Category: Trading strategies
French Open Tennis – Roland Garros
Today see’s the start of the 4th Round of the Roland Garros and its certainly been an eventful first week to say the least.
On day one the women’s world number 1 Angelique Kerber was dumped out 6-2, 6-2 making her the only number one seed ever to be eliminated in the first round of the French Open – there has only ever been four number ones who have gone out in the first round across all Grand Slams.…
Betfair trading – Little and often soon adds up
This is a phrase I’ll often quote when advising people on how to trade.
The real objective when trading
It’s really nice to bang in some massive results now and again, but generally, that’s not what trading is about. Most of the time I’m in a market I’m just looking for an opportunity. Something I recognise as having a decent chance of a payoff, with as little downside as possible. Sometimes you just can’t see them and sometimes they are …
Trading Tennis in-clay – When it’s good to see Red
European clay court Tennis, Group Racing at Newmarket, the Grand National behind us; spring is definitely here!
We are now on the cusp of a lot of major sporting action. The Monte Carlo Masters Tennis is a signal to start dusting down things for the French Open. The European clay court season is upon us and it presents us with some decent opportunities.
Tennis – Why Red Clay can equal Green
Clay is an interesting surface for Tennis because of …
Aintree, the Grand National and fallers
If there is one thing Aintree is known for it is spectacular fallers. In 2011 British racing yielded to public opinion and changed the fences at Aintree. The idea was to stop more fallers and serious injuries to horses. Did that happen? Will it happen? What the key factors behind a faller in a race?
Source data
To answer all the questions I took a look at half a million horses that raced around the various jumps races over the …
The Betfair exchange in numbers
I started collecting data on Betfair from the very early days and have carefully archived masses of work that I’ve done in the market.
I hoard data, even if I have no need for it, as I can go back and look at or compare previous periods. This is helpful in sporting terms to understand how the markets behaved in the past, but also I’ll often go back to apply something I recently discovered and see if results are consistent …
The growth and growth of inplay
It seems difficult to imagine a time when it wasn’t ‘all about the in-play’ – but before Ray and Betfair there really wasn’t much concept of betting on an event after the official start time. How things have changed!
The start
Back when exchanges started, it was purely a replication of the traditional bookmaker regime. Similar sports and similar punting styles, but exchanges brought this new concept of betting while an even was underway.
In essence, some markets were ‘in-play’ …
Everybody needs a role model
I’m very excited to have pre-ordered Ed Thorp’s new book. I suspect it will go on my top recommendations list.
Principles to live by
It’s important in life to find something you can live by. Some principles, desire, a path to follow. Often you look to others to find that.
A long time ago, while still at school, I visited at a friends house. There I stumbled across a Commodore pet. Learning to do some basic stuff on …
Trading Tennis at the Australian Open
January is when the Tennis season starts up again and it’s a great time to get some Tennis trading experience under your belt. With weaker markets elsewhere, the Australian Open is a great time to get going on Tennis.
If you want a quick browse of previous advice dispensed on Tennis, click here to search the blog for Tennis articles. But also view the playlist on betangel.tv. The forum is full of chatter from previous tournaments that should help …
Loss recovery systems
A very common question I’m asked on specific trading strategies is ‘what do I do’ about losses.
Puzzlement
At first, I was pretty puzzled by this question.
You expect losses, they are part of trading. Trading is all about getting a positive expectancy. If you trade at random you will end up with random results. Because the market is generally very efficient this means that, excluding costs and commission, you will end up neither winning nor losing a massive amount …
Starting out as a sports trader – Scaling up
I was back on my small account on Monday. I was recording a few videos at low stakes (I posted one last week) and also giving instruction to my daughter; she is progressing nicely.
I’m also teaching a new recruit to the team. It’s interesting to watch and learn from newbies and how they look at the market. I feel like It’s a microcosm of the entire market. I ‘feel’ this in the market every day, but experiencing first hand …
Starting out as a sports trader
I’m conscious that when I post bigger totals people wonder how they were created? The first thing to note is that the commonality with them is that they were all created with a lot of experience and hard work! There are no shortcuts when it comes to really good quality trading. Knowledge, experience, hard work, the rollercoaster that is trading, all count. It takes a lot of practice to trade with larger stakes confidently, but you can do it!
Bigger …
‘Gut feelings’ help make successful traders
While browsing various papers I recently came across an academic report publish in Nature, entitled the unfriendly – ‘Interoceptive Ability Predicts Survival on a London Trading Floor’.
Basically speaking, researchers show that ‘gut feeling’ does indeed contribute to successful trades. You can read the full report here: –
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep3298
If you don’t want to wade through this, here are the key elements: –
First off, Physiologists often use the term ‘gut feeling’ as a colloquial synonym for any interoceptive sensation …
Derby Day!
Isn’t the Derby in June? Yes and no….
If you are in Australia, early tomorrow morning (UK Time) is Derby Day at Flemington in Victoria. This kicks off the Melbourne Cup carnival and a week of top class Australian action. On Tuesday we have the race that stops a nation, the Melbourne Cup then more top quality days on Thursday and the following Saturday. It’s a busy period full stop on the horse racing front, as we also have the …
Luck and Skill in sport
Sport is generally about two different players or team competing with each other. It’s unlikely they will be equally matched in every respect, though not impossible. But typically a differential exists between the two. However, luck can be a key component in a sport as well.
Luck in football
The number of goals in football is low, an average of 2.60 goals a game. Watch this video to learn more about that.Over the course
Over the course of a …
Luck and Skill in trading…
Luck or skill?
