Trading early season flat racing
With Aintree out of the way we are now in the transition to the full flat racing season and evening racing.
The seasonal transition from one code to another can present problems if you bet and trade with the same style throughout the year, so it’s worth exploring what is different about this time of year.
The first thing to note is that the late season jumps racing has been suffering more than normal this year. A dry April and firm ground has depleted fields and, apart from the key meetings, left us with little of note. So that’s resulted in weaker markets to trade. That happens quite frequently, but has been particularly pronounced this year.
As we turn to the flat, the predominant characteristic at the start of the season is the races that include horses on their first outing on a racecourse. Nobody really knows how these horse are likely to perform and therefore there is a lot of second guessing in the market. This means that gambles are more likely to occur at this time of year and you can get some stupendous swing trades out of those gambles. He have already seem some significant movers and you can expect more as the early season begins to unfold.
When a new horse steps out on the course people will be looking for any information as to how it will run. If the word is on the street that something will run well, it may get some money and seeing that others will follow. There is no form to go by, so money talks in the case of a horse making it’s racecourse debut and that is a key driver of the market. Because of this; any move for a horse, positive or negative, will often run much further at this time of year. The behaviour of the horse also becomes more prevalent as nervousness can be a precursor to a horse that doesn’t run to it’s true potential.
During the winter there is no turf racing, obviously, so the fresh grass will also bring out horses for their seasonal debut. You may get three years olds that have improved a fair bit since they were last seen. So that is another dynamic in play at the start of the flat turf season. As the market gets smarter on progressive horses that will be discounted into the market.
This ‘new season’ effect generally wears off as the season get older and by October it is at it lowest. I wont bore you with the actual numbers, but it’s an effect I spotted many years ago and one that still persists today. I expect it to continue this year.
But the overall summary is, expect more volatile markets but more in the sense that once a move starts it tends to persist and go on for longer in affected markets. More volatile need not be dangerous though as they present good trades. Just remember, a loss isn’t a loss, it’s a negative profit! The big steamer in the market may not win it’s race but you can still stand a good chance of profiting from it, by trading it.
Category: Horse Racing, Trading strategies
