JOE BLOGS TRADER

30 January 2008 - Money matters

I just got handed my pay slip for January. £1391 net pay from £1916. What a joke. Thats £303 to income tax, £162.98 to national insurance and £59 to my student loan. I dont know if that is right but it sounds like a hell of a lot of tax. Then, my boss tells us that its her birthday so we can all go to pizza express tomorrow for lunch. She says it like it will be a treat. But its not. She or the company wont pay for it so it will have to come out of my own wallet. Probably about £14 after drinks and tip. So that's 1% of my monthly wage already out the door and its not even in my account yet. I probably sound like a tight bastard now but Im not. Im just very bad at saving. Every month I try and save but by the end of it I am in the poor house and borrowing money. I spend most my money on food and drink. I wouldnt have it any other way and when I am buying dinner I buy enough for everyone at home even though they rarely do the same back. I like to cook and I like to feed so i like to see the pleasure in peoples faces when they are enjoying the food that i have cooked them. The only answer is to get a better paid job or make some money on the side. Well this is 2008 and Im going to try and do both.

Anyway I'm basically having a rant because I dont have much to report on the trading front. I havent been able to watch much football mainly due to social obligations though I am keeping an eye on the republic of ireland next manager. The latest debarcle is trappatoni coming in from god knows where to 3's on the betting exchanges. Highly doubtful in my opinion so Ive laid at 3s and he's already drifted out to 7s.

24 January 2008

The next manager markets can be a bit of a joke. I have been trading the next ROI manager and it now  seems that terry venables is the favourite for the job. And yet, last night - he had drifted out to 14s. I have no idea why and it seems no one on the betfair forum knew why either. The thread on the forum is now up to 20 pages long. Anyway it was good for me because I re backed venables at 14, laid off some more at 8 and now he has come down to 2.4s. So now I have an all green book with 11% profit on Venables. Of course If Id stuck to my guns and kept my big lay on houllier id be sitting on a 23% profit, however, I would have had to sit and cross my fingers while venables's odds kept drifting for no known reason. Its hard to know wherther any of these price movements actually mean anything. It seems that the FAI are nowhere nearer to securing anyone for the role so is looks like this ferry go round of a market could go on for a bit longer yet. I like playnig these markets because the volatility can be massive. Basically because everything is based on rumour so its hard to quantify. Maybe I will just stick to next manager markets in the future and a bit of cricket. Speaking of cricket - I backed ozzie in the final test at 2's and theyve now drifted to 2.76. Basically this was a punt not a trade and I probably shouldnt have done it but tests last for 5 days so ill see what opportunities there are to trade out.

22 January 2008

I traded on the Liverpool v Aston Villa game last night and managed to make a profit of £5. Unfortunately for me, this was all betfair's money though I did get a free shirt and a couple of beers.

I was at a free Betfair education night put on by two of betfairs people, which I had received invitation to by email. It was a good night though I didnt really learn much new. If you are a complete beginner it's well worth going. I did learn a nifty way to level out your position using only the betfair interface and also a lovely if unethical little program that allows you to keep an eye on your bets while at work - even if your company is one that likes to block all gambling related web pages. Its called bet watcher and can be found in the betfair labs section. It was also good to meet a few fellow gamblers and have a general question and answer session. We then proceeded to watch the liverpool v villa game and were given £50 to trade with using demo accounts. For a fleeting moment, I did consider putting in a crazy back at 1000 on some empty market using my mobile and then using betfairs fund to lay, giving me 50 quid. But who would want to fleece the good people of betfair out of 50 quid? I considered I would probably get caught and banned for life so decided against it.

Those in profit on the match won a betfair polo shirt. I'll be sure to get that one out next time im painting the house :)

As for my own trading, well my funds are still a bit tied up which means I havent been able to do much. Ive been trying to trade the next manager markets for Scotland and Ireland and have managed to get a green book on Ireland and a pretty much green book on Scotland (red on tommy burns). I actually managed to back george burley at 6.8 and it looks like he will now be getting the job to give me an 8% profit.

