Well, I did say once a month didnt I...
The Tennis..
We started the year in Qatar, it's always good to catch as much early action as you can before the Aussie Open, or indeed the rest of the year and there were a few notable points that came out of this one (all my opinions of course). Firstly, Ivan Ljubicic looked out of sorts, looked slow and inaccurate, based his entire game on his serve - nothing unusual there, just more so than normal. He'll need to sort himself out to stay somewhere near the top of the game..
Andy Murray won the tournament, but more than just playing great tennis, he was also looking considerably leaner and fitter than I've ever seen him. Clearly putting on some muscle and losing any shred of fat he had last year... his speed around the court was unbelievable at times.
The Aussie Open was fantastic this year. Loads of great matches, even on the first day which is usually awash with one sided, boring matches. Plenty of matches went the distance, it was great trading and surprisingly - good liquidity too during the night, very happy to see that.
Murray will be gutted he went out first round to Tsonga, I'm sure he fancied a very good run after Qatar. Tsonga was unreal however, we all know that if he hits it inside the lines, he's fairly unstoppable.. huge forehand, big serve.. anyone who watched him go close to beating Roddick in the first round of the Aussie's the year before knew what he could do. A breath of fresh air.
Fed looked slow and out of sorts, I'm a Fed fan, so I'm hoping it's just a result of his pre tournament illness and not the beginnings of a decline..
Roddick had a huge match with Kohlschreiber which went deep into the 5th. Personally I felt he had little game in that match and lent on his serve to get him out of all sorts of trouble.. the match stats suggest a very high quality battle, my opinion is they flattered Roddick hugely, the winners were coming from the German's racquet, Roddick simply far too passive.. no attacking intent from his ground strokes. Massive improvement needed from him in this area otherwise I see him doing nothing this year.
Nadal looked pretty sharp, not something I was fully expecting given something of a flat finish to last year. He looks ready to go, but was beating by a man playing out of his brains.
We haven't mentioned the winner yet, Djokovic. I think a fair winner in the end, his level was above that of Tsonga in the final... most noteworthy point on the Serb.. backhand down the line! where has that come from ?!
On the Womens side, although I dislike Maria, it was good ot see her come back and play perhaps the best she's ever played.. makes this year very interesting, with pressure back on Justine Henin now who was head and shoulders above everyone last year. Maria's got herself a new set of wheels to get around the court it seems. Gone is the heavy goods vehicle reverse beep.. impressive change in her movement, credit to her fitness coach, she was getting balls back that previously she had no hope of getting close to.
Wierdest match of the tournament, Serena Williams v Jankovic. What the hell went on here ?! Serena was playing some reasonable tennis before this, and Jankovic could barely run with all the injuries she has been accumulating recently. Williams looked in pieces on court, serving at 75mph, hitting 25 backhands into the net and moved like the Sharapova of old. She goes a set down, and suddenly, it's 110mph serves and the odd lashed winner... but alas, the effort was too late, Jankovic fell over the line, almost literally. I did a packet on this, but I'll live.. and learn.
The trading..
It was a good month. The first good one for a while actually, I've been treading water for a while, but December's month off gave me a chance to reassess, and to work on everything I've been doing over the previous year. A lot of experience had been accumulated which needed processing, experience with various ways of approaching things. December gave me the chance to put a lot of things together into a clear structure.
Really I think the best thing to have come out of this month is the importance of the work I've done away from trading. The preparation of my strategy, the work I've done on spreadsheets and the maths and continually thinking about and improving these things as I went along, between trading sessions.
As things stand now, I have a spreadsheet telling me what I should be staking and when, and you might think that sounds like something I should have had before.. you'd probably be right ! I certainly know now how much help it is being able to know without thinking all of the numbers that are important to me during a match. I feel this has helped me massively.
I've said previously how important just acting out a plan is, well now the thought process has been distilled to it's simplest form - seeing numbers and acting on them. Not just seeing numbers, but being told how much and at what price.. I'm faster than before, and I'm not making the errors of judgement I was. In fact, "judgement" itself has been removed from the equation and that is the error I made in the Williams match.. a mistake I won't be wanting to make again. That was my one screw up of the month and my biggest loss.
My biggest win was Djokovic beating Federer. Incredible value on Djokovic during this match, infact it kept growing bigger and bigger and for a while I thought the market might get away with it, but in reality, there's only so much pretence the market can maintain - if one player is out playing the other then it will go his way eventually. I remember one instance of laying Fed at 1.8ish with the belief that the right price was 1.7 on Djokovic.
My big loss took 13.2% off the bank, the big win added 13.8% on and for the month, it finished up 38%.
If you fancy reading more, Paul at Selectabet has been interviewing me and has recently posted the first part of it on his excellent blog. Here's to a good Feb.
Update: I notice Part 2 is also up over at selectabet.
