Goodwood so far
I think it has played out similar to what I imagined. People always over-hype Goodwood and as a consequence the markets often fill up with money that nobody takes.
If you look at the detail you can see this showing up in the stats. The average queue size at Goodwood is twice its normal size, but the fill rate is about normal. This adds up to taking a little more than twice as normal to fill. The longer something takes to fill the more risk you have that it will go against you, so this isn’t an ideal scenario. It’s been more volatile than normal as well, so the risk is much higher this year. There is some really high quality racing at this meeting, but it’s also interspersed with other stuff as well. This can catch people out.
With Betfair’s continued insistence on hiding the exchange, turnover is continuing to hurt. With two days left the turnover is down 16% on last year. You could argue that Frankel’s appearance at 1.07 last year has something to do with that. But even if you go back further and compare with prior years that decline remains unchanged. So the bias if defiantly downwards, as it has been for most of this year. I finding it curious the market volumes are often strong but the underlying fill rate can be remarkably weak, which begs the question of where is the money really being matched?
Meanwhile over on Betdaq volumes and market characteristics are improving. I posted on the forum yesterday that this could actually be a watershed moment for me. It is looking likely that I will earn more on Betdaq this year than Betfair. The first time this has happened at a major meeting. With falling volume and low fill rate, it looks like Goodwood isn’t going to break records for me. Still a couple of days to go, so much could change. I’ll let you know if it does!
Curiously the best trade of the day came elsewhere. I may just have done the best trade of the month on the very first day, check out Betfair chart of the day or today’s racing where I lurk for daily chatter.
Best of luck for the next couple of days!
Category: Horse Racing
