Tag: trading
Best of a bad job
Well that was an interesting day. I knew it was going to be a case of doing the best I could in tricky circumstances. Despite being tired it all worked out roughly in the end. But it didn’t feel like a successful day!
First up, the run-away leader in the US Masters made this a particularly tricky Masters this year around. I wanted a record result, I desperately wanted to break a four figure sum but it looks like that …
Losses refunded – BETDAQ trading promotion
In line with the release of the new version of BetDAQ Angel, view the video here, BETDAQ would love you to give it a decent test drive. Therefore they are offering you a rebate on losses on your account while you give it a good thrashing. There has never been a better time to give trading on BETDAQ a try, especially now you can automate it using the new version of Bet Angel for BETDAQ.
Download a copy of …
How to win every year on the Grand National
So the Grand National is upon us and that monumental task faces us again, picking a winner from 40 runners. Worse than that, all our friends will want a tip as well.
Picking the winner from this incomprehensible field is a bit of a nightmare. There are some common trends that are touted each year. Horses that haven’t won over three miles are generally not considered, as are horses with no experience of large fields. Positives are age, experience, proven …
Luck of the draw
The FA Cup fifth round is upon us and unlike previous years the competition has been very interesting so far.
A raft of premiership clubs have already been dumped out of the competition and that’s changed the shape a bit. In the fifth round this year the premier league clubs account for 96% of the market. This is lower than previous years which have been 98.76%, 98.36% and 99.30%.
So for the first time in a few years that percentage …
Why Tiger isn’t roaring anymore
You must have noticed the news this morning that Tiger Woods is taking an indefinite break from Golf to rebuild his game. He had better hurry as he is now 39 and as in other sports age is an important factor in Golf.
Typically you have to look at a sport along two lines to determine where a player is in there career. One is age, as this is defining characteristic of strength and agility. The other experience, this tells …
Trading Relegation markets
I recently did a piece of relegation markets, concerning manager sackings which often occur at Christmas and new player arrivals / departures in the new year.
I have written a short piece for Betfair and a longer one for Racing Ahead magazine, but I think the video I did on You Tube is probably the best overall summary. You can view it here, or I have embedded it at the end of this video.
To supplement this video you may …
Ghost of Christmas past
One thing I’ve always been very good at is keeping records, I’d recommend it. You can look back and recall what you did previously and improve on it. Or just use it as a point of reference. I tend to archive a lot of trading records and make notes against them so I can remember how the markets traded, what I did and what I was thinking.
I was browsing my records from previous years this evening and came across …
Is NBA the new WTA?
During my recent travels in the US I sat down at a bar one evening and watched some Basketball. It was an entertaining experience. Fellow bar attendees proffered their opinion and curiosity overwhelmed me, so I reached into my pocket fired up the Betfair app and had a look at the market.
Here is something you may not know. You CAN’T actually log in and place a bet from the US, but you CAN actively look up a market and …
Kaizen
Nobody is perfect
You know what, nobody is perfect. We all get emotional, we all defend our views and our patch of turf vigorous and sometimes errantly. But when I started 20 years ago I wanted to achieve something really special. So each morning I wake up, that’s my objective. I think about what I can do today to nudge my activity to a new level. I think hard about what I, not others, are doing and how I can …
How extrapolation trips people up when trading
A trend is your friend, until the end.
One of the most common mistakes I see in newbies is trend following. Trend following is when you latch on to a pattern and extrapolate it. It could be a horse that is heavily drifting or coming in, perhaps a football team on a great run or form, or a poor one. Perhaps a team has had 20 games under 2.5 goals. Is there a trend, why, or this a natural aberration?…
95% return on stake
I thought that headline may grab your attention that the screen shot!
Basically it’s an accurate description on what I did last night before the champions league matches started, only I tend to do it on a larger scale and that reduces percentage returns. For this example, which I am documenting in detail for my course, I did it using highly replicable £10 stakes. It would be easy to add a zero to this number. Harder to add two!
Before …
Trading the Ryder cup
Once every two years the sporting world turns its attention to what is turning into a classic sporting Rivalry, the Ryder Cup.
Many years ago it didn’t have anything like the profile it does now. Post war it was a chance of US golfers to show how much better they were than UK players. Then the rules changed to make their opponents UK and Ireland but that was still dominated by the US. Then in 1985 when it became the …
Part timer
I’m back onto Betfair markets properly today. I’m currently taking the opportunity to enjoy the late summer sun. I had my first round of golf for a few years this morning! Having worked hard during the busier periods of the year, I can skip the quieter days at the moment without remotely denting my yearly performance much. Though I did take a look at the champions league last night.
I also nipped in on Sunday to have a pop at …
Millions by the minute
It seems every now and again a trading documentary pops up now and again on the TV. The most recent one aired last night, click on this link to watch it: –
Traders : Millions by the minute
I thought it was entertaining but quite lightweight in the scheme of things. It was curiously positioned as new and exciting but online trading in financial markets has been around for ages. I liked the way they focused on the psychological side …
Summer has almost gone
Seeing Wolverhampton on the card again made me realise another summer has almost passed into the spreadsheet of history.
