RSSCategory: Trading strategies

French Open Tennis – Roland Garros

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.…

05/06/2017 | By | Reply More
Betfair trading – Little and often soon adds up

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 …

30/04/2017 | By | 2 Replies More
Trading Tennis in-clay – When it’s good to see Red

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

20/04/2017 | By | Reply More
Aintree, the Grand National and fallers

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

07/04/2017 | By | Reply More
The Betfair exchange in numbers

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 …

05/02/2017 | By | Reply More
The growth and growth of inplay

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’ …

04/02/2017 | By | Reply More
Everybody needs a role model

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 …

29/01/2017 | By | Reply More
Trading Tennis at the Australian Open

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 …

14/01/2017 | By | Reply More
Loss recovery systems

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 …

17/12/2016 | By | Reply More
Starting out as a sports trader – Scaling up

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 …

14/12/2016 | By | 4 Replies More
Starting out as a sports trader

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

03/12/2016 | By | Reply More
‘Gut feelings’ help make successful traders

‘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 …

13/11/2016 | By | Reply More
Derby Day!

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 …

28/10/2016 | By | Reply More
Luck and Skill in sport

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 …

16/10/2016 | By | Reply More
Luck and Skill in trading…

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 …

14/10/2016 | By | Reply More
A classic psychological flaw

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 …

08/10/2016 | By | 1 Reply More
Trading the Ryder Cup

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 …

30/09/2016 | By | Reply More
The greatest show on earth?

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 …

26/09/2016 | By | Reply More
Manual or automated?

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 …

24/09/2016 | By | Reply More
Quick Sand – Racing at Laytown

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

13/09/2016 | By | Reply More
US Open Tennis

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

31/08/2016 | By | Reply More
Manic Monday

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, …

29/08/2016 | By | Reply More
Loadsamoney

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 …

28/08/2016 | By | Reply More
Why Monday’s evenings are great markets

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 …

16/08/2016 | By | Reply More
The footy season – My general approach

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 …

11/08/2016 | By | Reply More
False markets

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 …

06/08/2016 | By | Reply More
Trading Good-Way

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. …

25/07/2016 | By | Reply More
Making hay while the sun shines

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 …

17/07/2016 | By | Reply More
Trading the Open Golf

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 …

13/07/2016 | By | Reply More
The losers game in action

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. …

11/07/2016 | By | Reply More
Hypersmash.com