Loadsamoney
I made a post on social media this week about an article that appeared in the Financial Times. I didn’t realise at the time of posting, that in the background there was a mention of a sizeable position then went through the market at Royal Ascot.
I only realised this, when people started questioning it shortly after the post. Asking how it was possible put £125k through a market?
Ordinary or extraordinary?
This wasn’t an ordinary market, though, this was Royal Ascot and by any measure arrested Royal Ascot is not ordinary. You would naturally expect to have a chance of a big turnover race at a big meeting. However, it is perfectly possible to put large amounts through any market, it’s just a question of scale. During the big meetings, you can rack up some big stakes.
But typically you tend to run with much smaller numbers apart from the feature races. On Saturday evening at Windsor I managed to put through £40,000 on the feature race , but much less on some of the other markets. But the key to all of this it is may be several trades, rather than just one. £40k could be 16 lots of £2.5k, and also not all of it could be traded profitably. You will be interested to know the Betfair site struggles with numbers over £100k 🙂
You tend to find that as you push the limits of what you can do, you often start a trade dump it, then start again. The try again, again and hopefully get what you are looking for or perhaps just never find it and end up putting a lot through but with little profit.
The key, for me at least, is trying to establish a sensible position in the market at reasonable risk. I’m trying to profit with the minimum downside possible. If I put a position in the market, I’ll put it if I don’t like it.
The most common result for me in a market is probably somewhere around £0-10! That just reflects that I try something, then exit because it didn’t work or the risk changed.
What’s the limit?
I never have any idea how much money I am putting into a market at any one point in time. I never look, never guess and never aim for a certain amount. All I’m trying to do is do the best trade possible and, typically, use the largest amount possible in any one trade. That is achieved by starting with a certain stake, then increasing it as I get more confident about the trade. If I am not confident then the stake never goes up and I may dump the position.
My focus is, and always will be the risk I’m taking on the actual trade. I don’t tie that to an amount of money. You can take more risk with £50 in the wrong market than £50k in the right market. That said I am always concerned about my exit so getting out is probably the most important thing to me. I need to safely exit, so the upper stake always reflects the underlying liquidity in the market. If there is loads of money in the market I feel safe using larger stakes. So that’s why I tend to put high volume through higher quality races.
I explained some of my thoughts in a video, which you can view here: –
Category: Horse Racing, Trading strategies
