Author Archive: Peter Webb
I left a good job in the consumer technology industry to go a trade on Betfair for a living way back in June 2000.
I've been here ever since pushing very boundaries of what's possible on betting exchanges and loved every minute of it.
3-7
Not very often you see a scoreline like that in a football match.
I’ve been fortunate to be psyhically present to watch top level matches that ended 8-2, 6-2 and 5-5; but 3-7 is a really odd one. So odd I couldn’t really price it if you asked. I’d happily lay at 1000! Total goals are easier to price and I would have offered about 2000 for ten goals last night. Stats aside, there is a nice write up of …
Fraud on client funds again?
WorldSpreads recently entered special administration after the company said in a statement that as at close of business on Friday 16 March, the board of directors believed there was a shortfall of some £13m in clients’ money. I offer my sympathy if you have been affected.
Basically it looks like they have been trading using clients funds, though official information is always a big foggy in these cases. If so, it would not the first time a company has done …
F1 is back – Australian Grand Prix
Well my tickets for Silverstone are already booked and I’m looking forward to the new season.
I don’t tend to do much on Motorsport, but over time I’ve become adept at picking out opportunties on F1. Have a browse of some previous blog posts.
Comments from winter testing and early season practice tend to show you whose cars are competitive and whose are not. Other teams will catch up over the course of the season and rule changes can …
Happy St Patrick’s day
Best wishes to our Irish customers. Whatever you are doing today have a good one.
After the frenzy of Cheltenham we return to earth with a bump today. Lots of racing, but little of note. Use today to adjust yourself back to the melee of lower quality racing. On the football however we have the FA Cup quarter finals, so that looks interesting and will throw up some opportunities. I may dip in out and of those markets.
For main …
Don’t Panic!
This afternoon, for an experiment, I was wired up to a heart rate monitor. It was a test to see how I reacted throughout a busy day and to see what sort of stress I went through. As it turned out it measured a different sort of stress from normal!
The day started as normal and pulled in a couple of OK results. On the approached to race three though something seemed to be going wrong and the response I …
Cheltenham – So nearly a record
Big day today, the iPad three is launched! – LOL – You also have the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Yesterday went much better than I thought. I scoured my notebook from days one and two to give myself the best chance of pulling something out of the hat and did. The markets are very similar to last year in that respect.
I was a bit more aggressive and confident yesterday and that helped a lot. I was also able to read …
Wolverhampton Winners
Two winners at Wolverhampton, one race after another. Have a look at the graphs and see if you can spot the pattern.
Cheltenham day three
Day two of Cheltenham went pretty much to plan.
I did get off to a bad start though, a small profit then a loss of £120 in the second race didn’t put me in the best of moods, but I pulled things around nicely and patched together a string of decent results to end up ahead of last year again. Still short of my best ever, but as I mentioned before, not a surprise.
I am trading both exchanges together …
Cheltenham day two
That was an OK start to Cheltenham. I’d rank it on the better side of the line. OK because I didn’t break any upside records, but OK because I didn’t do so on the downside either!
Volumes waiting to be matched are higher than last year, they are running at around ten times normal week day levels. The rate at which those orders are filling are only six times normal level so there is quite a big gap in the …
Ear plugs for the Cheltenham roar
I’m in a nice relaxed and refreshed mood for the first day of Cheltenham. Last night I used ears plugs so I could be assured of a decent nights sleep. With three children, a decent nights sleep is not always assured.
The first day for Cheltenham is a day of learning for me. Yes I know what I am doing, but I am also really keen to understand what has changed from previous years. We will be gathering data today …
Trading the Gold Cup – Ante post market
I’ve been tracking the Cheltenham Gold Cup ante post market.
Big news today is that Kauto Star is definitely in the race and Grand Crus is headed for the RSA.
We have been tracking top 15 runners and before the announcement they made up 100.2% of the book, after the announcement 100.4%. The big negative was obviously Grand Crus, but Kauto Star only covered half that deficit, with the field making up the rest. Long Run’s odds are unchanged.
In …
Cheltenham by numbers
For those that are not on my mailing list, I prepared and sent out a little peice this weekend called ‘Cheltenham by numbers’. It’s stats based review on the festival.
You can read it by clicking on this link: –
https://www.betangel.com/newsletter/
Nightmare
I have a little diary next to my desk. In it I scribble notes on the markets and what happened and any mitigating circumstances. I also keep a spreadsheet where I track what sort of activity I have been up to.
Both are key pointers for me to look at and to set expectations from. If I look on the spreadsheet and see a really good, or really poor day. I’ll flip to the diary to see what actually happened. …
Europa league matches
Both Manchester teams being in the Europa league has injected a bit of life into the Carling Cup of Europe it seems.
I quite like the look of this evenings matches. The market is forecasting around 21-22 goals this evening. SP Lisbon vs Man City is the pick of the bunch from the 18:00 kick offs. So I am secretly hoping that City score first but struggle to break down their opponents from there on in. Despite my wish, I’ll …
Which match?
I’m looking at three different matches this evening.
First you have Barcelona vs Leverkusen, Barca 1.17 to win and 3-1 up from the away leg, a formality. But there is little incentive for Barcelona to go for and nothing for Leverkusen to lose so an interesting set up. Barca should win easily, but the lack of incentive gives an opportunity for a slip up.
Spurs vs Stevenage is a different kettle of fish (love that phrase). Spurs have a great …
The 49 bets
Here is something interesting. Well I thought it was interesting anyhow, so I thought I would share it.