I manoueverd to a big red on gerard houllier for the irish job when i heard from the bbc that he would not be going but then as a number of further rumours came out i was extremely worried that I had made a big mistake. Luckily, the market has managed to flip flop a little and i managed to offset my profit on venables on to houllier to give me 7% on houllier and 6% profit on venables. 1% profit on everyone else. Hopefully these markets will get sorted out soon cos I want some funds back to get going on the poker and football again. :)

Test

For some reason I am not appearing in the recently uploaded blogs section. This is annoying as this is where most of my readers come from. lastminute , what is going on?

21 January 2008

Well it is monday morning and not for the first time in the last week it has taken me over 1 hour and a half to get in to work. Because I work in central london i always take public transport but todays journey was just an absolute nightmare.

I woke up, looked out the window - major traffic on roads so decided to get the train. just missed the train so decided to get the 419 bus to hammersmith. waited 15 mins for the bus then major roadworks on the route sent the bus on the most stupid journey ever taking half an hour to do a journey that normally takes 5 minutes. Added to this, there was traffic at every turn. Then, 3 schoolkids got on and proceeded to shout, scream and 'MC' all the way. Soon, the young guy behind me (about 30) lost his rag and started shouting at them. ''Why don't you shut the f*ck up", "Youre screaming like a bunch of girls", "Youve got no respect". More sarcastic comments followed from the kids and the man behind me then climbed over the back of his seat in a fit of rage "Im gonna smack 'em" and started laying into one of them. At this point I get up and try to break it up. They break up and even then these kids continue to make sarcastic comments! I just do not know what you are supposed to do in these situations. Thankfully the bus got a clear route into hammersmith soon after that. Not the best way to kick off a monday morning.

As for trading, I managed to make another 1% last night trading on the Inverness Rangers game and later I am going to a betfair trading seminar at betfair towers. Dont know what it will be like but its free so I'll go along then report my findings.

20 January 2008

My football trading couldnt be any worse at the moment. The last 3 games where I have tried backing the under 2.5 goals have resulted in 4 goals, 6 goals (manchester united) and another 6 goals (liverpool). Then yesterday with newcastle 0-0 I decided to lay the under 1.5 goal at half time for a great price and there were no goals. I have decided that I need to pay closer attention to how the game is going and move back to smaller stakes. Hopefully I'll be making money on the football again before too long.

Meanwhile over to the one and only on the bbc and all my recommended backs are doing well. cher, sinatra, lionel and elton have all shortened. robbie has lengthened a little but not by much. :)
I may post some more tips later.

18th January 2008

No trading last night apart from another dabble in the oz v india test match and a review of the next manager markets. I managed to back ozzie again when they hit 2.84, they actually traded much higher than this last night but once they took a few wickets the odds settled back down to around 2.4 - I had already traded out at 2.6. A trade that I had set up to come in whilst I was in bed. That takes the book to +13% whoever wins.

The next Ireland manager market is still all green for me though my profit is slight reduced on the new favourite -gerard houllier. To be honest Im not sure why his odds have dropped, it sounds like it would be a strange appointment in my opinion but stranger things have happened. MY lay of Deschamps has proven correct though as he has now drifted out to 44. While I have also gained a free bet on John Sheridan. The Oldham man may not be in with much of a chance but I felt the 700 offered up on him on betfair was a tad high so I took this and then managed to lay off around 200. A profit of over 1k if it comes in. That would be nice! :p

Souness has now dropped to second favourite behind mark mcghee to be the new scotland boss and i cant argue with that. I have a small green on mcghee and a small red on souness and im pretty hopeful that mcghee will get it but anythings possible.

Punts (1)

In a new part of the blog I have decided to document a number of punts that I will be making throughout the year. I am calling them punts as most of them will be long term positions that I will take by looking at stats and using my own intuition. In reality, though I will often trade out of many of these positions so you could more accurately call them long term trades.

