Team Simmonds Journal!
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I'm a couple of days late writing up here! feeling ok, I missed my swim this morning, still aching a bit from the workout I did on Wednesday afternoon! but physically I'm ok, no headaches & sleeping much better! I put it down to tiring out the body!
Trading wise, there's still not a lot going on, I've again been full tilt on the racing strategies, having lost a bit of faith in what I had in front of me! I've re-jigged the current strategies, and I'm still working through Turf racing!
Nathan was doing very well on his Lay Betting but I think he had a day of high risk which has set him back both bank and mentally! I've been trying to drill into him that the bank must be protected, personally I don't advocate going over 1% right now. Perhaps once we are confident in the picks?
I've got nothing else going on right now so I'm able to put a lot of time into learning the software, trying new things & exploring new parameters!
Its all good!
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@neal-simmonds defo think doing exercise helps with sleep, just avoid it at night-time as sometimes that can make you more active late.
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12 Apr 2023.
Its almost midnight, I've had a couple of good days, not good trading days
but generally good life days! nothing too special happened, I just had a good swim & sauna Monday Morning then a really good Gym session yesterday which has left me feeling a bit stiff & I think my nipples are a bit bigger!Had a bit of a cook off today made a new batch of protein/energy bars & did the math on calories, carbs & protein content, there's more sugar than I'd like in them but 12g of protein per bar 360 Cal's, add that to all the strategizing I've done to my brain in the last 3 days & I'm feeling a bit more positive!
The one thing I'm going to have to check tomorrow is how a selection for tomorrows Newcastle AW Card has popped up on my Back the Galloping AW Favourite and on the Lay The Galloping AW Favourite (I cant lose) lol.
Nathan & Lisa have come down with Tommy's viral infection, so I plan to have a gym session tomorrow & hit the software again! Hopefully I'll start sleeping past 4am if I tire my body out instead of just my mind?
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@neal-simmonds it's hard when that happens all at once, hopefully it is a rare occurance!
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A caveat to what I said yesterday is that our horse racing made a loss too! its never a good time for your strategies to not produce the goods, but for everything at once to go down; well, it gave me a knock.
Been waking up early, I'm talking 4.30 ish, made the most of it today though, got on the first football trade of the day in the Aussie A-League, had the bot put the position on & went off for a swim & sauna! so a win-win!
I've put a condition on the cash out asking for a minimum of 32% on the trade! My reason is that I hate the diminished returns of small prices, especially since the trade went on at 1.43 so cashing out after a goal at best gets you maybe 20p in the pound? Anywho! while I was swimming the 2nd goal went in on 49th min closing the market for the full value of 43p in the pound!
The second Half goal trade would have won too! but as there was already a goal, a second trade with the 1.5 goal market risks being cashed out by the bot for the Ryan's Split trade!
Still, a good positive start to the day! Now to prep the Haggis Lasagne!
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@neal-simmonds yeah some of the members strategies have had a rough start back from the international break, will be interesting to compare them to this time last year
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9 April 2023.
I suppose a crisis of confidence is inevitable at some point when your trying to do what we try to do! I've not had much to feel confident about in the last week.
Apart from that Nathan is having good results on his lay the favourites strategy & its enough to keep him relatively happy, I still think he risks a bit too much of his bank, but then again his hit rate is phenomenal!I've been concentrating on the daily football picks which were doing ok, but a bad day on the Late Goals with only 1 from 7 trades coming in and then the ELO Lay the away team with a 5 & a half point losing day, I'm only in profit now with Tomasz Lay the under 1.5 goals. Martins 1.5, Ryan's split stake, ELO away, Late goal & Lay The Draw are all losing!
I gave Ryan's splits a miss but monitored them & of course they won 4 from 5, probably because I wasn't on them.
Tracking the positions is a bit easier now since I have a bot for Martins over 1.5, Tomaz's Lay & the Lay the Draw & ELO Lay the Away team but I'm still missing my in's on some of the specific times strategies like the late goal & Ryan's split.
I think the idea is to get a bot working that will place the first position at the right time & then notify me with a beep & bring the market page to the front!Yesterday gave me a bit of hope on the footy, I'm up a few points, got to double check my spreadsheet is calculating the totals properly.
We took the kids swimming this morning which cleared any fog remaining from the fight I had with the Cherry & Vanilla Gin on Friday night, so a bit of a blow out and we soldier on!
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So, the last week has been a bit of a struggle on the trading front that is! I've not been feeling positive at all about how things will go since the first 3 days of testing the new strategies with small stakes went worse than I could have imagined!
Yeah I know what I said about soldiering on when you see a trend you have to jump on it! but I simply have not been feeling it!Had the early lane swim & sauna this morning, new walking boots are being broken in nicely ready for Windemere in June and I am sleeping a bit better since I've been a bit more active in the last week, I've has a few days off from the horse trading and to be fait, there's not much been coming up on qualifiers!
Had a couple of days of fairly indifferent football trading the email picks, I'm probably a few points up on the last 2 days, Saturday was a bit manic & I need to automate and/or decide which strategies. Tested the Fairbot's yesterday on Martins O 1.5, Tomazs U 1.5 Lays & The ELO Lays & I'm pretty sure there working fine but there are some tweak's to make to the ELO Lay & Martins over 1.5 bot's
Anyway, I'm going to spend today doing more analysis & strategy building! Hey Ho!
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@neal-simmonds it's nice to be able to test so many isn't it, so easy with the software!
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26 Mar 2023.
