Why trading horse racing works so well!
We had a glorious example earlier this week as to why trading is definitely a better way to earn money on Racing than traditional punting! The great thing about this trade, is that I did it office when we had somebody in for training; so it was great to pull of such a trade while they were here.
If somebody from a traditional punting background doesn’t understand why they should trade, show them this post!
The set up
We have all heard about “steamers”, “gambles” and “gambling” yards. The outlook is typically familiar, in the early market something shortens up quite rapidly. Rumours abound that a horse is being produced for a win and the price shortens further. Seeing the price shorten the market gains some momentum and people who don’t want to miss out pile in make the price even shorter still! We have a ‘steamer’ on our hands!
Punting a gambled horse
From a punting perspective, the judgement is really down to whether you think this course is going to win? Has the yard prepared this horse for a win? Is the horse looking good? How the other runners looking? Will the horse perform on this course and distance?
From there they have to decide is this punt worth it?
How much should you put on it? Can you afford the loss? What could go wrong?
Trading a gambled horse
From the trading perspective it’s much easier decision. We can see the horse is being gambled and therefore we expect the price to shorten a little bit more. We don’t know exactly how much it will shorten by, we just know that it is likely to shorten! So when we spotted the gambled horse we back it at the highest price possible, then wait.
It could be that we join the market at just the wrong moment and the horse doesn’t shorten in price any more, that would be annoying. It could also be that people no longer want to back it and the price moves out slightly, but the previous price movement very often means that this is much less likely. Even if that does happen, we can still trade out for a small loss.
Very often what happens is that the gamble continues and continues and continues and continues, right until the off.
When I see a gambled horse
When I see a gambled horse, I tend to follow it through until the death. I’ll do this unless if I see money coming from another horse, or a significant weakening on the gambled horse. This could be in the market or perhaps through something that is happening on course.
On Wednesday Chepstow kept on re-rating horses significantly throughout the day. As I indicated on Twitter at the time there were some really big moves taking place at Chepstow that day. So when the gamble started on this particular horse I knew I was going to follow it and with a reasonable sum of money.
The funny thing was that I didn’t actually get all of the money that I required on it, only a small fraction of what I would have liked. The price was moving that quickly! As it turned out I managed to back it at a reasonable price and traded out just before the off.
The trade
In total I may just over £600 from my trade. At post time I would win £600 regardless of what happened in the actual race itself. Whether the horse won, lost or refused to start the race. Pretty much whatever happened I had made that £600 before the race had even started, I could relax and wait for the race to start. Until you’ve done that on any scale, you just won’t know how good that feeling is!
It wasn’t long before the race had started.
The race
The horse in question the horse in question ‘Not For You’. It was was held up at the start and it looked like the jockey was trying to keep the horse out of trouble for later in the race, when it would be produced for the win. Unfortunately the jockey didn’t count on the first fence! With the horse pulling hard the jump was mistimed and it clipped the top of the fence and face planted itself on the other side along with the jockey. Thankfully both horse and jockey were fine, but it’s race was over after just one fence! Not even one fence really as it never cleared it!
The conclusion
Anybody backing this gamble would have been absolutely gutted because the horse didn’t get a race and their entire stake had just hit the dirt in a matter of seconds. But of course that didn’t matter to anybody who had traded the gambled horse. They had profited regardless of how the horse ran, whether it ran well or not and whether, as it happened, it fell at the first fence. At the end of the day you will profit many more times by trading a gambled horse than punting it and you can relax and watch the race as well.
And in a nutshell, that is the beauty of trading rather than punting a gambled horse!
Category: Horse Racing, Trading strategies
