidence was starting to waver. However, as I anticipated a slow start from the West Indies I decided to watch the first 5 overs of their innings before making any further actions. Fortunately, Gayle lost his wicket to the first ball and the price on India came in rapidly from 2.00 to 1.50 so I bailed out for a small loss on my initial trade. I then re-entered the market at various points which eventually made up my small gain for the day.

It's obvious to me after today that I have to invest a lot of time in cricket to make 2007 a good year.

A Missed Opportunity

This hurts, perhaps, a little more than it should.

For the last few days I've been scratching my head searching the markets for opportunities to trade. I'd drawn a blank until last night when I reviewed the prices for the final test between South Africa and Pakistan.

The match is being played in Cape Town so I checked the weather forecast and plenty of sunshine was predicted. I also checked the stats for the ground and with an 80% history of results everything seemed to be pointing away from the draw. However, the price on the draw was very short at only 3.30. After reading some more pre-match reports and discovering that both teams were suffering from tiredness I was even more convinced that this game would end in a result.

But...I didn't trade!

I was stopped by the fact that some recent matches that had ended with a result had started with a big innings. The average first innings score was around 370 so by my reasoning, should this happen again, then the price of the draw would shorten a little further - perhaps to 2.80. My decision was to wait until this happened and then lump on with a 'lay'.

I've now just come home from work to open my position, but unfortunately it looks like this one got away - 15 wickets have already fallen and the price of the draw is now 40!

I'l learn from this lesson and won't think twice next time.

What Next?

Daily P/L: £16.20
Monthly P/L: £104.53

The good news is I've had a good weekend and have nearly clawed back the losses I inflicted on myself last week. My monthly profit is nowhere near my original aim of £255, but I'll be glad to get out of January with anything over £100.

The difficulty I have now is - What do I trade next week?

The Heineken Cup has finished for a couple of months, the NFL season is nearly over I'm not going anywhere near Soccer or Horse Racing. I'm really looking forward to the Cricket, Tennis & Golf seasons but they don't really get going until March.

In February there's the Six Nations and the start of Premier League Darts but they're both a couple of weeks away so I'm really struggling when it comes to a sport to trade - I don't fancy staying up all night so maybe it's time for an early holiday?

Any suggestions are welcome!