Daily P/L: £316.09Monthly P/L: £253.38What can I say? Not much really apart from a huge amount of indiscipline, impatience and stupidity led to my biggest loss to date. The snooker markets I was confident would reap dividends decided to get their own back by starting my day with a £138 loss in the first Higgins v O'Sullivan frame and from there the downward spiral started as (I hate to admit this bit) I tried to chase my losses. Horse Racing, Badminton, Tiddlywinks - if you'd given me the chance I would have got involved in all of them today - it really was that bad.I haven't been happy with my trading for the last week as an amount of frustration has crept in and a loss like this has been coming for a while but I have to put things into perspective. I need to concentrate back on the processes involved and not the end result. I've been guilty about getting too far ahead of myself and I've paid the price. This happens to us all so my immediate goal is to focus on just getting back to even for the month. With the Premier League Darts on tomorrow I can revert to a sport that I'm comfortable with and if I take my time there should be opportunities to take advantage of. Consolidation is now key and it's at times like these you have to earn your money - there's no such thing as a free lunch..
Daily P/L: £62.71 Monthly P/L: £62.71The future's bright, the future's snooker! Well, maybe not but from what I can see it looks like a game I should be able to make money out of. One thing is for sure - it's very volatile especially if you get involved in the frame markets which is what I did today. After reading Gareth's post I tried to make sure I limited my risk by reducing my maximum liability to 9% of my bank and due to the dramatic price fluctuations this was more than enough to make decent figures. At one stage my green figure was quite a bit higher than the one I'm posting but I got caught in one frame and that was enough to make me pack it in for the afternoon.I also did something very wise today. I often here of disaster stories from other traders that normally go along the lines of "Betfair suddenly crashed, I couldn't get out of my trade and I lost £400!" As I don't want to be in this position I decided to split my trading bank by transfering enough cash to my Betdaq account to cover my largest trade. Even though I've got the Betfair telephone number pinned to my desk sometimes this isn't enough and this will give me another escape route should it be needed.It'll be more snooker for me tomorrow but I've already got one eye on the Taylor v Barneveld showdown on Thursday..
Daily P/L: £8.35 Monthly P/L: £93.67I took a look at the Welsh Open snooker tonight and was pleasantly surprised. There was no frame betting available as it was the first round so I had to make do with the match odds market instead. Perry was up against Parrot and he started the match as a strong 1.30 favourite. As I'm a novice when it comes to trading snooker I kept my trade sizes relatively low and took a very cautious approach. It seemed to pay off as I identified a few opportunities where the price had moved a bit too far, which allowed me the chance to do a bit of scalping. It's amazing how much the market reacts though - an example was when Perry lost the first frame and his price traded as high as 1.59, when he won the second frame his price shot back down to 1.28! With the score only at 1-1 in a first to 5 frame contest you can see that the market was prone to over reacting. All this is good news for us traders.I'm away on business for the next couple of days but plan to get involved with the Premier League Darts on Thursday. I'm hoping that I can hold my discipline and make a good profit as each match should be competitive.
Daily P/L: £6.15 Monthly P/L: £6.15 Okay, I might not be sprinting out of the blocks but I've started the month in the right way. Not much action, just a little dabble into with the Malta Cup Snooker and the Premier League Darts.My involvement with the snooker was more of an education. I'll often play with small stakes on events I'm not overly familiar with. Don't get me wrong - I always devise a strategy before trading but if my thoughts are unproven then I'll always edge on the side of caution. To me, good defense is even more important than good offense (and yes, I pinched that from the book Market Wizards).I was cautious with the Darts for a different reason. The Premier League format is completely different to normal tournaments so matches need to be approached in a slightly different way. I wanted to see if my strategy would hold up and I'm happy to report it did. Although the liquidity in the markets isn't great, I'm confident that if I pick my spots, I should have a profitable campaign.The Six Nations will be my main focus for the weekend. I'll only be trading on the Saturday as on Sunday I'll be going to the Wales v Ireland game and unfortunately, as I Welshman, I'm very pessimistic about our chances. Too many injuries, a dodgy coach and a lack of strength in depth leave me cringing that this could be a good day to be Irish but you never know. If you plan to watch on TV then please keep an eye out for me...I'll be wearing red!
