Swinging 2 Horses Trading Vid

I've just uploaded 1 of my trading video's I recorded from a race on Friday 16th Oct. It was one of those markets that I saw quickly develop into a typical swing trade, and I managed to get on both moves on the top 2 favourites. I didn't get on too big either, just in case they turned against me. If you get it wrong on one, then your fighting a hard battle to get out on both selections. You can see me hovering over at certain points ready to get out at any time, but patience and trusting my instincts I held my nerve and got out for maximum profit on both.

You will see how I'm viewing the market pretty much opposite to the way the market is looking like it's going at first. Being contrary to the crowd is what I try and do as much as I can, this is where the real opportunites lie as if you are getting it right, you are making your big swings off the majority of everyone else reading it wrong. I felt the fav was trying to be held there down by some dodgy few 1k's, and the second fav wasn't going up in a hurry. I waited for some more signs and just felt confident I could see these both turning. When you see yourself in the green I know it's hard waiting for a bigger return, as profit is profit at the end of the day. But in my opinion if a market is looking to go further it makes no sense to me not to wait. If your wondering how some big profits are made on 1 race, I hope this gives you a small insight into how its done.

I'm possibly going to be offering something to clients where they can access my video's online whenever they want. Being able to look at a large amount of content I will always update on a regular basis. I'm researching ways to archive my recordings somewhere on a database that has a massive amount of storage. Also providing a webinar maybe every week to explain the video's in detail to the clients.

I'm not too sure if it's worth my while, so I'm looking for people to give me the go ahead If I see a demand for this. Please let me know via comments or by email.

Also If anyone knows of sites where several gigabites can be stored for good value please let me know. I'm currently using www.screencast.com It's a great site but can only store 25gb at any one time. This might be fine but I'm looking for alternatives??

I'll be putting random vid's on the blog maybe every few weeks so keep an eye out.

The link above doesn't appear to go full-screen so I'll look into this and try sort it out. Fow now the link to view it properly is :

LiveBetfairTrading Vid - Swing Trading 2 Horses

Rewarding Week

Last week was a great experience for not only the client, but myself after finishing my first 6-day course. It was very rewarding to see the client improve on a daily basis and being able to read a market more affectively. Putting the know how with the doing it yourself is obviously a different ball game, but I believe I have definitely provided a very useful insight into how its done on a successful level. I'm looking forward to helping my next client out on Thursday 22nd.

Each client will benefit from the course in different ways, and this client benefited mostly from the analysis of the videos I was doing before and after the live trading happened. As mentioned on the last post it gives an invaluable discussion into why I was placing orders and certain times, according to factors in the markets that was making up my decision process.

I'm currently rendering 1 of my video's so I can upload 1 of the races onto my blog. So this will be my next post when I have edited it and given some explanations into what happened.

I started slow last week, reaching about £300 by Wednesday. But I finished strongly seeing some nice swing moves on the Thursday, and getting very stuck into some solid scalping done on the Friday.

Saturday was a tricky day, it just seemed to be a little poor considering there was some big races on the cards. I got a race very wrong and stupidly losing quite a big -222. But I think that just kicked me into gear where I went on a quick fightback and pulled in a respectable profit after the loss. With my style I am prepared to take a few losses in a day, as I know I am pushing on for big profits. Also looking for swings where I'm often trying to predict the turn in price in a market, I know I'm not always going to get it right. That in my mind I can deal with them with confidence knowing I can quickly turn things around.

It's nice to get back into trading 5-6 days a week again due to having so much time off with internet problems. It's a relief that it hasn't seemed to have affected my focus.

My Setup

Finally I'm all set up in my new pad now, I've got a new desk and chair which you'll see on the pictures below. Things are ticking over nicely and I've currently got my first client on a 6-day course which started on the 12th October. I'm fully booked up now till the second week of Nov and have had bookings for Nov/Dec. So if anyone is interested in attending a course before the new year, just let me know via email and I'll try and squeeze you in.

