Trading Analysis Part I
We start this blog series, with a look at how the week starts and what conditions/processes are needed to set up my weekly trading. This could work for everyone but it's about the planning!
Monday morning @ 05:30 am – Alarm goes off and it's straight downstairs for a cup of tea. I then spend 30 minutes, in a quiet room, going through the week's racing/football betting. Notepad is used and all of the major races/games of the week are noted.
06:00 am – Shit, shampoo and a shave!
06:30 am – Breakfast (something healthy) and a full-on reading of everything that's happening in the horse racing & football world.
07:00 am – Load up technology, assign various computers to various data and re-check everything is in place.
07:30 am – Go for a swim/gym/exercise and second breakfast
10:00 am – Load up all of the markets that will be of interest and start to analyse “what's what!”
This is the breakdown of that 10 am workload! –
- Make a list of all horses/football teams that have WOM (weight of money applied to them)
- Go through each horse/team/outcome and look at logical reasons, as to why they've had money for them
- Analyse the opponents/other outcomes and see why they might not have had money for them
- Make a checklist of all selections that make logical sense for that day (Monday in this case).
By 11 am, I had come up with a sound and logical reasoning behind 4 selections.
There were three horse racing selections and one football selection.
I now have a couple of hours to attend to other business, grab some lunch and run any errands.
Then, it's down to business. I have my trading office in our house, so when the door is shut, all family members know that it's “do not disturb time”
Whatever method of trading I'm using, I generally set this out into an excel sheet. Like the one, below –
So, everything is filled in by lunchtime, except the Traded? and P/L. The latter two columns are filled in after the event has been traded and then copied and pasted into my full trading diary.
It's important to keep everything updated and results kept, as we can then keep a tab on things and check where we're going right or wrong.
I decided not to trade on the draw in the football game as the odds didn't come into line with the model that I use, but there could be days where I'm still trading, come 9 pm at night!
So, that's a basic look at the day in the life of a full-time trader. There are days, when I don't get to trade, due to other commitments but by planning the day from the outset, I can get other things done.
Also, setting some rules within the household and putting up boundaries of when I'm going to be trading, make life a lot easier and quieter, so I can concentrate!
Next week, I will be looking at what the logic and 1st SHOW trades look like and how we can use these different types of trades in our daily lives. People that work 9 till 5 can still use these trades, it's simply about planning when and where you're going to execute them. I'll even show you a way that it can all be done on a smartphone!
