Fortune Favours the Bold
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Hi everyone, when I started this blog it was with the intention of learning how to trade and to stay disciplined. Over the past couple of years my trading has developed and an ongoing blog isn't as achievable nowadays. Instead I intend to set myself a challenge or yearly goal and work through that as a side project to my normal trading.
I wanted to do something that showcased all the lessons learnt from BTC and highlight the rollercoaster of trading to anyone new. I present to you...
PLAN FOR 2024 - "The Hundred" Case Study
The lessons:- Focus on one strategy at a time.
- Be very cautious.
- Compound - (but no fancy formulas).
- Use the software.
- Paper Trade/ Back Test.
- Record your results.
- Pay yourself first.
- Have a plan.
- Be patient - Probably the hardest thing to learn!
- Have fun.
The rules:
- Starting bank £100
- 2% liability per trade (50 bets)
- Withdraw 25% of monthly winnings. This will be kept aside until I have 25% of previous monthly bank in reserve to balance out any losing months.
- Be 100% transparent with trades and recording results.
- £5 "fun bank" - I'm someone who tries not to take themself too seriously so this is the stab-in-the-dark, gut-feeling, throwaway trades fund. I'm going to limit myself to this and will try to post on here so I have some accountability.
The Strategy/ Useful Information:
- Short Odds Lays (1.8-2.5) I've posted this before, there is also a preset version in the software and John has his version on forum. If anyone wants more information I can send that over
- SR 58% / Breakeven 55%
- LWS: 14
- LLS: 10
- Maximum DD: 36%
- Looking at 2023 there was 4 losing months (Jan, June, Nov, Dec)
I'm going to try and adapt this over the year but will forward test the different version.
For fun, rather than tracking 'grades' or 'belts' I thought I'll track something that Ryan has an interest in... biscuits. The first target biscuit is 60p Pink Wafers
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@Dan-MacKinnon said in Fortune Favours the Bold:
A new month, a new "fun trade". This time I'm using the xG feature on the football software and gone with the following. I intend to close the trade at HT.
Lay Bournemouth @ 2.98 (£2 liability)
Back U1.5 FHG @ 1.5 (£2 liability)
Back U1.5G @ 4.5 (£1 liability)FH xG is
WHU 0.51 vs BOR 0.59
WOL 0.34 vs UTD 0.25According to the software the most common HT scores are 0-0, 1-0, 0-1 or 1-1. The only difference is there are no scorelines that have Bournemouth winning at HT. I've checked Soccer Stats and West Ham have not been losing at HT this season.
Soccer Stats also have Man United as the 3rd worst offensive team. Worse than Palace!
Well, that backfired! Strike two, if next month is a losing one that'll be the end of my fun trades. And heads up, next month definitely will be because I'm saving it Cheltenham festival!
I blame the software. Where's that YouTube video?! I need to leave a comment saying how this xG is broken and BTC is a rubbish tipping service!
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What do I know about football!
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A new month, a new "fun trade". This time I'm using the xG feature on the football software and gone with the following. I intend to close the trade at HT.
Lay Bournemouth @ 2.98 (£2 liability)
Back U1.5 FHG @ 1.5 (£2 liability)
Back U1.5G @ 4.5 (£1 liability)FH xG is
WHU 0.51 vs BOR 0.59
WOL 0.34 vs UTD 0.25According to the software the most common HT scores are 0-0, 1-0, 0-1 or 1-1. The only difference is there are no scorelines that have Bournemouth winning at HT. I've checked Soccer Stats and West Ham have not been losing at HT this season.
Soccer Stats also have Man United as the 3rd worst offensive team. Worse than Palace!
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End of month review. I'll do a proper look back with more detail but the headlines are as below:
- Rough middle of the month. Usually, I probably would have thrown the towel in and switched to something else. Luckily I didn't and it made a recovery.
- My "fun trade" was definitely driven by social influence. I will continue to do this, however, I will try and be more conscious of what is driving my decision making.
- A few times this month I had to ask myself "what am I willing to risk to get certainty?".
Overall this month is down 14pts but 7 of those were due to a "technical glitch". I don't think January has been good for horse racing so fingers crossed for the February.
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Week 3 was better but still not great. Here's a snapshot of the last two days. Shows how low the strategy got to but made a bit of a recovery.
