Category: Trading strategies
Stop losses and the illusion of safety
Drachten is a small town in Holland, but what’s got to do with stop losses & risk?
Well, a few years ago almost all traffic lights and signs were removed from the town’s centre in an effort to improve traffic safety. This was based on the theory that drivers pay more attention to their surroundings when they cannot rely on strict traffic rules. What happened was that accidents fell because people actually paid attention to actual risk, rather than relying …
Does scalping still work?
I’m doing a course today at the office where, amongst many things, I will talk about scalping and answer this question. The answer is ‘Yes’ by the way.
Qualifying the ‘yes’
For every market, there is a strategy and every strategy a market. Your mission is to join the two up. If you deploy the wrong strategy in the wrong market then you will get bad results. So underlying this ‘Yes’ is some depth and qualification, it takes a bit …
Automating your football trading
For those who have not yet tried the advanced automation feature within Bet Angel, football offers several opportunities to try this out. If you are unfamiliar with any features in Bet Angel, try them out in practice mode.
In this example I am going to show you how to automate a simple trade on the Over/Under 2.5 market and green out for a profit. I’ll explain why this works and things to look our for.
The Over/Under 2.5 goals …
Good days, bad days and risk management
I have good and bad trades, good and bad days but generally I don’t have bad weeks and, in fact, as time progresses my chance of a loss decreases. Why, because of the way I manage risk.
Approach to risk
The way I approach risk is pretty much the same on a trade by trade basis or on a day by day basis. One major advantage you have in sports markets, is the large number of events taking place, so …
The affect of the international break
First in a regular series of posts from our friends over at Football Form Labs. Endorsement follows….
Football Form Lab is software that I use to help me spot patterns or trends in football matches. It can help you identify thousands of opportunities every week across over 40 different leagues. It’s very detailed and that’s why I like it, so much information.
Form Labs is currently on offer and you can save 66% on a Form Labs subscription.…
The missing link in trading
I’ve been on a very long journey to understand risk and trading as I do now. When I talk and examine risk I do so almost intuitively now, but I had to learn it all the hard way, from the ground up.
The journey has led me to re-examine myself a lot. I’ve had to learn and improve my ability in three distinct things, trading (the structural bit), modelling markets (the understanding bit) and finally a bit of psychology (the …
Procrastination is the enemy of success
Last year I had an idea, I added it to the list. For a lot of people that’s where the experiment ends, diet’s always start tomorrow etc.
But for me when I get a bright idea, no matter how crazy, I make a note of it and follow up. I tend to work on a few at any one time as most stay as crazy ideas, don’t work , I learn nothing or realise my thought process was wrong. But …
What does value look like, on a bigger scale
I did a post some time ago called, ‘What value looks like’. Here is the same effect but on a much grander scale, though you should not the familiarity between the two. Finding value is one of the hardest things to do in any betting market because usually the market is hyper efficient. But probably the biggest issue is the wild swings you can get and how they affect your psychology.
In the graph you can see we start …
Making hay while the sun shines
An old phrase, but one that is equally applicable to trading at this time of year. Not only is the sun shining, but this year its so hot the grass has turned to hay! As we are now in peak trading season, it’s time to harvest.
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 …
Open Golf stats
Fair weather greets us for the Open this year, that’s unusual! But this may make the course a little less random this year.
Therefore, from a trading perspective, I’m less inclined to find a big priced winner this year. Links golf on a difficult course can be notoriously difficult, but when the weather is sweet and the wind calm, skill comes more to the forefront.
Winning a major requires a bit of luck however and also requires a very different
A month in the life of
Following on from the popular a day and a week in the life of, I thought I’d give you some perspective on what a month looks like. I wanted to focus on the structure rather than the results, which I am sure you can extrapolate from information I have previously provided.
Biggest month of the year
June presented lots of Tennis and, of course, Royal Ascot, so June is traditionally one of my biggest months of the year. The first …
When is a Tennis player most likely to hold serve?
If you back a player before they serve, they are very likely to win their service game. At which point the odds will contract and you can net a profit, hurrah! Sounds easy, but nothing ever is that simple is it?
So, one itching question I sought to solve last year was “Which game is a player most likely to win on serve”. The hypothesis was that the propensity to win on serve is higher at some times than others.…
An Ace is worth more than a point
When you read that statement it looks a little strange. How can one point be worth more than another? But statistics seem to show that’s true.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve been busy collecting data on a range of Tennis matches from the top level of how a match played, in games and sets, right down to individual points.
I’ve been carefully examining how one point affects another and spotted what seemed to be a bias on serving …
Can you predict 1.01 defeats in Tennis?
Surface problems aside, the main news from Wimbledon this week was the ‘shock’ defeat of Rafa Nadal, shortly followed by Federer. Nadal was a shock, apart from the fact that last year he crashed out in similar circumstances, it was just a round later. Coincidence, predictable or a shock?
A couple of factors play into the hands of the Nadal shock this time. The first is that Rafa’s game leads him to get injured more often than other players, he’s …
My Betfair birthday
I celebrated my ‘Betfair Birthday’ this week, I am now a Betfair teenager! It’s been just over thirteen years since I opened my account and started betting.
