Those who have followed my blog since the re-start (if anyone has?) will remember I left my job at the start of the year. This was the main reason for starting the website up again as with so much time on my hands the idea of blogging again was intriguing.

Of course things change and 3 weeks ago I started some part time work. The part-time work provides me with enough money to cover basic bills and then anything I want on top of that I have to earn myself. It’s been an interesting experiment so far – I’ve gone for the best part of 6 months without working more than 18 hours in a week and more importantly I haven’t had to sacrifice much. When you work full time people have this belief that leaving their job would be a dire situation – how on earth would you cope? Well as always things are never as bad as they first appear. In fact when plummeted into the position of having no income the first thing you realise is how much stuff you thought you needed you don’t really need at all. Life actually becomes simpler and what used to be a chore is now a pleasure, even simple things like walking to the shops instead of going by car. To get an idea of what I’m trying to achieve then I recommend the book ‘Four Hour Work Week’ by Tim Ferriss.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. Having had endless amounts of time to do what I pleased with at the start of the year I began to get carried away with what I could do. I could start the blog up again, start trading other events, take a self learning course in Maths & Statistics, build some betting bots (which is taking hours and hours of my time) etc etc. All was well but now I’ve started part time work to ensure my rent is guaranteed each month all that spare time seems to have gone.

For the Canada GP I noticed a slight change in the way I traded. You may have noticed I was somewhat ‘lost’ going into the weekend. This was because I didn’t have time to do my normal amount of research and crammed it in. I ended up chasing the market which on that occasion worked out fine as I made a handsome profit, but it didn’t feel right.

This weekend it was the (what could have been fatal) error of placing a bet on the wrong market. I was rushing to get bets on at the last minute – partly the fault of poor liquidity but also sloppy on my part. During qualy I was again chasing the market and this time lost out. I had felt Webber offered much better value and he did – but I just didn’t trade the odds very well and made a loss (within my limits).

I didn’t do any prediction post before the weekend either, A) because of time and B) because I didn’t want give away any tips when the volumes traded were so low.

Those who read a number of betting blogs will probably now be thinking this is a post about giving up the blog – it’s not.

When I made the decision not to go back to full time work and to try and earn a living by other means, I was determined not to quit or let anything stand in my way. But I do have to be realistic and to get to my ‘end target’ I have to prioritise my actions to those which offer me the most value in return.

Doing a post about what my predictions for the forthcoming race are is not much use to me. If I’m right then I may have given away an advantage and if I’m wrong then I won’t have any readers so it’s a waste of time! Doing a post about how I traded the race is also of no use to you (those variables will not happen again for you to replicate it) and no use to me other than maybe learning from mistakes.

So I’m going to kill two birds with one stone. Well actually I’m not killing anything, more merging items into one which I hope will then give me a benefit from spending time on it.

No longer will posts be in relation to the forthcoming race or how I traded the last one. It won’t be about me at all – it will be about F1 and Betting/Trading. Therefore posts can be written as and when I have the time to do so. It’s not so much the writing of posts that way a blogger down, it’s the constant feeling of needing to do a post, especially when you set yourself an imaginary deadline. So removing the need to post out of the equation I can better manage my time.

As a result of changing the content of posts I’m going to stop the self learning course in Maths & Statistics. It was fine, but is learning hardcore maths any use if I never get around to applying it to anything. I will therefore continue teach myself but on my own time frame (therefore removing deadlines again). To help with this learning I will apply what I learn to F1 statistics and how they relate to the odds etc. Therefore a typical post may be ‘If you backed the pole sitter, would it have returned a profit over the season?’. I have bundles of data but never get around to using it (time!)  – now I will be able to investigate my data and create a blog post at the same time.  Any other ideas for investigations would be welcomed.

Betting bots are also another thing I’m looking into at the moment so I may do some posts on these – probably when I need some help with solving programming issues!

Twitter will allow me to make quick comments when I feel like sharing something regarding the weekends current F1 race so those interested should follow me here.

As for the Flutter Fund, well it proved either outright betting does not pay or that I’m terrible at predicting the outcome of the race! Probably a mix of both if I’m honest but it goes to show how little ‘prediction’ is involved in trading as those returns are sky high in comparison. To finish it off, I have done one last selection for this weekend.

Yesterday I felt overworked and my trading suffered as a result. Last night when I made the decision to merge the blog and learning together and remove the need for a deadline on those tasks, I felt much better. I’m now looking forward to today’s race and come profit or loss, I don’t care as long as I’m back to trading how I should be.

Good luck for today (and for England!) and I will post sometime maybe soon, about whether there is value in backing a pole sitter such as Vettel @ 1.92 or if this should be a lay position…..