I'm recording my trading now everyday using Camtasia. It's been an interesting experience looking over my trades and analysing them for someone else. Giving the client step by step guidance of what I was thinking at every moment. Giving an insight into my thought process behind each decision and discussing my entry/exit points to how I view the overall trends of a market. It's proving a very helpful tool for the client to learn from and I believe will only benefit my own trading. I will be putting a few video's on here soon of some of the more interesting markets I come across. Although the eye strain of hours in front of the computer is making my head a little spaced out =/

You will see on my pictures below how I setup my screens.

Left - Laptop I use for my secondary backup and it's where I have my Slingbox linked up to watch the racing channels. 5 seconds delay isn't too bad and having my trading colleague on Skype with live pics, he can let me know of anything important I need to know. This is plugged in via Ethernet cable to the router.

Middle - iMac 20" I use for my primary backup and it's where I have my Skype calls from. I also have a Betfair page open at all times in case of my PC ever going down on me. I use this on wireless.

Right - Dual screen 19" Wide screens I use for my main trading machine. It's a quad core processor, 4GB RAM computer that I only use for trading and keep clean of junk. ie. pictures, films, and browsing the web. It's a dedicated trading computer and I recommend this to anyone.

Right monitor - I have my 3 ladders up with the separate charting docked up beside that to the left. The bookies live prices underneath - www.thebettingsite.co.uk.

Left monitor - I have my unmatched tab on the right of the screen, with the cancel all button clearly on show. Then the market overview graphing coloured lines on the left. At a glance you can see visually what the prices are doing in correlation with each other. A tool I've recently started using religiously.

I also use guardian to be able to graph all the markets well in advance of the first race. The Betfair graphs can be misleading due to having no time information on them. With guardian you can easily see what the recent trends of the market are via the market overview screen. Instead of a long-term look at what that particular graph has done. This computer has to be connected via Ethernet to the router.

Phew!

Bit of a late post, but I thought I'd let people know im back up and running at home. My internet line has finally been sorted, and I'm very relieved to say the least! I'm amazed how long it has taken, especially when I'm using the same internet service provider as before - Jazztel. I was starting to fall out of love with Spain from the stress this has given me, but I'm happy to say my passion has returned to this chilled out City I am lucky enough to live in. I try not to let things bother me that are out of my control, but they really were testing me with this! This is the life of a trader though, where we are faced with unfortunate incidients from time to time.

I must be living closer to the exchange where the signal gets sent to, as the speeds I'm getting are faster than my old apartment, which is a pleasant suprise:



It's great to know that trading is very much possible in most countries in Europe. It gives me options to live basically anywhere I choose, but for now I'm very happy in Spain. These are very impressive speeds through a phone line, and I dont think in the UK you could get these speeds through our old copper wires we still use. The demand for super fast internet is very high in the UK, but we are well behind the times with our old systems we still have in place. I know we have cable/fibre optic but we have got some cathing up to do with most of the world. Lithuania/Latvia and Sweden are rated the top in Europe. Check this out on the top countries per download I recently found http://www.speedtest.net/global.php.
Have a look where us British rate next to other countries in the world. It might open your eyes to what other people can get their hands on!

I think it's impreritive for you to trade successfully on a regular basis with a fast, solid connection. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, but I know enough to know what you need to trade with no problems.

Downloads speeds aren't massively important, I think anything from 6 mb/s or higher is sufficient. Also anything from 400 kb/s or above on your upload rate should also be fine.

However ping is very important to us pre-race traders - This is how fast a signal is sent and received from the source. 100 m/s or lower is perfect, but again anything upto 200 m/s is fine. Obviously the lower the ping the better!

I use a website called www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk for quick speed tests.
Anyone reading this should test there speeds, and if they are lower than the rates I suggested, I would recommend you look into getting a faster line if you want to take trading seriously. There are many stressful things we tackle daily trying to make money on Betfair, don't let your internet speeds be an extra burden. Simply search for the best line you can :)

Also I really wouldn't recommend trading off a wireless connection if possible. Plug an ethernet cable straight into your modem/computer just to stablise the line, and reduce any drop outs that could occur. The line will be more solid and with a fast internet line you should not occur any freezes and refresh errors. If there is, it will be probably coming from Betfair's end and meaning everyones suffering the same as you.

Looking forward to getting back into the 'groove'