Evil Diaries: When the going was good

I cleared £150,000 on Ascot but given that I won £100,000 on the last day I freely concede that the profit and loss fluctuated.

Much more interestingly, the draw advantage changed. On Friday it seemed that the place to be was on the far side but careful inspection of the opening race on Saturday indicated that the advantage had switched to the stands side with, remarkably, the middle being a hopeless trap for those who thought they could get over to the stands side. Fortunately my adviser phoned me a few minutes before the fourth race and I trousered the £100,000 by a neck.

The cause of the change was watering overnight when it seemed that the firmish going established at COB Friday might lead to withdrawals as trainers sought to protect their charges’ legs. Why the watering was so liberal in the middle and on the far side I do not know.

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Mick Lynch of RMT will lose this clash with the train operating companies. My reason for so asserting that the trains are overmanned and no economy can possibly enforce uneconomic behaviour. That is what skewered Arthur Scargill. Mind you, resolution of differences took a long time and was not easy.

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Last Thursday I bet fairly large on the yen strengthening against the US dollar. The argument was that the Government of Japan would give up supporting the Japanese government bond market and that therefore it would decline implying higher interest rates and enhancing the willingness of investors to hold yen.

It did not happen. But I suspect it will and that therefore selling the yen/USD rate at circa 135 makes a lot of sense.

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Finally, I this morning bought Logistics Development Group (LDG) again – this time at 13.5p.