On Saturday I was working a position into the Liverpool vs Arsenal match. I’ve often maintained there can’t be many big gamblers / traders out there as I rarely see big amounts in the market. OK there are reasons why I may not be able to see them, but even then, I rarely see anything that looks like a bigger player.
In …
Tonights football opportunties
I like the look of the champions league tonight, but I can’t trade it as I’ll be out watching the football instead. I’ve been doing a lot more of that this year and really enjoyed it. What’s life if you can’t enjoy the fruits of your labour?
The Arsenal vs AC Milan really catches my eye because both teams have little to lose. Arsenal wont gain any credibility by defending and will have to have a go. With Van …
Betfair continues squeeze on users
Full management statement here: –
https://corporate.betfair.com/media/press-releases/2012/06-03-2012.aspx
Having been an active investor for over 20 years, here is my take on the management statement. Management statements always focus on the positive and you have to read a bit deeper than the headlines.
Core revenues up 11%, but no mention of non core revenues, other than ‘they are in line with expectations’. The games products are no longer working and despite being pushed in-front of all users, which personally I find very …
A question of scale (part two)
In part one we talked about how scale could be an issue in the markets, but how?
If you are betting there is a maximum amount of money that you can bet ‘at value’. Obviously there is little point in betting outside of value, so by default that means it’s impossible to fulfill an unlimited amount at value. It’s also impossible to take all the money on offer and get value, so you realise quickly that there is only a …
How to avoid Betfair API problems
Unfortunately Betfair suffered two more problems on the API yesterday, adding to the number that have occured on a regular basis recently.
This post is a reminder for everybody that Bet Angel can run in an alternative (non API) mode if you experiance an issue. Using this mode can completely save your bacon if there is an API glitch. It’s a feature that pays for itself, even if it’s just in terms of your peace of mind! You must …
Is trading football the new racing?
Horse racing markets are popular with traders because of the large amounts of volatility, but trading football on betting exchanges hasn’t traditionally been seen as a place to get large risk free swings in odds. Things appear to be changing however.
I have recently been conducting some re-reseach on pre-off movements on football. I do this sort of thing on all sports, revisiting previous research. But on conducting the research this time around I noticed a change. The football pre-off …
Creating a profitable strategy (Part one)
Lots of people want to know how to do a winning trade. But very few ask, or think hard enough about how to create an overall postive strategy.
In the context of trying to do something positive over the long term, a trade is just one component of a broader strategy. Trades will win but also lose and therefore it’s the overall strategy where we want to get the balance right rather than getting too focused on each individual position …
International football friendlies
I wont be actively trading the international friendlies this evening. There are many things I can predict about how a football match will pan out but doing this on friendlies is much harder and a bit more random. Basically I don’t know if I have an edge.
I also have this issue that I don’t have enough data to these types of matches to make a confident judgement. So I will pass on the opportunity to do so.
This is …
Bank building
February is the quietest month of the year for me. I do around 1/3rd of what I can during the busiest time of the year. So I tend to take some time off during February. A few years ago I was forced to take time off because of a death in the family and I’ve pretty much stuck to that since. The time off that is!
For me this period is about getting some relaxtion in and planning for the …
Carling cup final – Please read the rules!
Whenever the Carling Cup final comes around I am always reminded of the importance of reading the rules in a market. Certain positive positions, things that seem too good to be true can suddenly be exposed as your worst nightmare! But as always with betting exchanges there are two sides to the coin, you can profit from understanding the rules better than others.
Before we get to the main point, I can give you a more recent example; the next …
Creative football trading
The great thing about football markets is that they are very predictable, in an unpredictable way!
Goals are few and far between and occur randomly but with bias throughout the match. But because there are so few goals on average, that makes it easy to figure out what you should do when one goes in. There are only a small number of combinations to work with.
Lots of people focus on just one match, research it to death and try …
Back to the desk
Back behind my trading desk today after a few days trying to recover from this illness. Still nowhere near 100% but I just hate doing nothing. I’d rather be distracted by something other than the sight of a sick bowl! I actually find trading quite fun, so I can still do it and mess around with the numbers, even when I’m not on form. It’s definitely the challenge I enjoy more than the result, though that helps!
The Wolves next …
Is inability to trade a genetic trait?
When you look at any market that follows a random walk, upside and downside is created in equal proportion. So it’s impossible, if you participate at random, to lose money, apart from the cost of transacting in that market.
On the stock market it’s even more favourable as the underlying investment is net accretive, so it should be even less possible to lose money. But still people lose!
Having studied the markets for so long I now have a very …
Are people in the UK less enterprising?
I did a course at our offices yesterday where I talked all day about how the markets work and why. I followed this up with showing that in action.
That’s fairly normal, but the unusual thing about yesterday is that only a couple of people in the room were from the UK. This seems to be a trend that is constantly developing in everything I do. On Friday I am meeting somebody at Heathrow whom I am going to work …
Profiting from next manager markets
Just a couple of weeks ago had a change in the England manager job with Capello walking out. A week later and we had another ‘next manager’ market to deal when Wolves sacked Mick McCarthy. Then Lee Clark is sacked from Huddersfield, Warnock joins Leeds. It sometimes feels like the managerial merry go round will never stop. I’ve actually studied what effect sacking a manager has, but that’s for another post. I think I may have written about it already …
Connect
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.