I think I need to review this strategy, but will continue and look to make adjustments in the background.
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Week 2 complete and it was a bit of a nightmare!
There's a couple of trades which don't tie up with the software but it's relatively minor.
There was only 1 positive day and 6 losing ones so no surprise it's taken such a dive!
In comparison to this time last year, the software suggests the strategy was in profit with a 61% SR. At present we are down with a 46%. Let's see how we get on next week
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OK. Week 1 complete.
I spoke with Adam and realised a couple of potential changes that I could make to ensure this strategy is more accurate. We also got to the bottom of the missing horse. The race must have started after the "official" time, however, the trade was still there so the bot matched it. For my results going forward I will do a combination of both "official" and "actual". Alternatively, I could get my bot to cancel after a set time if not matched. I'll track both options and see.
With that the week looks like this
This ties up exactly with the software. Longest losing streak is 4 and SR is 57%.
My BFBM results also line up perfectly so that's encouraging.Martin's latest podcast said that a good rule of thumb might be to have 5 winning days per week. This week has been:
Monday
Tuesday - No trades
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
SundayAs for the fun bet, that was a failure. However, I did realise that I'm more inclined to place a bet socially. If I'm at an event with my friends or we're all watching together and messaging (like we were on Thursday) I have false optimism. I might try and be more conscious of this in future.
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Doing my “fun bet” and going all in with the full fiver!
SHG in Palace vs Everton at 1.4.
I was tempted by over 1.5 at 2.6(ish) and BTTS 4.0.
Both teams are slow burners and tend to score in the second half. The rain here was horrendous but it’s starting to clear up which might help. It’s also a cup game and remember James MacArthur saying that players have less fear in cup games because they’re not thinking about taking a point and can instead push for the win.
As a fan I would say Franca to assist
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Nothing on Tuesday, just the one from yesterday.
At the moment it's 10 trades and 70% SR.
How does this compare to last year? 11 trades, 64% SR. So about the same.
Using the exact same metrics, January ended as a losing month with 55% SR and a 7 trade losing streak.
I know it seems pointless to compare at this stage, however, this is all part of the mental preparation for "the worst". As Martin likes to refer to trading as a rollercoaster, this is my own Health & Safety warning!
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New Year and a new challenge.
This is how yesterday went.
I won't screenshot them going forward but you can see what we're working with. From the 9 trades, 1 was not on the software but as the odds range are 1.8-2.5 it might have just missed.
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@Dan-MacKinnon yeah FHG died a death in Covid, defo had an impact
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@Martin Yeah definitely. I also recently listened to a podcast about football trading and it gave me a few ideas. I'll find what it was called and let you know because it could be interesting for the backtesting. For example, they noticed that unders strategies did really well during Covid when there were no fans because teams were more willing to play like a friendly/ play for the draw. Once fans came back the strategies bombed.
Also, more data might not necessarily be helpful. For example Man City vs Liverpool 10 years ago isn't worth the same as Man City vs Liverpool last season. However, 1st vs 2nd over 10 years will potentially show a trend.
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@Dan-MacKinnon encouraging that it was the bots rather than bad trades though!
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@Dan-MacKinnon said in Fortune Favours the Bold:
Trades for the next few days
Girona vs Ath Bilbao
Barnsley vs Wycombe
Volos NFC vs Panserraikos
Ipswich vs MillwallIt's been a while because I've been a bit unwell of late and my SHG bot wasn't trading as expected. Overall, pretty rough and -3pts.
I'm going to hold off on the football trading while I work out these bots. So not a great month and November finished -7pts. It would have been closer to break even if some of these bots had fired, but hey ho, live and learn!
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Trades for the next few days
Girona vs Ath Bilbao
Barnsley vs Wycombe
Volos NFC vs Panserraikos
Ipswich vs Millwall -
@Dan-MacKinnon said in Fortune Favours the Bold:
I was wondering why it's so quiet on my spreadsheet, then remembered there was yet another international break.
I'm going to try and get these games to do SHG in BFBM and I'm going to take a leap and try FHG with minimal stakes. Apologies now for the flood of 0-0s this weekend!
