On May 1st I included this comment in my post:
And in another amazing coincidence, back after two months away is Betting For a Living (BFAL) who is aiming to do exactly what JP was trying to do, make a living from betting. Interesting day. Rather ambitiously in my opinion, BFAL is aiming to make £2,500 a month mostly on horses, but without having any edge, or at least not one that he is revealing. Most readers know my views on horse racing, and this is that it it most probably the toughest sport to make a living from unless you are on the inside. I look forward to being proved wrong though, but starting the year with a loss of £545 in two months doesn't bode well.I'm still not convinced that BFAL (Mudflaps) does in fact have an edge, and it appears that he himself is beginning to question the fact, if he wasn't before:
"I can't say too much without giving away my strategy (which I would rather not do in order to protect the edge I may or may not have)..."In his post yesterday, he concluded with this:
Having said all that I have decided to have a serious look at trading things differently in the future and that may well mean changing my strategy completely. More news of that over the next few days.Now Mudflaps did have an excellent May, averaging £114.08 a day, but since then I think he'll agree that results haven't been as good. His daily average is now £55.76 but as I posted on his blog, so long as you have an edge and maintain your confidence, then the profits will return.
So why the decision now to change strategy completely after seven weeks? (I asked this question via a comment, but for some reason it failed to show.) Having an edge doesn't mean that you will be immune to losing runs. On the contrary they are to be expected, but the right response to a losing run is not to give that edge up; it is to stick to the plan confident that in the long run the edge will guarantee an overall profit.
While I have written before about the importance of being able to adapt rapidly because markets change and edges vanish overnight, the decision to change strategy completely so soon suggests that when Mudflaps speaks of the edge he "may or may not have", it is becoming apparent that it's more likely he doesn't and he is realising this.
Otherwise, why give up a profitable edge?
5 comments:
He is a guesser and a chaser, that much is so apparent it doesn't really require any speculation.
Still, good luck to him, he's living a lifestyle many of us dream of.
It's a lifestyle with a limited lifetime if there is no edge.
I find it doubtful someone who was 40 with a new child would pack in a (presumably) successful and well paid job, move back to this country and not seek employment if he was purely 'guessing and chasing'.
Still, who knows.
I think trading the horses is the easiest of all sports to trade and there's definately no need to be on the inside to make a profit. I guess it all come down to where your 'edge' lies. In general most sports don't lend themselves to pre off trading whereas there's so much movement within the horse racing markets it's not that hard to profit if you can read the market.
Obviously the real money lies in running in any sport but that requires far too much knowledge of the sport and effort for me.
Surely no one in their right mind would give up a decent job without verifying that they did indeed have an edge over a long period of time. That's why I was puzzled when he lost money in the first part of the year before returning to England, and why I am puzzled that he is now suddenly changing his strategy. It doesn't make sense.
Yes, Anon, the real money lies in-running. The horse markets just don't work for me. I see moves, but as with day-trading, it is just gambling because others know far more tham me.
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