One Year On - Part II

My last blog post reflected upon my development in my trading throughout the previous twelve months and considered my development to have been unthinkable. Even more unthinkable however, would be the progress in my work life throughout the previous twelve months.

Most people join Betfair with a vision of sitting back, watching sports and having a better, more interesting life away from the daily grind of work. I don’t know if I ever subscribed to the full time dream but it is certainly safe to say that I was highly disillusioned with my work life twelve months ago and frankly despised going into work.

In a nutshell, I left University with a set plan which then flipped on its head due to an enforced job change to something of no interest, challenge or relevance to me and then due to other events involving health and fitness, flipped to an entirely new position. And the next thing I know, I find Betfair and try to use that to edge me closer back to my original plan.

Now, whilst I am still far away from the ideal path I envisioned on leaving University, I feel I am edging closer to it having amazingly been promoted from my current job. (And even though the new job is a fairly significant promotion, the increase in earnings is less than a very good weekend on Betfair due to several reasons!) Still, it not only should produce a confidence boost but also a feel of some contentment given that I am starting to do something to meet the ridiculously high expectations I set for myself.

It’s hard to find the words to illustrate what a dramatic turnaround this is without going into too much detail, which I would rather avoid, but believe me when I say that no-one could have ever seen this coming. In fact, it is such a ridiculous turnaround that any script portraying this would be rejected due to its sheer ridiculousness!

You may wonder why I have chosen to blog about a seemingly irrelevant topic but this actually has a huge effect on my trading.

Put simply, my trading over the past few months has suffered from a lack of preparation (As have the blog posts!). Whereas last year I would watch copious game film and analysis of teams before a RL match, this year I have struggled to even keep up with the highlights and have largely winged it and due to my perfection tendencies, have been too caught up in greening up at the earliest opportunity. This is largely due to the insane number of hours I have been working which, whilst unlikely to decrease going forward, is something I can definitely fit my trading around better, even if I am finding it more difficult this year to fit my trading around my social life.

So, hopefully, regular readers will benefit from greater analysis both pre and post match although I think it might take a couple of weeks to catch up with this.

Before I end the post however, allow me to comment briefly on the weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix. On Saturday qualification, I managed a profit approaching £15. On Sunday, I managed a profit over fourteen times greater although I consider my performance on Saturday to be much better.

By Saturday, I usually have an open book expecting the market to move in certain directions but I woke up on Saturday morning feeling extremely ill and unable to trade. Now, at 4 AM, there isn’t a great amount of liquidity and so I looked to largely trade out of positions not expecting to be in any fit state to trade the qualification market in play. However, I didn’t fully trade out due to what I considered to be poor value on some drivers and therefore entered Qualifying with a red of £70 on Vettel, Hamilton and Alonso.

Whilst I did feel terrible, my inability to sleep meant that I did watch qualification and whilst only trading at half speed, eventually managed to remove any red which I considered to be a phenomenal achievement.

Whereas in the race itself, I felt out of control and feel that I rather got lucky with some trades. However, I am starting to wonder if this is just typical of wet races where there is so much activity. After all, if you have cars entering pits and your live timing screen not working, it is to be expected that you can’t keep up with everyone – well I can’t!

Still, despite being caught out by the ridiculous pre race odds on Lewis Hamilton (I had laid at 10 post Qualy considering this to be huge value; especially when I was able to back his team mate who was AHEAD of him at 30!) and amazed at the odds on Mark Webber (9 whilst second?!), I obviously managed to do some things right!

It’s interesting to note that someone could have easily made my profit just by two or three well placed trades on Sebastien Vettel before the race, but I feel my strategy is much less risky and therefore the profit (whilst more difficult to obtain and involves much more hard work) is much much more rewarding and meaningful!

A three week break from the races is now on the cards before they move onto Europe which I feel shall see an increase in liquidity and may take me a couple of races to react to; especially if such seemingly ridiculous prices continue!

Until then, any comments are gratefully received as usual!