Analysing my trades

Hello,

I read a very good blog entry from punt.com about analysing your trades. That's a thing I did not make in the past, so it is time to do that.

Here are my stats of the last four months:

March 08: +3.08
April 08: +25.27
May 08: +1.36
June 08: +25.90

First to say: I am in profit! That is a good sign for a beginner in sports trading. We also see I do not make consistently similar amounts of profit every month.

In March I tried to identify potentially winners in tennis matches. That is something I am not good in, so that's the reason why I am trading. I put money on my pre match selections and lost -32.37€, so I think it was possible to make a bigger profit this month without punting.

In May I lost -18.76€ when trading Formula 1 with too large amounts, so a bigger profit was also available.

I collected detailed data of trading tennis in June:

June 08:

number of matches I traded: 57
number of wins: 37
number of losses: 17
scratched trades: 3
number of losses > 3€: 13

total win: +345.77
total loss: -319.87
total pl: +25.90

average win: +9.35
average loss: -18.82
average pl: +0.45

win rate: 69% (I do not count the scratched trades)
max win: +20.51
max loss: -77.25

The diagram above shows my amounts of profit and loss I made during June 08.

What we see from this diagram is: I am not disciplined! I make profit in 69 trades of 100, but I had 5 trades where I lost more than 20.

Here are the stats with an assumed maximum loss of 20€:

number of matches I traded: 57
number of wins: 37
number of losses: 17
scratched trades: 3
number of losses > 3€: 13

total win: +345.77
total loss: -186.42
total pl: +159.35

average win: +9.35
average loss: -10.94
average pl: +2.80

win rate: 69% (I do not count the scratched trades)
max win: +20.51
max loss: -20.00

If I am disciplined the average win amount is the same like the average loss. Also my total profit could be more than 600% than it is today. The problem is, I do not think about it, when I am actually in a match and the match does not develop as predicted.

During reviewing my trades, I also wrote down for every trade I made, if there was a trading point or not. In 8 of the 17 losses, I entered the market, but there was no trading point. I want to give an example:

Safina v Peer

This was a 3rd round match and I expected Safina to win this match. Peer won 1st set 7-5, see stats of 1st set below:

After this first set I backed Safina 30€@1.94. This was not a trading point, it was a gambling point. Safina was not serving very well, both players had similar percentages of receiving points won and a similar number of break points. There was no reason to enter the market at this time.

At the start of the 2nd set Peer made a break and the odds on her shortened very much. When she made the break, we saw a trading point, because with 47% receiving points won by Safina a re-break was possible with a large odds movement.

Back to my reviewing of my trades, 8 of the 17 losses came from trades like this in the match Safina v Peer, so I have the capability to improve my trading with being more cautious when entering a match.

quote from punt.com:

"Emotional stability is important for maintaining discipline.  Keeping records like this allows you to actually see a bigger picture of the war you are fighting rather than the losses you might take in individual battles - which inevitably stick in your mind longer than the wins."

That is something I want to do from now on. I created an Excel sheet to keep my records with auto updated stats similar to these I created for June.

All the best, Loocie