Getting burnt
This title could be a reflection on the weather in the UK at the moment, which is fantastic. Lots of us took advantage in the last couple of weeks to head out with the children during the Easter holidays. As a result, quite a few have a bit of burnt skin thanks to the less than common, warm and persistent sunshine. It’s not unheard of though, as I remember running the London marathon in 1996 when the temperature was 20c, what a slog that was!
The main reason for the title is to reflect on how people got caught out by the abnormal number of big spikes in prices last week on the horse racing markets. There was a long discussion on the forum about the spikes, which were causing a lot of people to get burnt. These sorts of things are difficult to predict and can be damaging to a position, but once it was obvious that they were happening very frequently, I decided to change style slightly and put orders in the market to try and take advantage of any unusual spikes. It didn’t work all the time, but it was obvious that I needed to do something to counter the activity. Once I had adapted, I actually ended up having my best week of the year so far. It wasn’t just purely down to this adaptation though, there were a lot more races last week and that obviously helped significantly.
Unfortunately you don’t get the transparency on Betfair that you get in financial markets, so it’s difficult to speculate on what caused the spikes. It will be interesting to see if the activity returns this week or whether it was just somebody experimenting or something else completely different, who knows.
- Spikes can hurt if you step on one
Category: Horse Racing
