Sunday 30 November 2008

End Of November Update

Since Last Post P/L: £5.07
Monthly P/L: £416.44
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A couple of casual poker games before making the trip to the hospital put a small dent in my total for November but I'm not unhappy. With everything else going on just making a profit is welcome :-)
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Monday 17 November 2008

The Big One


Since Last Post P/L: £110.66
Monthly P/L: £421.51
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I'd been hoping for a quiet week but an 8 month old baby had other ideas! Caden decided last Tuesday to get himself another infection and this unfortunately hit him harder than before. His oxygen saturation levels weren't good so it was back to the hospital for a very stressful 3 nights and it was only after the Doctors declared that his temperature was back under control that we were allowed to come home on Friday evening. With his full heart repair operation scheduled for Wednesday the worry was that any deterioration in his condition would force it to be delayed and in extreme circumstances this could be for up to another 6 weeks. With his 'tet spells' becoming more regular this is something we clearly want to avoid so it's sods law that Nicola woke up with a cold on Saturday morning! She's now been banned from going anywhere near him :-)
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So this is it - the big one. As a natural control freak this feeling of uselessness isn't resting comfortably on my shoulders and with there little left for me to do, I'm now resigned to the events that lay ahead. The statistics are in our favour but I'm very nervous - I just want my little boy to be okay.
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With all of this going on I've only been able to to take a quick look at a few events over the weekend. There've been some topsy turvey results and if I hadn't taken a look at the NFL last night I'd have saved myself £80.
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American Football : £63.94
Horse Racing : £4.26
Rugby Union : £175.42
Soccer : £0.36
Poker : £5.44
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Nevermind, other things are way more important and all of my attention now turns to what looks to be a hugely challenging few weeks. Hopefully life will start to return to normal come the beginning of December and I'll be able to let out a huge sigh of relief.
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As I'm not likely to be around for a while, many thanks in advance for all the best wishes we may receive - they are a source of strength and we are hugely grateful.
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Sunday 9 November 2008

Juggling Priorities

Since Last Post P/L: £310.85
Monthly P/L: £310.85

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Before now I've often been guilty of forgetting the contents of my previous post so with this in mind I'll get the bit about my head out of the way. The staples came out last Monday and if I do say so myself I was very brave (ha!) and all that remains is a chunky scar which should at least serve as a reminder on not to be such an idiot in future! Of course, despite this mental note I maintain that my mate was to blame :-)
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My trading involvement has been relatively quiet so it's given me a chance to catch up on some reading. 'Reminiscences of A Stock Operator' was one title missing from my collection and with it being regarded as one of the best I was starting to feel a bit like a fraud for not having given it a look previously. I haven't finished it yet so I won't give a full review but my initial impressions are that if you can get past the way the book is written (it was 80 years ago and wordings have changed) there are some hidden gems on how to look at the bigger picture. It seems that the big money is to be made in the big swings and this is not something I've given my full focus to before. I've often looked to just the short term and whether that's for 1 minute, 10 or 20 maybe I haven't fully considered the conditions of the markets I've been active in. Plenty of food for thought there.
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Where possible I've continued to try and lend Betdaq my business - it hasn't been easy but the graphic below will help illustrate that generating decent sized profits on some in-play markets is possible. I went on to lose a bit of this cash but that doesn't matter ;-)
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What about the rest? Well, the Stanford Superstars giving England a whooping did make me chuckle. Everyone at the ECB got what they deserved in my eyes, and I'm sure they're regretting the decision to get involved with the whole thing now. It was very embarrassing. People have made comparisons regarding the sums of money available to that in football but until now there's never been a situation where Chelsea have been pitched to play Arsenal for $20 million in a one off match. No, although I enjoyed the spectacle, the Stanford match represented greed and for that reason it left a sour taste in the mouth. Not sure my comments mean much though as it also netted me a profit!
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Anyway, here are my full results for the beginning of November:
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Cricket
Stanford Superstars v England : £169.86
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American Football
Green Bay @ Tennessee : £80.35
Dallas @ New York Giants : £48.33
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Horse Racing
Wolverhamption : £8.27
Plumpton : £9.47
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Soccer
Newcastle v Aston Villa : £9.58
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Rugby Union
Australia v New Zealand : £18.99
Scotland v New Zealand : £117.30
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Elsewhere, we've been given the date of the 19th November for Caden's full heart repair operation. This date has already been pushed back once so it's possible it could happen again but if everything goes to plan then the blog and my trading activity are likely to be put on hold come the end of the month. We're now at the stage where we just want to get the operation out of the way so that we can look forward to our first family Christmas.
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