All things New

Well that time of year has come again, the time were football ends, and I don't know what to do with myself. As you are all aware I am a part-time trader, trying to juggle my full time job with trading. As a result of this I mainly trade football, as this complements my 9 to 5 job. I do like trading Tennis, but the majority of the seasons matches are throughout the daytime, so I trade the odd match at the weekend and some evening matches during the week.

I traded the Championship Play-off final this weekend and made some decent profit. I also traded the Champions league final and managed to make some profit, but what now?

Thankfully the Euro's takes place this summer, so that will hopefully keep the profit ticking over during the summer period. However, I want to succeed, I want to become more diverse.

When I first discovered trading about two years ago, I, like most other newbie’s though it was a great way to get rich quick. I made some early money laying the draw and thought I had this trading lark cracked. Two years later and I am still learning and I am not rich. Trading is like anything else in life, if you want to be the best, you have to work hard. My goal is to become a full time trader, but that is a long path of up's and down's.

As there was not much football this weekend, I decided to try my hand at trading the Cricket. I have been a Cricket fan for about 10 years. I have traded a couple of test matches in the past, laying the draw, but nothing big. After reading and talking to several people, I realised that there is money to made trading ODI's and Twenty20 Cricket. There are big swings with much to be gained.

For the past week I have been collating data for the current IPL tournament and compiling spreadsheets. So this weekend I traded 4 matches with minimum stakes of £2. I have no real experience so to start with I looked at laying the team batting first, looking for early wickets. I would look to hedge out after 10-20 tick movements and then enter the market again, when I thought there was an opportunity depending on the stats and the people batting and bowling. I don't know whether it was pure luck, but I managed to make a small profit on each of the 4 matches. My initial experience in trading Cricket is that it is hard work, you have to concentrate more than football, but I found myself liking the experience. I like doing the preparation work, I like stats. I enjoy the challenge!!!

Looking back on my two years trading so far I have come a long way. In the beginning when I started laying the draw in football matches, I would spend 10-15 minutes having a rough look at the stats on the soccer stats website and that was that. Now, the preparation work is a lot more intense. I try not to leave any stone unturned and I have detailed spreadsheets for each of the main European leagues. I think my trading has improved, but my loss of discipline at times still lets me down. I have reached a point were I know in my heart I can do this, I can be successful. However, I have to keep the lose of discipline and focus to a minimum.

So this summer, I will be trading the Euro's and also trading the Tennis. However, I will also be trading the Cricket, mainly ODI's and Twenty20 using minimum stakes, so I will record my progress on here. I hope you will follow with interest.