So, that's 21 British Chase & Hurdles strategies copied, downloaded, re-renamed, saved with the notes, backed-up, uploaded ready for activation! for foreword testing!
There's some I'm still working with but these 21 I'm happy to move to testing!Got a bit of work to do on the Irish versions before I can set them up!
I'm working through Turf Racing in preparation for the Flat season! But wanted to catch the end of the jumps season for testing what I've created so far.
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@neal-simmonds the solution to this is forward testing, if you have a few you are testing just do that for a few months before risking any dosh!
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@ Martin Thanks Bud, yeah I'm feeling better! its swept through the lot of us up here! but were on the mend.
23 Mar 2023
I wanted to write this while its fresh in my mind! I've been reviewing the horse racing strategies! drilling down into each course characteristic type as you know! & we're having some fantastic result! however, I have this constant nagging feeling that all this back testing is a glimpse into the past! and identity of a trend if you like, & there's no guarantee that the trend will continue? The example here is Kilbeggan which has a non-handicap Favourite Chase Strike Rate of just 12.5%.I often think though, that these results are a glimpse into the past & there’s no guarantee that the trend will continue into the future, I think that’s the good thing about having a lot of small strategies running, it would be an incredible turn of bad luck for them all to crash & burn!
Well, 2 things. Firstly you cant think like that! You have identified a trend, now you need to jump on it! if it doesn't work out for you, don't play the blame game. Just review, learn and adapt!
Secondly This approach will lead to a fair number of strategies running but no more than 4 on any given day! meaning it would take an incredible turn of bad luck for them all to crash & burn! at the same time?
On a further note, I feel its so important to get this done! I've placed no trades in about a week now!
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@neal-simmonds thanks for the update enjoy these! Hope you feel better soon plenty of lurgy going around in the Futter household at the moment too!
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21 March 2023
So, the review of the horse racing strategies is taking a bit longer than I wanted it to, I was hoping to have it done by the end of last week but I'm a bit behind! No worries though as the initial findings are looking really good on the back testing!
I've not done any trading last week either whilst I've been concentrating on getting this review done.I've also not been feeling great, physically, there's always a bug going around Tommy puking up all over himself in bed while he had a sleep over at Grandad's then the next night I had Mia over, so 2 nights of not sleeping very well! Woke up with a bit of a headache today too but I'm hoping to finish today, I need to export all the strategies to save in our backup then up-load them back as individual strategies so that I can have them activated!
All I will say is that we have drastically cut the number of races we will be trading the 'Back The Favourite' and the review has uncovered other opportunities to trade!
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@neal-simmonds 5 pts is good work, well done!
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14 March 2023.
So, the football test trading seems to be going ok, for now I'm using the picks from the daily emails, about a week in 5 days of actual trading & were about 5 points up! its a piddling amount & its obvious to me that the stakes I'm using aren't going to be life changing!However, before upping the stakes, I need to find a better way to work, ss I keep losing track of where I am with certain trades, especially those that don't go on at the event start like Ryan's over 1.5 Split Stake & the late goal where I've had them listed in my daily run, but I keep missing the entry!
We've also set upon a big horse racing strategy review:
Well, after lots of thought & just trying different things out yesterday, I've come up with the base parameters for the Easy Courses which are: Favourite's, Easy, non-handicap, Ireland & TypeI’ve then created a base strategy for each type of race in Ireland and I’ve got 18 strategies to work with, there will be another 18 for the handicap versions! So, 36 in all covering Ireland! It sounds like a lot, & yeah, it is a lot of work too but this is being forensic & I think needs to be done!
From this base line I’ll look individually at each strategy starting with the AW & work through the list, Chase, Hurdle, Turf, NHF the aim is to have this done by the end of this Cheltenham week!
There will be obvious similarities & who knows, some strategies might be identical in the way they work but as I say, I think this is something I need to do!
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overdue a journal entry, its been a week of 'not much going on' with me struggling to focus & looking for some inspiration which has thus far avoided me. I think the strategies we're currently using on the horses need another review but I think we need to get very specific to the point of forensic with drilling down to figure out what's going on maybe by course!
whilst it sound like a lot of work, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that what goes for Ayr might not go for Ffos Las or Epsom? So we've decided to take a break during Cheltenham and go again in a week!On the football front, I'm struggling too, I'm not sure how to get the best out of the software & it might be that I'm asking the wrong questions? Its very different from the horse racing software in that when you create a strategy, you don't get to see all of the results like you do in the horse racing software, you just see a bunch of qualifying games.
I need to do some work on what it is I'm looking to trade with the footy before I attempt to build strategies, I think the priority for this next week is to focus on the horse racing & come back to the football when I have a Eureka moment!
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Fri 3 March 2023.
So the last couple of days has been about getting the books ready for some Football Trading! I'm not flushed with confidence in my own strategies & I'm still trying to learn the Footy Software so I'm just going in with the 3 profitable member ones from last year! Small stakes to start with. there's 7 positions to go on today!I'm not usually one to jump in when I can't see the bottom but I'm aware that there's a need to get into a routine or profitable trading!
First position today was the 15:30 Tomasz’s Lay Under 1.5 Goals, got in at 3's for only a £10 Liability but boom, first goal went in at 2 mins & the position paid out on 41 mins. long may it continue.The Horses have not been setting the world on-fire but we just got to keep plugging away at it but its a day off tomorrow for Nathan & me, we're off to the racing at Kelso for the Morebattle Hurdle's Day & taking the kids & looking foreword to a really good day out!
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Hi Neal, good luck mate and hope you can buy a small island with all your profits
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@neal-simmonds No time like the present is there?!
