Doing nothing pays dividends

Daily result: £61.73 (revised)

I start my trading today much as I started yesterdays. I traded badly! I had planned to get up early (8ish) and spend the morning going over some videos of my trading to help get my focus back after the break to Newmarket - Well my alarm must have gone off and I must have turned it off as I don't remember it going off - when I did eventually wake up I thought it was actually around 8am but in fact was nearer 10. Oh well, I must have needed the sleep, but it meant I was behind my schedule and by the time I got round to reviewing videos it was 11.30am and as I like to watch Prime Ministers Questions for the usual Wednesday comedy show that is Gordon Brown I hadn't left myself much time for the videos.

I decided to look over yesterdays losses and I was pretty confident they had come from the usual error I make when I am losing or have taken a break, that being I went back to WOM trading and trying to jump in front of large amounts. I don't really know why I revert to this style when losing or having taken a break but although I know I shouldn't be doing it and say to myself not to I just seem to. Something subconsciously takes over it seems. I did use to trade like this but that was back in 2003/2004 - back then I did okay from it but then in 2006 when I did it I could never win really over a day. The reason being in my mind is that it is not what makes the prices move - yes, supply and demand are the under riding principles but 95% of time I think what makes prices move are prices. Now that probably doesn't make much sense but think about it and it should! Anyway I have kind of gone off on a tangent there. After reviewing the videos quickly I had confirmed why I had lost and that was I had just gone in guns blazing thinking I had seen an opportunity to take a tick profit but the reasoning behind going in was wrong, sometimes you can get away with it but in the long term you can't.

With this in mind I said to myself to revert to my normal style and just wait and do nothing until I saw the prices move and a chance to make money raised its head. I think this line of thinking lasted about 30seconds!!! I sat down thought I could steal a tick by getting in in front of a lump of money. Well in came a lot of money took mine and the money I was sitting on and the price went in and I lost! I said to myself - WTF are you doing, just wait and the chance will come. The next race I waited and did one scratch trade but nothing else, then the next race I slipped back into the old mind set and lost quickly, I managed to reduce the loss but I wasn't happy with myself. I took myself away from the computer had a think about what I was doing, made a cup of tea and sat back down with a new mind set and fully concentrating. The next race I won all the losses back plus a little more. As the day progressed I was finding the races very hard to trade as there were either a very short priced favourite which lends itself to WOM trading or it was a very open race with 4 or more horses all priced around the same level. I don't really like these races as my setup and brain is able to monitor the first three in the betting and it is from these horses that I make my decisions, when there are 4 or more closely priced horses it means I am unable to monitor all of them effectively and therefore one of the horses I am not closely monitoring can be effecting the three I am and therefore can cause me to be doing a trade I shouldn't.

So instead of trying to force the issue I just did nothing unless something obvious came about. This meant I made just £3.53 between 2pm and 3pm and as such was looking at a pretty average day in terms of winning. However, I didn't stray from my plan and just carried on waiting for chances to show up and if you wait long enough they will come and as long as in the mean time you have been keeping your discipline and doing nothing it will mean you are left with profits as opposed to recovering losses! In the next 40 minutes I won £20.87 and as I had kept my discipline I was able to add this to earlier profits to make the days profit a good one and above my current target!

I know that has been all a bit long winded but hopefully anyone who is still bothering to read my drivel has got the point I wanted to make. That being do nothing if no clear cut chance of making money is showing - although it won't make you money it will stop you from losing money and therefore mean you stay in profit long term! It has meant I have now got through the £700 mark on my account from £165 in just over 5 weeks whilst only using small stakes!

I may do some of the racing tonight and some of the football tonight - hope you had a good day!

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Well that was some night of trading! I ended up trading the Kempton card and had a great night of it, winning on each of the 7 races and a total of £33.73. Although I won on each race I did have a few losing trades along the way and managed to turn what were looking like 2 losing races into winning ones which was good. I was also thinking of backing the under 3.5 goals in the Newcastle v Arsenal match which would have proved profitable but I thought I should concentrate on the racing as that was going so well. Overall I ended up trading 24 markets during the day winning on 16, breaking even on 6 and losing on the 2 early races. Today was my best day of trading since starting the blog and even beats the two Breeders Cup cards! Hopefully tomorrow I can keep things going and hopefully hit the daily £25 target!