Eight Swallows: Betfair Trading

My February 2021, Trading Update.

For anyone who has read this blog on a regular basis I thank you for following along with my progress. I still intend to post from time to time going forward but this will be the last regular full monthly update.

Without giving too much away about how I trade, when I do enter a trade there has to be a strong reason(s) for me to enter the market and if while I’m in the trade that reason disappears then rather than wait and hope I just immediately trade out.

Well, the strong reason for me starting to record my progress on this blog has disappeared so I’m effectively closing the trade on it.

If you read the daily update for 20^th Feb below, (my new record day) you’ll see it was the trigger for the decision to stop the regular updates. It gives a bit more on how/why I made this decision.

I will still blog on an ad hoc basis and just so you know there are 3 things that would trigger me to post going forward.

The first two are A) a month where I go through the entire month without a red race and B) the first month when I win £2,000. I think either of those milestones would be worthy of note.

The third option is if there is a topic to do with trading, playing poker or gambling in general that interests or annoys me enough to write about it.

Anyway the daily breakdown is immediately below this and the summary and a few of my random thoughts are at the bottom.

Daily Breakdown

Day off 1^st and 2^nd. Call me a fussy old fart but I didn’t fancy “jumpers bumpers” on the AW at Newcastle.

3^rd Feb

One decent trade and a scratch. I have been doing these scratch trades a bit more often lately not entirely sure why, but not too concerned about it. Todays was a £1.27 green. I think there is a fine balance between being positive and making a decisive entry into the market and jumping the gun a bit.

I’m going to stop recording them as “scratches” because when I look at my Betfair account at the end of the month it just says X number of trades it doesn’t care if I entered and more or less changed my mind within seconds.

Number of Races 4

Traded 2, 0 losses, 2 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £40.36

Daily Total Plus £41.63

Bank £2,041.63

4^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,041.63

What a weird day. I thought it would be a really good day with 3 jumps meetings (2 on RTV) with lots of races in my sweet spot between 12.30pm – 2.30pm.

Turned out not so good.

Did 4 small trades 2 B2L and 2 L2B. The L2B’s were poor with not much on at poor prices and the 2 B2L’s were fine but with my B2L stakes I can only win £8 on a successful trade.

That meant that I ended up having 4 trades at about £8 each. I was actually quite pleased with the B2L’s only small stakes/greens but decent trades, I think.

Number of Races 12

Traded 4, 0 losses, 4 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £8.91

Daily Total Plus £31.81

Bank £2,073.44

5^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,073.44

Steady day nothing too exciting. Had to be patient but got a couple of OK trades out of the day. Well, I say day I traded for about 2 hours. I’ve often thought about trading Cricket or Football, but I love that races last less than 5 mins and you can dip in and out through the day. I doubt I could concentrate on a 90-minute footy match with the intensity required and I deffo wouldn’t want to study a cricket match for 4 or 5 hours a day.

Number of Races 8

Traded 2, 0 losses, 2 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £46.52

Daily Total Plus £67.58

Bank £2,141.02

6^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,141.02

Damn and blast. Got a bad red on the 1^st race I traded when there were three options open to me and I managed to pick the only one that meant a red trade. A) I could have left it as a “no trade” or B) when I decided to lay it on the signals, I could have instantly entered so I’d got a much lower price than I did and so my back bets would have been taken. Sadly, I opted for door C) where I was just too hesitant and entered later at a higher price and although the price still went out only about half of my back bet money was taken before the horse rallied and came back to win.

A lot of people in the Telegram group had a successful trade on the race, so it was an opportunity but my execution was poor.

Only real highlight was a successful B2L on the 14.10 at Leopardstown. Such small stakes though on my B2L’s so I really wasted my last trade of the day. (As soon as I’d had the big red, I was determined to not trade more than 5 races)

The 84p red and £5.23 green were basically scratches but I’m determined not to overtrade this month, as it worked so well for me last month. 

Number of Races 15

Traded 5, 2 losses, 3 wins, Biggest loss £68.71, biggest win £31.14

Daily Total Minus – £25.22

Bank £2,115.80

7^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,115.80

A day where I just plodded along. No really good trades but another successful B2L trade. I may start making a separate note of my P&L on those because I may be able to raise my stakes on them if I can prove to myself that I’m profitable on them.

Only really 3 trades as one was a tiny green scratch.

