In the year to April 2007, average earnings of full-time male employees were £498 per week, while for women it was £394, according to the Office of National Statistics. [BBC News 19/2/08]
I like numbers. They motivate me. If I am trying to lose weight, I record my weight each day. If I am trying to exercise more, I record the miles run or biked, or the yards swum. If I am trying to cut down on alcohol, I record how many days a month I drink. If I am trying to save money, I record it. It’s the same with investing. I record my daily wins and losses by sport in a giant spreadsheet, and keep track of my average daily profit/loss for the past 10 days, 30 days, year, and my average gain per day since I started. Well, not quite since I started, but once I decided to take this investing seriously. So as a result, I have data for every day since New Year’s Day 2005.
I have daily targets which I try to meet, starting with the first target of recording a profit, and rising to the ultimate target of beating my best ever daily total. In between are targets to beat such as my 10 day daily average, my 30 day daily average, my yearly daily average, and my all-time daily average. And then there’s the ‘average earnings for a full-time person’ target (see above) to beat.
The temptation can be to take risks in an effort to achieve these targets, but I have learned not to force anything, but to await the opportunities which sometimes be like London buses and come along all at once, before vanishing for days. Do many of you out there reading this keep records? Any ideas?
About Me
- Cassini
- I have had a life-long interest in sports and after studying Pure Mathematics with Statistics at secondary school, have been fascinated by odds and probability. The first system I came up with was a simple one - back the favourite and double up after a loss until a winner. Simple enough in theory, and I told my Dad about it. Not being a betting man himself, he ran it by some of his colleagues, and came home to tell me that it wouldn’t work because a long losing run would mean that the bank would be empty. Then there was always the possibility that the winner would be returned at odds-on, meaning that the total returns would not match the outlay. Not what a ten year old wants to hear! Only slightly daunted, I then went on a search for the Holy Grail, the secret to riches that I knew was out there somewhere. Finally in 2004 I stumbled across an article about Betting Exchanges and four years later I was able to make a steady profit.
Hi Cassini.
ReplyDeleteIn reply to your other post mate, I still continue to read the blog at least once a week and it's always an ejoyable read.
As you would have guessed for someone who works as a Pricing analyst full-time, I am obsessed with keeping records of how I'm doing every day. I laugh when I read some blogs and they say they don't keep records as I'm not sure how they motivate themselves to get out of bed!
At the moment, I'm breaking every personal record every week and sometimes every day, so I'm amazed by how fast I'm picking this trading game up.
Obviously, this will level off in the future but not for a good time yet I guess as I'm still improving at a rate of knots!
I don't talk too much about personal goals on my blog but let's just say I intend to keep beating my personal records for a fair time yet!
Cheers,
Graeme
Sounds like you and I are cut from the same cloth. I love making charts and calculating moving averages etc, and in this game, I can't see how you can be serious about it and not keep track of everything.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be doing great at this, and learning a lot faster than I did. It took me 18 months to get the hang of it all (turning £100 into £21.40!), but since that time (Sept 2005) I have done very nicely. Hope your run continues - I was a bit worried about you at the start!