Fortunately I have the support of friends and family in my endeavour to become a professional punter.

Even though currently my response to the question “how’s it going” falls into their expectation of all gamblers i.e. only the bookies win I don’t get the emotional carpet that is my long terms ambitions whipped from underneath me.

The reason is that I have built up a track record of earning my friends a few quid when I am asked for tips. In summary they believe in me, my long terms ambitions and goals. It has taken a while to believe in myself!

So now I have convinced myself that I can be “a profitable and consistent winner” after discussion with ere in doors about our long term goals I have decided to take an interim step to become the fund manager of “Equine Investments”.

It was the blogs of Tooting and Mr Iverson that gave me the idea that you can adopt an investment approach to punting as it alters the way you approach this activity. Like all funds with long term growth goals, the objective of the fund is too achieve maximum returns with minimal risk.

It has taken a psychological shift in my approach to betting for me to take the investment route. Ok, I know, I should be doing this already but we mugs take time to absorb new information.Basically the fund will operate as follows. I will continue with the strategy, the subtle change is that now I will track and monitor a couple of fund performance factors. Overtime I may develop some more.

The first metric is to track my overall strike rate. Based on current performance “the favourite” has the best overall strike rate of approx 30%.

My employer is well into the business idiom “benchmark performance” (measure the capability of your business against the top performers in the industry) so I will benchmark myself against the market leader “the fav”.

However, my objective will to maintain a 25% strike rate to ensure that I don’t set unrealistic objectives at the same time setting a target considered acceptable by professional punters.The next metric (and the important one for anyone wishing to invest in “Equine Investments”) is return on investment (ROI).

If you believe the press regarding the credit crunch (I do), then stricter lending criteria will mean that the spending binged we seen for the last 8 years is over; now comes the hangover! The other side of the coin is that savers should benefit in higher interest rates for those that have spare cash.

Currently the best savings rates are yielding 7%, so this will be my benchmark; however unlike the strike rate metric, I’ll set a high goal (20%) to give me something to aim for.

In discussing the fund with ere in doors, the managed fund approach has yielded a benefit that now I am thinking of ways how I can continue to manage risk at the same time maximise profits.

A modest fund of £50 with a maximum bet size of £2.50 and typical bet size of £1 easily manages the risk of the fund going bust (using the Kelly approach to staking). Trying to make an accurate estimate about the probability of each contender on the shortlist manages the risk reward piece (my tissue). In reviewing my records growth areas are “laying” and “exactas” as I am definitely missing out on some profits in these bet types.

However, a big investor (“ere in doors”) is looking take a stake in Equine Investments so I need to ensure that the fund is progressing nicely before she looks over the books in May.

I’ll stick to the “grind it out” approach till then.

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