Number of Races 14

Traded 4, 0 losses, 4 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £21.56

Daily Total Plus £49.45

Bank £2,165.25

8^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,165.25

Almost didn’t trade today as 2 jumps meeting off due to snow. Managed to squeeze out a small green day. We will have better days racing than this, so no need to force it.

May have to go back to separately recording scratch trades as its makes my av trade look so bad. Only really did 2 trades.

Number of Races 9

Traded 4, 0 losses, 4 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £12.44

Daily Total Plus £31.30

Bank £2,196.55

9^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,196.55

Just a bumper jumper so did one trade and called it a day.

Number of Races 1

Traded 1, 0 losses, 1 win, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £21.02

Daily Total Plus £21.02

Bank £2,217.57

10^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,217.57

Ironically the AW meeting at Newcastle was cancelled due to the weather!

So just Wolves at night-time. Only watched a 7f race that fitted my criteria and got a small green with half stakes. I was determined not to get into trouble on such a day.

Number of Races 1

Traded 1, 0 losses, 1 win, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £14.81

Daily Total Plus £14.81

Bank £2,232.38

11^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,232.38

Another day with just jumper bumpers but managed to get a couple of bits out of the day.

Number of Races 5

Traded 3, 1 loss, 2 wins, Biggest loss £3.48, biggest win £26.70

Daily Total Plus £43.40

Bank £2,275.78

12^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,275.78

One very strange race where the prices on the exchange at times didn’t seem to bear any relation to the reality of the horses’ actual performance. I ended up, through an abundance of caution, taking a small red. (about 3% of my total liability)

I laid it for chunks at an average price of 2.97 when it looked like a 20/1 shot. The price just refused to reflect where it was positioned and how it was travelling and although I got half my offsets taken the other half were still in the market when they were rounding the turn.

If not fully matched I feel that trading out when they come round the final bend is, on balance, the right thing to do, safety wise.

The horse didn’t win and others in the group were out and fully matched.

I spoke to Andrew about the trade after he’d had chance to re-watch it and see a video showing the race and prices.

I was a bit pissed off to get a red of course but he thought I traded it well. Good entry point and reasons for doing so and an exit strategy that over time will serve me well.

Number of Races 6

Traded 2, 1 loss, 1 win, Biggest loss £11.57, biggest win £33.78

Daily Total Plus £22.21

Bank £2,297.99

13^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,297.99

Managed to turn a £30 green into a £44 red being greedy. That made what would have been a very good day into an OK one.

Number of Races 11

Traded 4, 1 loss, 3 wins, Biggest loss £44.07, biggest win £53.09

Daily Total Plus £44.96

Bank £2,342.95

14^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,342.95

Decent day 3 greens, though one of them was a scratch really.

Number of Races 9

Traded 3, 0 losses, 3 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £48.60

Daily Total Plus £79.20

Bank £2,422.15

15^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,422.15

I was overly cautious on race 1 a bumper jumper at Lingfield and actually missed a pretty easy trade.

Got a good one in the second race though and a small bit on the third. So, with 2 jumps meetings on RTV I do 2 trades on Betfair Video on the AW!

I’ll take it though.

Number of Races 5

Traded 2, 0 losses, 2 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £47.71

Daily Total Plus £62.22

Bank £2,484.37

16^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,484.37

Watched a fair few races, zero trades.

Bank £2,484.37

17th Feb

Starting Bank £2,484.37

Just one trade today which was a B2L (where I only use fixed £25 stakes), but this was the first B2L I’ve ever done where I’ve gone for a double click. So effectively in for £50.

Very pleased with that trade but sadly no more opportunities by the time I had to stop trading due to work stuff.

Number of Races 8

Traded 1, 0 losses, 1 win, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £15.92

Daily Total Plus £15.92

Bank £2,500.29

18^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,500.29

Decent days racing. Got 2 good trades quite early in the day.

Number of Races 6

Traded 2, 0 losses, 2 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £37.33

Daily Total Plus £61.00

Bank £2,561.29

19^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,561.29

Missed an easy one earlier as I got the time of the race wrong and switched BA on just as they crossed the line!

Anyway, no matter got a fairly easy one on the 14.12 at Fakenham.

Number of Races 5

Traded 1, 0 losses, 1 win, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £43.58

Daily Total Plus £43.58

Bank £2,604.87

20^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,604.87

Wow, what a day. Nothing for a bit then 3 one after the other. The third being my biggest ever trade, to give me a new record day.

