Archive for May, 2010

I don’t dabble that much on non core markets, but in 2006 I did have a play at the Eurovision song contest. After boring myself with the entrants my evening was lit up by the performance of Lordi which was hilarious to see in a straight laced contest such as the Eurovision. Soon after the voting started it was clear the voters were sending a signal to the contest and the rest, as they say, is history.

As soon as I saw the voting patterns I had to place a bet on Lordi, here is a graph of what happened next. The Finnish competitors changed the face of the competition forever.

Not a reference to the English cricket team, but well done lads on getting to the final. I must admit to not knowing enough about Cricket to trade it effectively, but I may have a look in on the 20/20 final. It has all the characteristics to be a decent trading market, so I may have a stab. Uncertainty is great for trading and the final promises plenty.

Sometimes when I am trading I feel I am batting on a sticky wicket. I can look at a day and identify some key characteristics, I know what do to and when. But sometimes, despite this, I just can’t get things right. I had one of those days this week. My strike rate was miserable and it seemed like I could only win on every other market. When this happens I simply have a good look at the day again and see if I could change something but, more importantly, I move on. Sometimes things just don’t go your way and accepting that is important.

There is often a propensity to give full credit for your success to yourself, but to blame something else for your mis-fortune. Learning to do neither will improve your long term performance. At the end of the day I just didn’t function on my naff day, there may have been external factors that helped cause this, but ultimately it’s down to me whichever way you look at it. Either I got it wrong, or couldn’t spot the shift in the market. With that in mind I can move on, but failing to do that would leave me no wiser the next time something happened and probably less able to make a sensible decision in the future.

Recognising your flaws and errors and attempting to strike them out is a critically important part of trading successfully. Failure to do so will inevitably lead you down a path of frustration and failure and it’s a path that’s followed by a surprising number of people, but it’s completely avoidable.

OK I am a bit late summarising, but it’s been a busy start to May. April was a surprise for me as it turned out to be my fifth best month ever and I pulled in a very high strike rate, which was unexpected. So far this year I am running at double my total of a couple of years ago, there are many reasons for this. However, on a like for like basis, I think I had the wind behind my sails and a number of markets suiting my style last month.

Some was slightly fortuitous as well. I’ll often take speculative positions in a market to benefit from long term inefficiencies. This involves throwing away small amounts of profit and getting the occasional big win. I had one of those big wins last month. The opposite is expected to happen as well, but both balance each other out over time to produce a net profit. Last month my negatives were substantially smaller than the positives.

I’m looking forward to May and, pending today, have a decent week behind me for starters. I think this is a pleasing year so far as the markets seem pretty stagnant to be honest, so an improving P&L has to be viewed favourably. Let’s hope it can continue for May. I am currently experimenting with hoards of new ideas, so I am hopeful some of those will make it out of the woods for later in year.

Good luck for what looks to be a busy May!

Went through my normal routine this morning. The last bit is to nip into the Garden and top up the bird feeders and feed the fish. Big problem this morning was that there were no fish in the pond, all 23 were gone!

At first I thought it was a Heron or something, but it seemed unusual that it could gobble all 23 so efficiently. The resident frogs were also missing, so any Heron probably wouldn’t have been able to take off after a feast like that! Suspicions rose more when I realised the bottom of the pond had been disturbed a lot and pond plants severed. Suspicion was not the word when I fond a trail leading away from the pond and towards a Zippo lighter in the middle of the garden. I’d been robbed, but rather bizarrely only for my fish.

I’m gutted, as when we bought the house, the pond and the few fish in it were not in a good state. But we had succesfully got the fish to breed and the pond was coming along nicely, now we have to start again. The kids will not be happy when I get home this evening. Not sure why somebody would go to such trouble just to get some fish?