Trading the tumbleweed

Feel a bit disappointed with the international break interrupting the normal football. There are never enough matches on to satisfy me. Then I also cannot ever really get excited by England playing, especially as Friday's match is such a mismatch. Lastly, however, I was building-up a nice head of steam with my trading, and now it feels like that momentum has been snatched away. It's a bit like a football team who are smashing the opposing team into submission, but then half-time arrives, which allows the opposing team to regroup and come back out to change the outlook of the match. I hope that doesn't happen to me.

Incidentally, take a look at the correct score odds for England's match against San Marino. The 0-0 scoreline is 160 to back and 180 to lay. Wow. I don't recall ever seeing odds that high for 0-0. Of course that scoreline does seem highly unlikely, but I do feel tempted to shove a small bit down on that, if only for short period. We'll see when the time comes.


Money Management

I received this from zteff the other day:

Zteff8 October 2012 10:35

The comment looks like it's from a bot (or someone having too much spare time) posting comments on blogs. It's basically a computer spreading links to dodgy webpages, all over the internet :-)

I've a bit more betting-relevant question for you:

I presume that you apply strict bankroll management, but which rules do you have?

Thanks. I think it has been established now that this was the dirty work of a bot. Posting a comment that only  contains a link and nothing more only causes Blogger to mark it automatically as spam - but a few lines of autogenerated nonsense circumvents the rudimentary spam detection.

On the money management question, I don’t really have anything original or ground-breaking to say on this. There are plenty of sites offering decent money management advice. The Staking Machine site has every possible staking plan listed there, and you can try them out on your own ideas to see if you will make money.

Regardless of all that, I'm currently doing this:

• Trading: as mentioned in a previous post, I use an aggressive approach with my trading. This year, I reduced my trading bank right down to £1,500 and divided it into 75 points. I will happily use up to 10 points of that on any one trade – although the actual exposure is considerably less than that. Frankly I wouldn’t recommend this kind of money management to anyone! I do feel comfortable with this, however, and have traded this way for quite a few years.

• My straight bets: Currently using fractional Kelly here, and so the exposure will vary according to whatever Kelly has determined. Based on previous years, I have a 45 point bank.

• Fink Tank: Just running fun bets on the Fink Tank picks and so am using small level stakes on a £1,000 bank divided into 100 points. Tend to run 2 pts homes, 1 pt (Asians) on aways.

• Golf: Running some golf bets this year too. Again level stakes (as I doubt an edge) with a £1,800 bank divided into 300 points. Most bets each ways.

As I spread my bets across multiple bookies, I tend not to report on those (can’t be arsed). But I do report my Betfair trading activities on here – mainly because it’s a trading blog and also because it’s no trouble for me to do so.

While I'm at it, I suppose I should give an update on how I'm doing overall. 

Trading: 
Original bank = £1,500 divided into 75 points
ROI = 4.94%
ROC = 104.53%
Points = + 78.40
P/L = +£1,567.93
Total P/L = £3067.93

Straight Bets:
Original bank = £3,000 divided into 45 points
ROI = 40.36%
ROC = 23.34%
Points = +10.50
P/L = +£700.08
Total P/L = £3700.08

Fink Tank:
Original bank = £1,000 divided into 100 points
ROI = -10.42%
ROC = -2.40%
Points = -2.40
P/L = -£23.97
Total P/L = £976.03

Golfing Bets:
Original bank = £1,800 divided into 300 points
ROI = -16.60%
ROC = -4.22%
Points = -12.65
P/L = -£75.87
Total P/L = £1,724.13

Even though I've doubled my money, I'm mildly disappointed by my trading profit, which is slightly down from where I envisaged it would be at the beginning of October. Still, it's early days and so I won't judge it too harshly. 

The straight bets are off the chart considering they only really began six games in. This is clearly unsustainable and will drop down to normal levels in due course.

The Fink Tank bets started off quite well, but have tailed-off a little recently. A couple of big winners, however, can easily get these back on track. As mentioned before, I'm only running these as a bit of fun anyway.

The golf bets have been poor for some time now, but I will persevere with these and see how they pan out across a more lengthy period.

And that's it really. Below is my trading P/L for the last couple of days. Now we await the internationals - although I tend not to fare too well on those.

Football: £128.12 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £128.12  

  

Football Showing 1 - 10 of 10 markets 

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£) 
Football / FC Koln v Dynamo Dresden : Correct Score 08-Oct-12 19:15  08-Oct-12 21:05  24.88 
Football / FC Koln v Dynamo Dresden : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 08-Oct-12 19:15  08-Oct-12 21:05  17.70 
Football / Hannover v Dortmund : Correct Score 07-Oct-12 16:30  07-Oct-12 18:23  21.07 
Football / Hannover v Dortmund : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 07-Oct-12 16:30  07-Oct-12 18:23  -3.44 
Football / Newcastle v Man Utd : Match Odds 07-Oct-12 16:00  07-Oct-12 17:55  0.00 
Football / Newcastle v Man Utd : Correct Score 07-Oct-12 16:00  07-Oct-12 17:55  3.34 
Football / Mgladbach v Eintracht Frankfurt : Correct Score 07-Oct-12 14:30  07-Oct-12 16:21  5.04 
Football / Southampton v Fulham : Correct Score 07-Oct-12 13:30  07-Oct-12 15:26  34.40 
Football / Southampton v Fulham : Over/Under 3.5 Goals 07-Oct-12 13:30  07-Oct-12 15:20  9.69 
Football / Southampton v Fulham : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 07-Oct-12 13:30  07-Oct-12 15:18  15.44