I normally screenshot and tweet it out when I’ve had a good day, but I was so excited that I instantly switched BA and my computer off. When I came back some hours later to write this up having calmed down, I decided against it.

I’ve always felt it fine to screen shot my green screens and post them up when I was a “plucky underdog”, but with this win today I feel if I posted it up, it would just be showing off.

“Cock waving” as some successful traders call it. Andrew does not allow anyone to post green screens in the telegram room. I think I’m right in saying that I’m the only member who publicly posts his results.

I’ve been considering for a while stopping the monthly updates and I think today has finally made me realise for certain that I should.

Several people have offered many differing opinions on why I do this blog. They are all wrong. Just lately I’ve even been accused of running it purely for affiliate and ad revenue.

I didn’t start these trading updates back in Oct 2019 for that reason and it wasn’t to show off either.

I started them, to make me face up to the fact that I was losing all the time. So, by recording my results, I would have to face facts and either do something about it or quit trading.

Well after 8 consecutive green months I can safely say that the original reason for me doing this is no longer there.

You can read my first trading update post from Oct 2019 here. I just read it myself and it made me LOL.

Anyway, regarding the day today well chuffed obviously.

Number of Races 8

Traded 3, 0 losses, 3 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £147.79

Daily Total Plus £181.92

Bank £2,786.79

21^st Feb

Starting Bank £2,786.79

Nice steady day.

Number of Races 4

Traded 2, 0 losses, 2 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £30.13

Daily Total Plus £54.16

Bank £2,840.95

22^nd Feb

Starting Bank £2,840.95

Highlight of the day was Andrew did a live Q&A in the Telegram room which was very good. As it was 6-7pm in the evening only a couple of races on at Wolves but he talked us through those in-between any Q’s the members typed in.

I’d already finished trading and didn’t have BA switched on, but it was very useful to hear his thoughts.

Number of Races 4

Traded 2, 0 losses, 2 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £18.73

Daily Total Plus £34.44

Bank £2,875.39

23^rd Feb & 24^th Feb

Day off from trading today and tomorrow due to work sadly.

25^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,875.39

Number of Races 6

Traded 1, 0 losses, 1 win, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £18.55

Daily Total Plus £18.55

Bank £2,893.94

26th Feb

Day Off

27^th Feb

Starting bank £2,893.94

Late start and an early finish as I had a few things to do.

Just one trade not a very good one.

Number of Races 7

Traded 1, 0 losses, 1 win, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £28.75

Daily Total Plus £28.75

Bank £2,922.69

28^th Feb

Starting Bank £2,922.69

Number of Races 8

Traded 2, 0 losses, 2 wins, Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £23.91

Daily Total Plus £36.67

Bank £2,959.36

Summary

So there you have it, as a long-term consistent loser who started this blog to make myself face facts. I now believe I’m a long-term consistently profitable trader.

Although, I won’t be giving up the day job just yet,

I said back in my trading update for July 2020 after a first green month following 2 red ones that, “This is the most positive update I’ve had yet. I feel sure I’ve taken a good step forward this month”.

I also said “one swallow doesn’t make a summer”, but now I’m up to eight. For the observant of you I know there are nine swallows in the image on the post but I couldn’t find one with eight!

Admittedly I’m still not winning huge chunks of money, but after 8 consecutive green months there is currently no reason for me to doubt I’ll be green month on month moving forward.

I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly say “thank you” to Andrew at Back for Profit for turning me and my trading around.

I’ve read through a lot of my old posts recently and it has been beneficial to me to see where I’ve improved and what I’ve learnt.

The most important lesson and my biggest improvement in the last two months is this.

I know that if I trade 25 days a month for an average of £40 that equates to £1,000 but I don’t think like that when I trade anymore.

I don’t switch Bet Angel on thinking “I want to get X from the market today”. I’m now able to detach myself and switch BA on and just think “what will the market give me today?”

It is a very subtle change in mental approach but it makes a huge difference.

Some days the market might give me nothing and others it might be £181 but I have learned to live with it and totally accept it. Trying to force it only ever ends badly.

Thanks everyone

Thank you to everyone for reading the blog and the mainly positive messages I’ve received. When I started writing the regular updates they were read by a handful of people. I had about 10 followers on Twitter and my followers were all like me “struggling traders”.

The numbers reading it grew because they could could all see themselves in my struggles.

I wish you all well with your trading.

GL and stay green!