ROC of 900%

This post will, I'm sure, attract a fair bit of criticism and ridicule, but I'm going to put my head down and charge forward nonetheless. Please feel free to attack me in any way that pleases you.

I work in the IT industry as a contract software developer, and presently have a contract working for one of the major mobile phone corporations.

Now that every man and his dog has a mobile phone, the heady days of vast, unencumbered profits for these mobile telecom companies are at an end and they will never come back, and so they have all been looking everywhere and anywhere for cost-cutting opportunities to help support their profit margins. This means, closing buildings, shutting staff restaurants, slashing the staff numbers with voluntary and forced redundancies, and by outsourcing a great deal of their knowledge and expertise to other companies, preferring a fixed cost up front than a variable, unknown cost in the future.

All this slashing and burning and desperate penny-pinching looks for all the world like a fire sale, but of course the public explanation of all this panicked action is to call it a "slim and agile approach", making the company quicker to react to market forces and more able to divert vital resources in the direction it's required. Blah, blah, blah. You get the picture. All complete bollocks of course.



Okay, so why the hell am I talking about all this? What on earth has it go to do with betting and football trading? Well, I'm glad you asked that very astute question, and here's the answer.

Last season, I had a decent lump of capital in my Betfair account, even though I largely (but not solely) concentrated on one type of betting activity - trading. This year, however, it's my intention to diversify a little more and to make better, more varied use of my betting bank.

Consequently, I've had a re-think about my trading bank size, and have decided to dramatically shrink my bank for this one activity so that I can free up some of the cash for other aspects of my betting. This means my trading bank will now only be a "slim and agile" £1,500 and this will be divided up into 75 points. I will be trading quite aggressively with this bank and will usually risk 10pts on each trade I make (although this is not a strict rule).

I don’t really have any profit targets but, based on previous experience of how I've been able to grown my money in previous seasons, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this small bank increase by the original bank size each month or so. Currently, after eight matches and only one week into the season, my ROI is 8.76% and my ROC is 27.54%. I think that's pretty good so far, and the level of risk I've exposed myself to during this last week has been relatively small (not talking bank exposure here).


Trading of course has a completely different make-up to normal betting. In normal betting an annual ROC of 50% – 100% would be great; but if I only make £1,500 on my trading throughout the year, I will be crestfallen and will probably give-up and try something else instead. To my mind, it just wouldn’t be worth the time and effort I put in. So, as I’ve just said, even though I don’t really have any targets, I wouldn't be surprised if my trading bank were up around the £14,000 or £15,000 mark by the end of the season. I would be more than happy with that, but we'll have to wait and see how I get on.

This year, I’m also playing around with straight golf bets and straight footy bets, so it will also be interesting to see how each approach fares as the season progresses - and also how it compares and contrasts with the trading. Watch this space.

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Manure Indeed

After the amazingly exciting match between Man City and Southampton yesterday, this evening's game at Everton was not really in the same league... Well technically it was, but you know what I mean. I thought Everton deserved their win.

Of Man Utd's new signings, I thought Kagawa looked half-decent, and I'm sure he'll be a strong, solid addition to their squad. Van Persie came on with 20 minutes to go, but was largely invisible. He's a known quantity, however, and if he stays fit, he will produce goals.


Football: £69.66 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £69.66



Football Showing 1 - 3 of 3 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Everton v Man Utd : Over/Under 2.5 goals 20-Aug-12 20:00  20-Aug-12 21:56  21.05
Football / Everton v Man Utd : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 20-Aug-12 20:00  20-Aug-12 21:56  14.12
Football / Everton v Man Utd : Correct Score 20-Aug-12 20:00  20-Aug-12 21:53  34.49

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I'm taking my family away for a week break this week, and so will not be active for the next week or so. I'm taking a holiday in England and so have my fingers crossed for decent weather.