New Fund for 2007 - the Five star fund

For this year, I will start measuring blog performance for 2007 as well as overall since inception.

Also, I am launching a new fund. I was quite taken by Harry Findlay's articles in the Guardian and Telegraph last month and they chimed with various thoughts I had already been having. My approach over the years has been very conservative. I have been grinding away, building up each fund slowly but surely, with as little risk as possible of going bankrupt at any stage. This has served me well and I have no desire to change my overall approach.

However, I have felt for some time that I am missing out on opportunities. In particular I am not exploiting areas where I feel I should be getting my betting boots on, rather than just turning over my money. I also feel I am not exploting a current leaning (betfair driven) towards value being at the front end of the market, especially longer odds-on shots.

I also can see the sense (as a 4% betfair commission punter) in Harry's assertion that you can't make a living on 4%. Of course I'm basing that on his definition of making a living which is presumably far richer than the one I appear to making quite successfully on 4%! I have two ways of moving up a gear.

1. To continue what I do, and to continue to plough some of the year on year growth back into the funds to increase staking. My staking has after all increased about 10 fold on my horse racing stakes of only 5 years ago.

2. To set up a new fund which is highly aggressive in scope. The objective will be for capital growth as quickly as is sensible and with a willingness, at least in the early days to bust the bank. The fund is moderately-sized (a fifth of the size of my current racing fund) to allow for me to bust it without too many tears(!)but hopefully large enough to start having an effect. To be honest it is also set at a level where initially I am still betting within my comfort zone.


The fund will be primarily betfair based. Firstly, because this should hopefully help me get to higher discount levels, which will help all my funds. And secondly, because I'm finding it hard enough to get bets on with bookmaker accounts as it is and I don't want to scare any more off by suddenly upping stakes.

All well and good, but where are these new bets coming from?

I'll be concentrating on two areas.

A) Pressing up on those bets from other funds that strike me as exceptional value (naps if you like), but the constraints of the particular fund don't allow me to bet as much as perhaps I'd like.
For example I may see a football match which to my mind offers exceptional value (eg Bolton to beat Arsenal), but can only put 5pts on the bet within my football fund. Now I will be able to use my new fund as well.

B) Being prepared to have a thump at long odds on chances that whilst remaining value in my book, I've always shied away from in the past. I did start this towards the end of last year. Australia to win the ashes at 1/4 would be a good example.

The staking will be on three levels based on a mixture of confidence, price and exposure in other funds. It will also be done as a percentage of the current bank, instead of my usual percentage of starting-bank reassessed at start of every season. Hopefully, assuming an upward curve, this will speed progress.

The levels will be:
Three star bet - 5% of existing fund
Four star bet - 7.5% of existing fund
Five star bet - 10% of exisiting fund.

I will post all bets up on here. This should be of interest to the casual observer as I know some of you like to pick and choose from my recommendations. Now you'll have my own pointer as to the strongest bets.

I'll include progress as part of my monthly summaries. However, I will NOT measure this as part of my overall figures as it would distort them, and would also be a pain to keep track of on the new staking basis.

Fingers crossed!