The Next Manager Markets

I like exploring the bets on offer in the next manager markets as I have had a lot of success with them and sometimes they offer a lot of volatility. I was involved in the next newcastle manager and ended up with a loss of 2% that is yet to be settled. I did actually manage to back Kevin Keegan at 9's, however, I traded out as I couldnt see it happening myself and I had a number of other positions on other candidates.

Ireland. I have an all green book on this market after I correctly predicted a shortening of odds of Terry Venables and the drifting of Paul Jewell's odds. Recently, I have backed Lawrie Sanchez at 19s as I know he is being interviewed for the job and I have laid Didi Deschamps as I think his odds are too low.

The One and Only (BBC1). I have taken an interest in this show after watching both of the first two episodes. I have done alright in reality tv markets in the past and after watching the shows I am recommending the following backs:

Cher @ 4.0    Reccommend a small back. She seems to have all the Cher moves, looks just liker her but imo her voice is a little lacking. But I feel her odds may well shorten. This type of show has never been done before so it is difficult to predict what will happen but for some reason I have a feeling that a guy will win it. This favourite could easily be overturned.

Frank Sinatra    @ 7.0 One of the best voices in the competition Im sure this guy will have strong public support throughout and will go far possibly to the end but Im not sure if he'll win it.

Robbie Williams @ 8.0 Not the best voice but a dead ringer for Robbie and could have a loyal following due to the fact robbie is so popular and the people voting - young girls(?) will take a liking to him

Lionel Richie @ 7.0   I like this guys voice and he is a bit quirky being a) white and b) ginger. Could be a dark horse

Elton John @ 32    I was surprised to see Elton John priced so highly as he was one of my favourites from the show. He has a good strong voice that is like eltons and can also play the piano well which will be in his favour. It would be nice if this one comes in :)

Because of this I feel the other contestants can be rightly opposed. Diana Ross, madonna, kylie, dusty sprignfield and tom jones seem to have pretty weak voices in my opinion from the first two shows and I feel britney spears's act isnt quite good enough.

17 January 2008

No trading last night as I went out for dinner instead and I am having a bit of a rest. I havent been in the right frame of mind to trade the football recently after a couple of poor results. I am still looking at this market but since I am way ahead of my daily targets, I think a rest is the best option. I did play a bit of poker when I got in though and picked up two bad beats to finish -7% down. After the other night though, I think I deserved them. :)

Im going to post a bit later about a couple of punts I have going on.

Result -7%

16th January 2008

I did not involve myself in any football trading last night or poker as I already have a quite a liability on a few of the new manager markets. I will talk about these in a later post because so far they have been very interesting to watch. Instead, I did manage to trade a little on the Australia v India test match even though with the time difference it is very difficult for me to trade.

Because of the time difference I cannot trade this as well as I like which is annoying because the test matches so far have all been great trading opportunities. Therefore I decided to have a bit of a punt with half stakes and lay Australia at 1.39 with 5% of bank before the test had begun. It was a bit of a punt because I would not know the outcome of the toss or how the batting team starts. However, my reasoning was in a five day test match this is a trade with plenty of upside but little downside. (even if india start poorly - aussie odds may not drop that much). I woke up to find that on a fast wakka track, India were not doing too badly and aussie odds had drifted to 2.5. I then traded out my position to give a 10% profit whatever the result. Considering I am unable to watch the first five or so hours of each day I may well leave the rest of the test alone, although if i see another trading opportunity tomorrow morning I may go back in to try and increase the profit. Ill include the result when the test match is concluded.

Before the end of last year, I was undoubtedly a losing punter at cricket trading. In fact out of all sports, it was cricket where I lost the most amount of money. It is clear I used to 'chase' matches - I would keep taking the odds on offer in the hope that they would run in my favour and then trade out. However, Ive found that chasing the market in this way is a very wrong thing to do. Ive still got a lot to learn, but by taking a stand with what i believe are low risk trades, I seem to be doing a lot better.