September Salisbury and it’s importance
Today we have a meeting at Salisbury, that’s not unusual at this time of year. But this meeting has some significance for all traders.
Why it’s an important race
Way back in 2003 Betfair published information on a specific race. Betfair went full disclosure on the race. It listed all the market participants what they did, how much they did, how many accounts were active overall and similar information.
On seeing this publication I just realised that it gave me insight that may be useful then and in the future. I now use the data from back then and current data to look at subtle differences that now occur, how that affects the underlying market and what has changed since then.
Persistent biases
The most interesting thing is that most of what I discovered within that data, persists to this day. What I mean is, that the biases I see in the market are more or less similar as they were back in 2003. Obviously markets, their structure and participants change to a certain extent. But ultimately the biases inherent in that data more or less persist. This is interesting as it that implies that some of what goes on in the market are built into the psychology of the participants in the market.
It’s something that I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand in recent years by trying to quantify and explain it. This year I reckon I’m about as close as I’ll ever get to getting a full understanding of it. Being able interests me is that I want to predict it the behaviour rather than just observe.
One of the revealing parts of the report was that even back in 2003 people who backed and laid, traders. Accounted for just under half the market by volume.
The intervening years
It’s interesting to see what is happening in the intervening years in this particular race. There are always subtle modifications in the way that the market is created, such as the price of the favourite or the value of the race. But it is possible to rebase all of these factors to try and come up with a line of what happened over the intervening years. The picture isn’t a particularly pretty one, ignoring some highlights, the market as a whole has not really grown.
The could be a number of reasons for this. It could be that the way that volume is measured, it is most likely not the same as it was back in 2003. But it could also be that there is a general underlying decline in the amount of money on racing or in this particular market. Whatever it is you can definitely see that volume is not romping ahead on this particular race and that’s a shame.
I’ll be interested to see how the race plays out today.
Category: Horse Racing
Any chance I could get a hold of this data Peter? (2003 or today) Thanks
It was removed by Betfair and I’m not allowed to publish it unfortunately.