Watching the markets.

Spending a lot of time at the moment trying to get into trading the tennis. It's been a frustrating week so far, with matches starting at inconvenient times, but I do feel as if I'm making a little progress. I know I've mentioned Betfair Guru before and I like his strategies and chat room, but I want to go further and become entirely self-sufficient if I can. It relates to what I hinted at yesterday - that I can't help thinking that the secret to being free of the ties of working for an employer (and I mean free in the sense of being in the position to be able to choose whether or not we work for an employer) is to create three or four revenue streams that you can control yourself.

I suppose this is merely an extension of the principle of diversification that we aim towards when constructing a portfolio. As soon as you put your eggs in just one or even two baskets, then you're opening yourself up to a level of risk higher than is necessary.

Anyway, back to the trading. I've been "watching" the tennis markets for just over a year now, and it's taken me this long to even begin to understand them at a level that can be descibed as being more than basic. Sure, I can see the relevant entry and exit points when following the Betfair Guru strategies, and I could quickly recognise some of the patterns that occur in the markets, but all of a sudden I feel I'm getting to understand them, to be able to read them. Is this normal? Or am I particularly slow on the uptake?

I'm not saying or even hinting that I'm approaching a full understanding; just a realisation that I have taken a bit of a jump forward. The frustrating thing now of course, is that I don't have the time to press on at any greater rate than I have been doing. Time, as ever, remains the enemy.


Wednesday 27th February
Nothing spectacular yesterday, but another solid enough day providing a fair level of profit. A long long way from being one of the greatest days, but if I could secure this solid amount of profit each and every day, I'd be a happy man!

Still no profit on the horses, despite the best attempts of On The Nose. His first bet won nicely (Criqtonic - Wincanton - 2/1), but his second ran a lovely race apart from one blunder down the back straight at Lingfield which judging by the proximity he took to the winner at the line, cost him the race and us an 8/1 winner! No luck for Northern Monkey (0/1).

So again it was the sports services that brought home the bacon. Sportyy's (hopeful) recovery from a poor run since the start of the year continued with two winners from two (Kuznetsov to bt Bellucci at 2.25 and Over 2.5 goals in the Sevilla/Atletico Madrid match at 1.94).

Northern Monkey: Staked 1pt, -1pt.
On The Nose: Staked 1pt, +0.6pts.

Sportyy: Staked 3.5pts, +3.752pts.
Trial service: Staked 2pts, -2pts.