Motivation from other Trader's blogs and P&Ls.

[RentonT]

That last race annoys me but I have to really take the positives! I was so controlled overall today and I guess I though I was invincible there and tried to turn the loss into a profit and it just got worse probably because I wasn't being as a sharp minded and controlled as I was throughout the day but I have to be pleased with todays performance

[Euler]

Good stuff

I tend to finish around 18:00 on a Saturday and avoid the evening racing. Too may races like that in evening for me on a Saturday meant I just stopped doing it.

[jimibt]

Motivation -yes!! - SOO easy to feel the breeze of (limited!?!) success. BUT, after 6 months of really looking at this stuff full on, (jaws an' all), I'm kinda happy to say that most days now (for a limited 6 week period) are producing a reasonable profit (based on risk vs reward).

if I have a confession to make tho; i'm a lazy git really (apart from my 12 hours research each day and multiple testing of strategies) that i sort of expected it to happen now, after the MANY months of torment

In seriousness, i really wish everyone could have the opportunity to have a 6 month hacienda to explore this stuff (without undue strife) as it's really allowed me to home in on a minutiae that i would never have *discovered*, had there been pressure to *succeed* and no free time to explore.

anyway, confession time over... have a great ten o'clock all -i'm feeling good (beverages withstanding!)

[Dallas]

Well done RentonT great days work, was that both pre and in-play?

What is the easiest/best way to get my turnover figure??

You can email Betfair for your lifetime P&L or for your P&L during a specific date period and this will have your turnover for each day - You will probably be quiet surprised when you see it

[RentonT]

Thanks Dallas

That was all pre-off (even that last race), apart from I gave myself a free bet on Minding

Ok that's great I will do that. So if I want to consistently monitor my p/l against turnover I need to keep requesting it from betfair yes?

[RentonT]

So my turnover for yesterday was £51,115.72.

With my profit at £512.72 that gives me a 1.00% margin on turnover correct?

I was trying to have a discussion with the betfair chat man and he got confused when I asked him how turnover was worked out. Is it just total staked (as that is what he called the above figure when giving it to me).

[RentonT]

**UPDATE**

TOTAL TURNOVER = £51,082.99 (still 1.00% margin)

He corrected himself after saying I paid commission of £32.73 (which is difference between first and second figures)

And I think he is saying turnover is worked out by doing: Total Back stakes + total lay liabilities - commission = turnover ...........I think??

I am going to see if I can come to the same figure by working out manually my turnover for yesterday from my account statement showing all bets which I can download to a spreadsheet.

[Crazyskier]

CrazyC
Just a thought...
If you have a big enought sample set of data now, ie if you've been trading this for a week or so..It would be wothwhile extracting the bet history data from you account and analysing it.
Create a pivot table (easy to do, lots of examples on Youtube) and look at the profit you have made at each price point (you could then create a histogram chart)
Assuming you are scalping, you may find that had you only scalped on prices above 3 to 4, you would have made more money etc (ie below these prices, the volatility is greater and often not ideal for scalping)
Regards
Peter

Hmmm. I've 3 months+ (not all profitable!!) of sample sizes from 7 days per week auto-trading (botting). I do have price points in my automation that ticks away all day, but essentially I already know from my own (somewhat anecdotal, rather than S-sheet/pivot table) observations that my larger individual losses come from the 6-10 range, often with a lay trade around 9 that then remains unmatched on the back side and shortens to 5-6s before the off and my green/red up.

The bulk of my very modest gains comes from odds in the 2-6 price points, though I suspect that if I had your eyeballs looking at my data Peter, you'd soon spot something I'd missed. In 90 days + of my main auto trading, only 21 have produced a loss and that is normally more than compensated for by the next day's trading. In fact, the few times I exceeded the 1000 trades and BF charged me accounts for more than my total losses!

In the last month, I've refined further and the last 10 days or so in particular have been all profitable overall, at least on the main horse automation as you can see below.

Overall I am certainly still at the 'profitable pennies' stage rather than anything else but have managed to grow my £200 bank into surplus enough to withdraw the odd £50 several times in the last months, so all is well from that perspective, though of course I'm never complacent and the longer it goes on producing a few pounds daily, the more inclined I am to increase stakes and use PROFIT to experiment further - as per your advice to me of last year. Above all, I'm still viewing this as a fun hobby with the odd benefit.

[Crazyskier]

**UPDATE**

TOTAL TURNOVER = £51,082.99 (still 1.00% margin)

And I think he is saying turnover is worked out by doing: Total Back stakes + total lay liabilities - commission = turnover ...........I think??

That's my understanding of the equation too. Well done Renton - some great results (excluding the last race of course).

[Dallas]

Personally i dont tend to look at the return on tunrover, depending on your trading style this can differ massively, 2 people can start with and end with the same bank but one can turn over 20 times more to achive this same end result, especially if one is a manual swing trader and the other an automated scalper.

I prefere to look at overall ROI, if you withdraw weekly, monthly or quarterly etc take your starting bank at that period against your end bank thats your ROI

So a £1000 Bank on the 1st Aug turned into a £1750 by 31st Aug would be a return of 75%

Ignoring actual screen hours for the moment could you of gotten a better return had you inversted that £1000 in a ISA, Bank account, premium bonds or bought a bunch or scratch cards throughout August would your return be better or worse?

Thats just my personal way of viewing it.

[spreadbetting]

Surely your bank has nothing to do with ROI though, I have a relatively large deposit in betfair but rarely expose half of it. I'd prefer Renton's approach to ROI with using the actual amounts you're staking to give you a better idea of your 'performance'.

I used to simply add the back and lay stakes for my 'turnover' and compare that to my pnl for a % return. Haven't done it for ages but don't think it was 1% and certainly nowhere near that if I'd used the lay exposure rather than lay stake. I'm happy to play at higher odds so any exposure would be a lot higher than someone playing around the favs only plus I bot a lot of my stuff so wouldn't be as high as maybe a swinger would acheive on a lower turnover.

I think whatever way you choose as long as you're consistent you should gain some idea of how you're progressing. Think the main thing that still surprises me is how consistent my weekly income is, it's almost wage like taken on a monthly basis.

[PeterLe]

Hi
We touched on this some time ago.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1338&p=7375&hilit=ROI#p7375

(betangel in them days = Euler these days (unless it was one of the support guys)
Regards
Peter

[kodiac]

I started with a £100 bank and £5 stakes a few weeks back, and am now through the £300 barrier and using £20 stakes. What kind of bank do the average full timers use?

[spreadbetting]

Your bank really depends on how much exposure you expect to have at any one time. There's little point in keeping a large 'bank' on Betfair if you're not going to use it.

I'll have a bigger bank during the winter just because I'll have more money exposed on markets like football. I usually keep at least double my max exposure in my account also. Mainly to save me the hassle of topping up if things go tits up but also if a decent opportunity pops up unexpectedly.

[RentonT]

I think both ROI (bank) and return on turnover are worth monitoring because they both show useful performance indicators.

I couldn't get my manually worked out turnover to match the one betfair gave me so I guess I will just ask them each day for it.

I also look at my avg win vs avg. loss as I want to improve my avg loss figure. And strike rate is important too as this together with the avg win and loss affects results.