On Monday I hosted a learn to trade course with the intention of giving people a decent start in their sports trading journey.
Distractions
People are always keen to see you do something when you’re hosting a course. This particular course wasn’t set-up as a full-blooded trading session. But I was happy to oblige, as there is no better way of understanding the concept if you see it in action.
Of course, you can’t guarantee that you …
A classic psychological flaw
Here is something that will help you understand the way people act and what you can’t do about it! But how you can benefit from it.
I made a comment on Twitter a little while ago saying something along the lines of “if I ever think going to lose my edge all I need to do is look at social media and I know that’s not going to happen”
Entrenched views
What I was commenting on was the proliferation of …
Trading the Ryder Cup
Once every two years, the sporting world turns its attention to what is turning into a classic sporting Rivalry, the Ryder Cup.
Many years ago it didn’t have anything like the profile it does now. Post war it was a chance of US golfers to show how much better they were than UK players. Then the rules changed to make their opponents UK and Ireland, but that was still dominated by the US. Then in 1985 when it became the …
The greatest show on earth?
Tonight in the US we have the first presidential debate and what an interesting one it looks like it will be!
Take your side
In the red corner we have the eccentric, surely can’t be elected president, TV personality Donald Trump. And in the blue corner we have the political dynasty that are the Clintons.
Political markets rise in prominence
Political markets on Betfair are becoming very big business and this prominence within the marketplace reached a peak during the …
Manual or automated?
It was with interest this week that somebody pointed me to a blog post debating, or should I say justifying a stance on automated trading vs manual trading. Here is my angle on it: –
Financial markets
If you look to financial markets you have many aspects to it. High-frequency traders, slamming in positions in and out of the market to scrape a few cents per trade in as large a block as they can get through. A very specialist …
Quick Sand – Racing at Laytown
The races
Since 1868 Laytown has hosted the annual race meeting like no other. With no formal race course to host the equine competitors, these horses are raced on the beach. Laytown catches the attention of wide range of racing and non-racing goers each year.
Quite a few years ago I was captivated by the sight of horses running on the beach. It just seemed a bit different and interesting. So I set my sights on visiting this very unique …
US Open Tennis
How I learnt to trade Tennis
When I first started to trade Tennis, I needed a few things to be in place. One of those was an understanding of how odds move in Tennis match.
The reasoning was that if I knew that, I could pitch my opening and closing trades roughly where I wanted, where the market would move to. I could also start searching for ‘precursors’ to that key point in the match.
Also, with so many matches …
Manic Monday
It’s that day of the year that you either love or hate. The August bank holiday in the UK brings a whole bunch of racing, all on the same day. Then as we drift into the late afternoon, the US Open tennis gets underway. Not exactly a relaxing Bank Holiday!
Today there will be 483 runners over 51 races. This may seem like heaven for some, but it’s a nightmare for others. Quite a few races will attract little liquidity, …
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 …
Why Monday’s evenings are great markets
Something snatched my curiosity many years ago about trading the evening racing during the summer.
Anomaly
It always seemed pretty anomalous to me, but I would always feel that I would do well on a Monday evening, But Tuesdays would often be terrible. The rest of the week would vary depending upon the type of races and courses where the evening racing was being held.
Closer examination showed that Windsor was producing consistently above average results. So I came up …
The footy season – My general approach
Now the football has started again, here is an insight into how I approach the whole season.
Off-season
During off season I am most active on research and new information for the next season. I gather a huge amount of data during the season and during the off-season I analyse it to take ideas forward to the next season. Same story this year.
I started analysing football matches in the 80’s, so I tend to focus on very specific problems …
False markets
How would you like some free money? A couple of clicks and you have instant profit on your screen (but maybe not your account!)
Book percentages
In an outright market than can only be one winner. That is why, if you add up all the odds and percentages, the market will settle on a book value of 100%. If you can lay above 100% then effectively your payout is only 100% but your profit will be anything above that.
If …
Trading Good-Way
From a trading perspective I like multi day high quality meetings. They usually throw up some good opportunities and are a welcome addition to the month.
Goodwood
As you may know, these higher quality meetings produce extra volume and that can change the characteristics significantly. But don’t let Goodwood fool you into thinking it’s the same as a Royal Ascot or Cheltenham, it behaves very differently. Goodwood benefits from decent volume but it’s not as much as some major meetings. …
Making hay while the sun shines
An old phrase, but one that is equally applicable to trading at this time of year. As we are now in peak trading season, it’s time to harvest!
All about the execution
At this time of year, you have many opportunities, so I will stretch every sinew to do as much as I can. Everything else has to take a back seat, I’ll be a little less active on the blogging, fewer education events, less time for chit chat or …
Trading the Open Golf
The British Open is different from other majors in that it is played on rotation schedule across a number of ‘links’ courses in the UK. Links courses are traditionally near the sea, are near or on dunes, have an uneven surface and a sandy soil. This is in stark contrast to a lot of ‘modern’ courses which are often set in parkland or woods and carefully manicured.
Weather and links golf
Links golf is very different from traditional golf in …
The losers game in action
We had an interesting mix of sport at the weekend. As I suggested, I had a full blooded session on Saturday, but didn’t little on Sunday and choose to enjoy the sport instead.
In a previous post I talked about the ‘losers game‘, we saw some this weekend.
Win by not losing and win by winning
A triad of interesting sport awaited on Sunday. First up the British Grand Prix, definitely a case of playing the losers game. …
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