Old mistakes and a big new one!

Result since last update: £576.70

Well I guess given the result that it might not be entirely surprising to hear I haven't been trading all that well over the last couple of days. And I haven't. Still rusty to be honest and I've found myself anticipating too slowly in volatile markets.

I realised this on September 11 doing the openening Twenty20 World Cup match and was lucky to escape with a small win before a largeish loss in the Surrey v Somerset PRO40. Again I was too slow in that game. But I also made a mistake I have been guilty of in the past of trying to pick the winner and take the appropriate position too early. That can be costly and was in the PRO40, especially when coupled with the fact I was really too tired to be doing the game. Ended that day about £580 down, had a look through stuff, realised the pretty obvious mistakes and settled down on the 12th with a fresh head.

To be fair it worked. I was sharper in the markets and made the losses back in the New Zealand v Kenya and Pakistan v Scotland matches so that I was showing a small profit since the last update. Also managed a bit of green on the spreads though I don't include those results on the blog.

Disaster struck in the Australia v Zimbabwe match. My mistake was comical really and I lost most of yesterday's profit on the game. Before the start I'd had a fair size position on Australia. I figured if it goes wrong I'll get out and lose up to 15% of my day's profit. If it went right I'd get out with a small green. Either way it would be in plenty of time to get to the pub to watch the England match.

Great plan. But it fell down when I realised the match started an hour earlier than I thought it did! Thankfully someone bought my attention to the fact that Australia were 19/3 while I was obliviously catching up on paperwork. Of course by then my book was a total mess and I was unable to recover. Part of the problem with recovering was I didn't have much money to play with as I was near my max loss limit for a cricket match.

So I was a plank and it rightly cost me. Can't say I missed out on a big win as it was never my intention to do the whole match. But my lack of preparation - and confusion over BST / GMT certainly cost me a loss and wiped out most of the day's profit. Totally my own fault. And caused me to miss the start of the football. Still, at least I got to see Zimbabwe's historic victory!

Despite the early losses I'm actually enjoying the World Cup so far. Fireworks in the opening match and already a one ball victory in the mother of upsets. The organisers have obviously paid attention to crticism from the ODI World Cup final earlier in the year. Cheaper / free tickets are getting the crowds in, it's not often you see a team 0/3 and 1/4 and I love the fact that people in the front rows are being handed out hard hats! Brilliant!!

Anyway, got my sensible head on today, know when each match starts (!) and hope to make some inroads towards turning this month's red into a green.