Hello and welcome

Hello. I'm Keefter and this is my first of what I hope will be many blog posts.


Some Background:

As long as I can remember I've had a fondness for Betting. As young as 5 years old I would watch horse racing on tv and try to pick the winner, almost always selecting the horse with a number 2 on its saddlecloth. I'm not sure why always number 2, I guess I just liked that number. Of course back then no money was changing hands, though the thrill of being right and the disapointment of being wrong was enough to captivate a young Keefter and I've maintained a keen interest in both betting and horseracing since then.

Sometime around 2006 I stubbled by complete accident on an advert for a piece of software which enabled you to trade Betfair prices before a horse race and lock in a profit which was unaffected by the result of the event in question. The concept was immediately fascinating to me and I gave it a go. Initially I had some minor success but ultimately decided that price movements were largely random and unpredictable. At this time i was in a full time job and whilst I continued to use the software for betting I never traded much until in 2008 I was made redundant. At that point I decided to give trading another go whilst I job searched. I've been trading ever since and the job hunting is a distant memory.

Now I'd like to be sat here at 3am writing about how my life was forever changed from that point forward and that I now live in a small castle and drive a Ferrari but I'm afraid that is far from the truth. Don't get me wrong, I've done okay out of it and I'm not complaining but make no mistake this hard hard graft. It takes time, dedication and a lot of blood sweat and tears. When trading Betfair is your single source of income it can be difficult to grow a significant bank. Often your earnings are swallowed up by your outgoings, no different to any other occupation. Over the years I've developed an interesting skill set and a unique forte. Give me £10k and I'd likely blow it. Give me £10 on the other hand and I'll sit here at this desk for as long as it takes to turn that tenner into a significantly larger amount. I've never in my trading years come accross anyone else who was able to or more accurately; willing to do the same. Now that sounds like me bigging myself up a bit but trust me, it isn't a skill I should be proud of, it's simply a by-product of multiple fuck ups and lack of discipline resulting in me finding myself in an extremely 'short stack' situation. And like anything, if you do it enough you will inevitably become very good at it.

It's those infrequent but monumental fuck ups which have inspired me to start this blog. Over the past couple of years I've written a diary on the Geeks Toy forum of my crazy challenges, all starting with an extremely small bank. You can read that here if you're interested: http://www.geekstoy.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4298 and here http://www.geekstoy.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7385

I found that during these challenges my discipline was much better and I was far more focussed and showed the markets more respect than I usually would. There is something about committing yourself to public scrutiny that brings out the best in me. And that folks is what I'm doing here. Yes my reasons for blogging are 100% selfish ones. But that said perhaps I'll gain the opportunity to meet likeminded people and perhaps even inspire one or two along the way.

I don't want this blog to be one P&L screenshot after another. I do intend to track the results here and discuss the days trading if it's interesting enough to warrant that but I'd also like to write the odd article and perhaps post the odd video from time to time. So this blog will be something of a mixed bag and hopefully an interesting read. There is a great deal of room for improvement in my trading and I will be working toward better and more consistant results. As of now I trade Horse Racing and Greyhound Racing. Horse Racing UK US and OZ (up to the 49 race limit). I'm not going to lie, some of what i do is strickly speaking gambling and not trading, and these days 90% of my UK trading on Horses is done In Running.  Leave a comment if you'd like to know more and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Now in classic Keefter fashion I'm starting with £5 in my Betfair account. by the time Christmas is here that fiver will be worth thousands. Hopefully tens of thousands.