Still alive, and kicking, just about!

Nearly half of 2014 has flown past since I wished everyone a Happy New Year in my last post. I'm pleased to say that whatever the effects of the 'downturn' might have been in other areas of the economy they seem to have a minimal effect on prestige car sales! I've been flat out! That, together with a huge dose of writer's cramp and ennui has meant I've neglected my little blog.

Not only that, but I 'retired' from Cassini's FTL - and I owe him a sincere apology, as he kindly allowed me to enter (against his better judgement, I suspect!) despite my approach being totally at odds with what he and all the rest of the competitors were up to. I have been following sporadically, and tip my hat to those who finished, and tip it once more to those who finished in the green - no mean feat.

For my own trading efforts I've found myself more and more tending to trade the lower liquidity markets you find from early evening onward. As the dark evenings of winter started to give way to the spring and early summer, my return home from work seems to be getting later and later.

A by-product of this is that increasingly I've found myself getting involved in matches in the second half in-play, and I've got to say it's been a revelation. My strike rates and profitability have been much enhanced. I've also found myself tending to lay much more than I back these days, and have come up with a very effective second half approach to that end involving two markets in-play.

The end of the Premier League season once again proved both interesting and profitable. Once again I've one team to thank for a large portion of green - this time the mighty Reds :) No need to go looking for value backs all the time the Scousers are there to lay at far too cheap a price! I also laid Palace in the relegation market in the winter gloom at 1.2 something... my best individual long term win ever in terms of ROI if not hard cash.

I must say my flabber has not been entirely ghasted by the recent Sunday Times exposé of alleged dodgy dealings in FIFA. I'm sure I was far from being  alone in raising a wry smile when the biggest sports tournament in the world was awarded to a tiny state with no real presence on the footballing stage and where there would be very real practical problems with staging the competition. Let's hope that as part of the fallout from this that a) the tournament ends up somewhere more appropriate and b) that FIFA as an organisation pulls out all the stops to root out the corruption and nepotism that seems to plague it. Some hope the latter, methinks.

All of which, somewhat circuitously, brings me the summer of sport that is just round corner (tennis traders will have to forgive me ... I know their summer is in full swing but the sport doesn't interest me and I always lose money when I dabble!).

This Thursday sees the start of two sporting classics. Brazil and Croatia get the World Cup underway and Justin Rose starts his defence of the US Open. Here's looking forward to trading the both!