Farewell Torquay, Hello Fat Ladies

Betfair Pro Trader James, and author of “Programming for Betfair: A Guide to Creating Sports Trading Applications with API-NG”commented on my Fingers in Pies post:

Thanks for the write-up and for pointing out the statement "the money I have is all the money I will ever have".

It should have read something along the lines of "all the money I have earned working for others is all the money I will ever earn through that route" or something along those lines.

As usual, I get the urge to blog, dump a load of stream of consciousness down and go back to it later for a tidy up. Only you got their first!

I agree with all your statements in this post. I too have an inheritance but the fingers in pies keeps me going until then. The trappings of wealth are of no interest to me so I don't need much to sustain me. In addition to investing I am also a short-haired hippy who grows his own vegetables!

Talking of reading other blogs, yours is one of the very few that I do read. I see no point in reading blogs that contain little else other than "I made X today, and Y yesterday and if I continue making Z then I will be the world's first quadrillionaire." (Date of last post, ages ago.)

Inheritances are a welcome bonus in life, but no one should rely on them, (old people do silly things like live forever in nursing homes or leaving their money to a cat charity) and another problem is that they tend to come rather late in life! Inheriting £1million when you're in your sixties or retired is less life-changing than when you are younger, although inherit it too young, and it's arguably detrimental. With life expectancy increasing, there are many who advocate inheritances skipping a generation - just don't suggest that to my parents. Incidentally, my Dad moves from Torquay in Devon to two fat ladies today - not too shabby.

One of the new blogs I mentioned last week, Tennis Trading, may well fall into the category James describes. Although Martin does go into some detail about his strategies, it's mostly a Profit and Loss blog which are easy enough to maintain when the profits are coming, not so easy when it's the reverse, of which there have been a couple recently.

In his latest post, Martin writes:

There is a theory which says that there are three components to be a successful trader: strategy (10%), money management (30%) and psychology (60%). Well, 60% is probably a bit too high, but the control of the emotions is definitely the most important part. You need to handle bad days and start refocused after a night.

In a fair trading environment, 60% psychology might be a reasonable number, but the tennis markets are not fair because you are always competing with those who know more than you do. I wish Martin all the best, and hope he is still blogging in a year's time, but I have my doubts. Such an information disadvantage .

Another blog I am watching with interest is Big Pairs and his "weekly diary of an apprentice trader in sports and forex markets". It's all going extremely well for now, with big profits in the shark-infested waters of Horse Racing and Football, and yet to start on Forex. His latest post mentioned the topic of how time appears to speed up with age. Here's a BBC article on the topic.