Week 43 - Race to the finish

A steady but unspectacular week last week and things seems to progressing well. If I can manage an average of £1.5k per week I will hit the £100k before the year is out, way ahead of where I expected to be. I am really focused on trying to get there. I guess that over the year I have really found my feet and confidence! I am still a little nervous about my new strategy but it does seem to be working and I am more at ease about it. I haven't experienced any major set backs with holding positions for longer at the moment. I am waiting for that moment though! For meantime I'll actively choose to take on more risk.

Week 42 - Risk and reward

Something curious has happened to my trading. It was an accident as well I will admit. When the premium charge came into being I decided to try and trade off elements and create some arb type positions to improve my commission paid. That didn't really work but what I noticed was that by using larger stakes and holding positions in the market for longer I was getting filled a lot more than using my old style of trading.That didn't work all the time though and sometimes it would move against me. But overall the positive values outweighed the negatives.

Getting used to using the larger stakes also gave me the confidence to raise stakes and to my surprise using those larger stakes I am doing better. Using bigger stakes and waiting for fills has created very rocky profits though. Some days are very poor but other days are outstanding. The effect of all of this overall is to boost by weekly total. Its a slightly more hair raising way of doing things but remarkably it seems to be working. I will stick with this method for the time being.

I guess that I will have good weeks like this one, where things generally go in my favour, but I also expect I will have a shocker at some point. I think the reason it works is because I am taking more risk and therefore at the end of the week I am getting more reward. I don't need many good weeks now to end up hitting by total but I must admit I didn't think it would involve a change in strategy. I hope I am not making a mistake.

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Year so far

Week 41 - Objective set

I've been looking at the numbers and after last week I am just over £80k for the year, less semi random Betfair charges in the last couple of weeks and going forward. So I am within touching distance of the £100k. With 11 weeks left in the year this means I need to hit around £1.5k a week to achieve my target in the year. I think that's a definite possibility, so that is what I will be aiming for. I'll push hard to get that and then I'll have to think about the next target.

I continued with the same tactic I had last week but it didn't work so well and that was a problem, but I am confident if I push on I should be ok. I am guessing things will be a bit quieter at this time of year. The races don't seem anywhere near the same quality suddenly so I am bracing myself for a lower totals, well that and the additional charges. What on earth are Betfair thinking about?!?!?! On that note I have started trading already on Betdaq and it's going well, the markets seems perfectly tradable, the volumes seem to be rising as well. Vive la revolution!

I think the interesting thing about the Betfair premium charge is that they are now taking a huge chunk of money off of me and what do I have in return? Oh, that'll be nothing sir, not even a statement of charges!

Week 40 - Back with a bang

After a bit of a sabbatical to try and work out some new strategies I am back. I thought I would be clever and try and arb between Betdaq and Betfair to work up some commission points but something odd happened. When I put positions on, it turned out a lot of them moved into profit anyway in both directions. I quickly realised that by closing out and repeating I may add to my total and that's what happened. I also had another problem, I kept winning on Betfair and losing on Betdaq. This doesn't work now as Betfair will take 20% of my winnings despite the fact I am trying to rebalance the position. So I have abandoned that strategy. I squared off my positions on Betdaq and will have to go back to the drawing board.

So I've had a very lucky week but, of course, Betfair are going to take £1k for that. I am still astounded that they have introduced such a charge.