Weekend Trades - O1.5, SHG & FHG
Paris SG vs Monaco
Gaziantep vs Ankaragucu
SV Werder Bremen vs Bayer Leverkusen
Nottingham vs Brighton
Wrexham vs Morecambe
Swindon vs Mansfield
Newcastle Utd vs Chelsea
Olympiakos Piraeus vs Panetolikos
Excelsior vs Feyenoord
Slavia Prague vs Ceske Budejovice
Twente vs PSV
Dusseldorf vs Schalke
Atl. Madrid vs Mallorca
Ajax vs Vitesse
Villarreal vs Osasuna
Nijmegen vs G.A. Eagles
Tottenham vs Aston Villa
Heidenheim vs Bochum
Fenerbahce vs Karagumruk
Lillestrom vs Odd
Lech Poznan vs Widzew Lodz
Sparta Prague vs ZlinI'm going to try and summarise this quickly
O1.5
22 trades
3 losing and 7 winners - the rest NM
Overall -2pts
If I can get the others to work as a bot I might start to phase this outSHG
I was messing about with a bot so probably a bit stricter than I needed to be
22 trades only 7 got matched
5/7 winning trades
Because I was messing about with the bot throughout Saturday I ended up with -3pts which is slightly worse than I wanted, mostly because I didn't realise it was back stake and not fixed liability so got a heavier loss than expected. But I've now set it as 5% liability.FHG
22 trades and 22 matched (promising start!)
18/22 winning trades
I set the minimum odds to take at 1.2 but might up it to 1.25
Set it on ratchet staking too.
+3.5ptsOverall - (keeping these separate to line up with my BFBM banks)
O1.5 -2pts
Nov: -4ptsSHG:
-3pts
Nov: -3pts
P&L: -3ptsFHG
+3.5pts
Nov: +3.5pts
P&L: +3.5pts -
I was wondering why it's so quiet on my spreadsheet, then remembered there was yet another international break.
I'm going to try and get these games to do SHG in BFBM and I'm going to take a leap and try FHG with minimal stakes. Apologies now for the flood of 0-0s this weekend!
Weekend Trades - O1.5, SHG & FHG
Paris SG vs Monaco
Gaziantep vs Ankaragucu
SV Werder Bremen vs Bayer Leverkusen
Nottingham vs Brighton
Wrexham vs Morecambe
Swindon vs Mansfield
Newcastle Utd vs Chelsea
Olympiakos Piraeus vs Panetolikos
Excelsior vs Feyenoord
Slavia Prague vs Ceske Budejovice
Twente vs PSV
Dusseldorf vs Schalke
Atl. Madrid vs Mallorca
Ajax vs Vitesse
Villarreal vs Osasuna
Nijmegen vs G.A. Eagles
Tottenham vs Aston Villa
Heidenheim vs Bochum
Fenerbahce vs Karagumruk
Lillestrom vs Odd
Lech Poznan vs Widzew Lodz
Sparta Prague vs Zlin -
Bit of a rough weekend
11/17
-7pts
Nov: -2ptsI was not in a good state to try and mess about with SHG which is a shame because it had 27/31 winners! I doubt they all would have got matched though.
The FHG train rolls on. 62/77 81% SR
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Today's Trades
Schalke vs Elversberg
Ath Bilbao vs Celta VigoI'm going to try and set up SHG bots on BFBM for these as well.
And because we've got an office outing to the pub this evening I'll post my weekends trades too.
Weekend's Trades
Kasimpasa vs Kayserispor
Paderborn vs Nurnberg
Wolves vs Tottenham
Mlada Boleslav vs FK Pardubice
FC Augsburg vs Hoffenheim
Bayern Munich vs Heidenheim
Cardiff vs Norwich
Arsenal vs Burnley
Swindon vs Stockport
Tranmere vs Forest Green
Ipswich vs Swansea
St. Gallen vs Winterthur
Rodez vs Guingamp
Hertha Berlin vs Karlsruher
Young Boys vs Luzern
PSV vs Zwolle
Magdeburg vs Hansa Rostock
Fredrikstad vs Jerv
Aston Villa vs Fulham
Brighton vs Sheffield Utd
Celtic vs Aberdeen
Bayer Leverkusen vs Union Berlin
Feyenoord vs AZ Alkmaar
Viking vs Sarpsborg 08
Bodo/Glimt vs Aalesund
SV Werder Bremen vs Eintracht Frankfurt
Gent vs Anderlecht
Sevilla vs Betis
Kifisias vs PanathinaikosI'll try SHG for these too