One of the realities of sports trading is that summer is peak season across a number of sports for me, so it’s a valuable time to get into top gear. I mourn it’s passing. But my attention will now turn to Tennis for the US Open and back to Football for the winter months. Racing, of course, is an all year …
Little and often
This is a phrase I’ll often quote when advising people on how to trade. I posted up a full list of results from yesterday and it got a fair amount of commentary because it illustrated exactly that point. More information further down this post.
It’s really nice to bang in some massive results now and again, but generally, that’s not what trading is about. Well. not 80% of the time on racing.
Most of the time I’m in a market …
Tennis trading
In my journey to understand Tennis I had to work out how and why the market moved, so it was with that in mind that we created Tennis trader. It allowed us to probe the deepest detail of any Tennis match and set up strategies that would allow us to profit from that. Using Tennis trader you can get an idea of what is required for any strategy to pay off, what risk you are taking and when this will …
Pre match trading at the World Cup
You could be forgiven for thinking that trading on football is all about somehow anticipating something that’s going to happen in play. But if you follow my tweets you will see I’ve been banging some decent totals before the off.
I explained this in a previous post, but it’s worth noting again that if you are prepared to put the effort in and have a bit of patience, it’s perfectly possible to trade before the off successfully. I’ll be …
Inside the Shadowy World of Tennis Courtsiding
Interesting article on Court siding with contributions from Sporting Data, whose spotter was ejected from the Aussie open earlier this year, and also news of a book coming out about it! An interesting dialogue on the world of courtsiding.
You can read the full article on the fivethirtyfive web site.
Various quotes from various sources but in essence a summary of the courtsiding debate and some insight into what has been going on for quite a few years now.…
Profits and (losses)
Last week I got a few comments about P&L’s I’d posted up; this is quite common.
I was asked more than once, what stake did you use to achieve that? But there are so many ways to answer that question. You could have a hundred different answers depending on how you trade. If you don’t understand this answer, have a deep think about it.
A debate also broke out on the forum about posting winners and losers. My view on …
Trading Golf markets on Betfair
If you want detailed Golf stats check out this site which I have been using to dissect Golf tournaments in more detail.
My first ever bet on Betfair back in June 2000 was actually on Golf, curiously. But back then it wasn’t a trading strategy that made me place that bet. Years later, Golf is now a regular part of my trading mix and the US Masters is my first chance of the year to really go for it.
I’ve …
Trading the Premier League title run-in
With West Ham vs Liverpool on the agenda this afternoon I thought I would have a close look at the premier leagues remaining matches and how they will affect the run in for the title. View the video to see how I’m looking to do this.
Using traded volume to trade on Bet Angel
In this video I describe how to use the two traded (matched bet) volume indicators on Bet Angel. A simple but effective way of understanding where the short term volatility is driving market prices.
What you can do with a £10 stake?
I’ve done this experiment a few times on the blog where I use a £10 stake and do something with it. Last week, with Cheltenham looming upon us, it’s well know that the Cheltenham markets will be well and truly stuffed up with money. That can be tough and it’s likely you will need more money to make some this week. So I thought it would be a nice reflection to trade with small amounts again as a demonstration and …
How you really make (trading) decision
If you haven’t seen this episode of Horizon it is worth a watch: –
It is titled, ‘How you really make decisions’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03wyr3c/Horizon_20132014_How_You_Really_Make_Decisions/
I’ve used some of the examples in this episode in my courses from time to time.
I became interested in sub-optimal behaviour when I started working out how to win the football pools. I figured that while there was an inbuilt edge against me in he market, most people wouldn’t use optimal behaviour to place their bets …
FA Cup trading so far..
A quick review of how the FA Cup has traded so far this year. Pretty much the same as prior years TBH.
In the third round Premier league teams were 96.84% of the market. Today that stands at 99.15%, I think the winner could perhaps come from the premier league this year! If you look at the movers from the third round you see a slightly clearer picture, but obviously a lot of that is down to the draw: –…
It’s always darkest before dawn
In the UK we have had a tough winter. Storm after storm, rain, flooding, unprecedented weather not witnessed for 250 years. But it will end and this is where the title on this blog post comes from.
We all know that day follows night and vice versa, but in a period of time relative to yourself, sometimes it seems there will be no end. But I can assure you that everything in life works in cycles.
Remember 2013? Only last …
Strange places to trade from..
Over the many years I’ve been trading, I generally never pass up a clear opportunity to do a decent trade or trading session. This has led me to trade from all manner of places.
Just before I left my final job in the corporate world many years ago I’d often trade in the toilet. Bit odd you may think, but as I got more and more into trading I started to take bigger and bigger positions and they need careful …
Pre Match football trading
In the absence of racing today I’ll be dipping into Kempton to have a look this evening, though I doubt I’ll trade it, and I’ll also be welcoming the premier league football into my arms.
Football was one of the first markets I actively traded on Betfair and I still do it today. Trading before the match starts allows me to get off to a head start on things and, if necessary, carry over the profit to play around with …
A question of scale (part four)
I have finally completed my quartet of posts called ‘question of scale’.
Parts one, two and three have been looking at the question of scale in the exchange markets. Four looks at what this effectively means for me and it starts with a simple question.
OK, I’m going to give you £500,000 to invest. Where will you invest it and what return will you get?
Let’s put that in a savings account. Hmm, only 1-2% interest means we will …
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