After Aintree – Time for some R&R
With the Aintree meeting now behind us it’s time to take stock and get some R&R ready for the start of the flat season proper.
Aintree meeting
The Aintree meeting was a peach and I had good days most of last week, including the important races at Aintree. The Grand National was pretty eventful overall and lived up to expectations in all respects. We captured extensive data, which we are analysing in the early part of this week. But the basic numbers show volume at £10m which was the highest I have seen on the national. This was perhaps a little below where I thought it would end up after looking at the early volume. I’ll be talking about how I traded it on my next course.
In all the many years I have been doing the Grand National I’ve never had to cope with a loose horse. On Saturday that situation was reversed.
It was a fairly typical situation. Busy in the market and then suddenly, booooooooooom. Price shoots out. I’ve learnt to immediately look at the TV at his point. But, as normal, I couldn’t immediately see anything. Then I see Tony McCoy on his bum and realise what has happened. I must confess it was a moment of panic. I have visions of my entire profit going up in smoke. It made for an interesting situation. Immediately my profit plunged as the price shot out and went against my current position. But slowly the price came back in a bit from this overreaction. The delayed start repaid me by allowing me to continue to trade for a bit longer, offsetting that initial slump. I could have done with out this drama, but the delay ended up more or less offsetting the initial problem.
Synchronised could have proved very costly
Record day
The most pleasing thing about Saturday is that I managed to achieve a record day overall. Having been around for 12 years those don’t come around easily. So I can defintely give last week a 10/10. It’s a nice way to transition to the flat season proper. This week see Newmarket open up with the Craven meeting. This time next week we will be into the evening racing and suddenly, things will get really busy!
While it’s nice to talk about big races, you shouldn’t forget that it’s not all about the big races. 75% of the race card is made up from grades 3-7, so getting those right is the key to being consistent. The big and small meetings can be pretty contrasting, so it’s best to try and get skilled at both rather than thinking there is a one fits all tactic or strategy. If you look at Saturday even the smaller cards could produced something useful, so don’t forget about them! Also, don’t forget that thanks to the premium charge I am much less likely now to be active on the smaller days, simply because it’s not worth me investing time in them.
So, I’m going to have a couple of easy days and return for Newmarket and Champions league on Wednesday. I’ll put some automated stuff on and have a nose at that each evening till then.
Don't forget about the smaller races!
Category: Horse Racing, Trading strategies
