Deer 2009

The holidays are almost upon us, and this will be my final post of the year. I am preparing to close out 2008 with a couple of weeks away from the Internet visiting with family and friends in Surrey, North Devon and Dorset, eating and drinking too much, though not to the excesses of my youth, (with the possible exception of the Weymouth stop).

2008 has certainly been an eventful year. My ‘traditional’ investments (house and shares for example) are all worth less than they were a year ago, but with just two losing months on the betting exchanges (and one of those being a mere £70 doesn’t really count!), 2008 is my best year to date, exceeding 2006 and 2007 combined.

I still make mistakes however, although less often, and when I do, my ‘Bambi-in-the-headlights’ act is usually a lot shorter than it used to be when disaster strikes. I am getting better at not falling in love with a position, and with letting winning trades run. I do still have a tendency to go ‘on tilt’ after a big loss though, as evidenced by the increased probability of following a bad day with another bad day and I need to work on that.

There was also the introduction of the Premium Charge which affected my numbers, although I have to admit, not as significantly as I first feared, but one wonders what other tricks Betfair have up their sleeves.

BETDAQ is still a work in progress. As much as I would like to use them more, I still find the liquidity there sadly lacking. Faced with the choice of making £20 on BETDAQ or £50 on Betfair less the Premium Charge, well, it’s not much of a choice really. And sadly, with the introductory 2% commission offer scheduled to end in a few days, liquidity is unlikely to improve significantly.

Goals for 2009: Continue learning. Trading is an art, not a science. There are no ‘systems’. It’s all about the approach.

And finally there’s this blog. I started it back in March, with an opening post which included the following sentence “So, as arrogant as ever, I am hoping to fill this gap with a blog that goes a little deeper into the reasons why I made or lost money, my thoughts and emotions as the win / loss was happening, and perhaps filled with other observations from the world of betting”.

It’s not easy finding something worth saying about the world of betting on a daily basis, and I don’t try. I do try and find something to say every two or three days though, and hopefully some posts achieve the goal of being interesting and thought provoking.

Happy Holidays, and Good Luck.