What better way to ‘celebrate’ than to look back at the moment I took the big jump? If you would have told me that thirteen years ago what I do now, I just wouldn’t have believed it remotely possible. Therefore, I suggest you always use the word impossible with the greatness of caution.…
A week in the life…
I penned a post earlier in the week about a day in the life. It was a bit off the cuff and I was surprised to get some feedback on it, blogging can be a lonely pastime, so thanks for your messages! Getting some feedback had prompted me to talk about a week in my life.
Seasonal variation
First thing to note is that my week changes throughout the year. I’m guided by the sporting calendar. In the summer this …
Understanding UK Horse Racing
Most people understand most sports on the exchanges, but for some the terminology and structure behind racing can be a bit of a mystery. It took me some time fully graps what racing was all about and I’m no expert, but it helped how I trade the market. People attending my course will know I talk about it a fair bit. So I’ve invited forum racing favourite ‘JollyGreen’ to give you some broader background to racing. Here is the first …
Doing a back flip
The quarters are on us in the French Open Tennis and at first sight they look uncompetitive. The favourites are very short against their opponents. But when trading you are not that interested in how short a price something is, more where it can do.
So on short priced Tennis matches I’ll often try and do a ‘back flip’. I’ll happily back the outsider on the basis that if the short priced favourite doesn’t grab the match by the scruff …
FA Cup fifth round
So the FA Cup trundles on.
No real surprises so far in terms of how the tournament is playing out. I’ve pointed out in previous blog posts that from a tournament trading perspective it’s dominated by the top teams. So far this year premiership teams have dominated the book% in all rounds and that doesn’t look like it’s going to change.
Volumes on FA Cup matches are lower than higher profile so I’m starting to find it a bit annoying! …
The depths of winter
So here we are at the start of February, in the depths of winter.
Australian Open tennis has just finished, Cheltenham isn’t too far away but for now the immediate outlook is a little weak for me.
It can be pretty tough, especially on the racing front, at this time of year. So it’s only with experience that you learn not to worry, it’s just part of the annual cycle. In the summer opportunities come thick and fast and you …
Volatility friend or foe?
Volatile markets can be like rollercoasters, one minute the price is here, then it’s there, then it’s back to where it started.
There are two prevailing views on volatility, one is that it’s great because it creates opportunity and the other one that it’s a nightmare because a volatile market means more potential losses, which one is true?
I’m going to give you the first shot of an opinion. I’ve added a poll onto the main blog page where you …
Key turning points in a Tennis match
When trading you want to look for key moments to trade in and out. Sometimes these can be arbitrary, a goal up, a goal down, certain times. A set up, a break up etc. etc.
Today I saw a turning point in the Australian Open final that I hadn’t witnessed before and one that I had.
I’ve mentioned before about how players are keen to get opponents out of the zone where possible, but today this happened in an unusual …
Is Tennis trading a load of old balls?
Ever the researcher, I have been browsing some books and documents recently. I stumbled across an interesting document that relates to whether new or old balls are an advantage in a Tennis match, it gave me some food for thought. It relates mainly to Wimbledon but it’s got me thinking about other surface types also and whether the same thing would be applicable there or whether this is an anomaly.
So for my first serve, stop reading for a second …
Visualising sports trading data
You may have noticed my regular theme of visualising data. Why do I do this?
The reason is simple, it’s easy to pick up patterns when you are looking at them visually. If you have to plough through billions of rows of spreadsheets, pivot tables or outputs from a database, you may find some of the more obvious patterns may elude you due to number blindness. Visualise it and it often leaps right out at you.
Bet Angel contains a …
Seeded vs non-Seeded tournaments
We have a couple of classic divergences being display in full glory in the markets at the moment.
In Melbourne we have the Australian open Tennis where, in a seeded tournament, the semi finals look like they will be played out amongst the top four seeds. Seeded tournaments are basically there to ensure the top competitors have every chance of meeting in the latter stages.
In the UK, I just watched Bradford City complete a remarkable cup run to make …
Aussie Open serves up another classic tennis match
Anybody trading on Sunday was treated to another classic Tennis match in Melbourne.
Stanislas Wawrinka shocked world number one Novak Djokovic by racing to a 6-1 first set lead. Djokovic was clearly in trouble and needed to stage a big fight back or hope that Wawrinka faded.
Being the champion that Djokovic is, he dug deep and started the fight back. This match exhibited perfect trading characteristics again. It was another match, where if you were trading, you couldn’t lose. …
The appeal of Tennis trading
Some decent matches this week at the Australian Open, it’s been a good opening week. Don’t forget to use Tennis Trader!!
There are two key aspects of Tennis trading that should interest you if you haven’t traded tennis before.
(1) No pre-defined length of match
I was active on the Kvitova vs Robson match, which eventually ran into the start of the racing. This is always a problem with Tennis. Being a competitive match, both players fought hard to …
It will get you in the end…
There is one definable characteristic in Tennis that allows you to predict how a player will perform year on year.
It’s age….
There is also definable characteristic with most gamblers, it’s called the gamblers fallacy. Basically people back things because they either expect them to continue, or they expected a ‘trend’ to reverse. In Tennis this often leads people to consistantly back dominant players to win or back once great players expecting a ‘return to form’.
To pick up …
Two very contrasting days
You couldn’t wish for two contrasting days in the racing markets this week.
Boxing day was pretty chaotic and messy, that wasn’t entirely unexpected; but it was much chaotic than I wished. Very few races dovetailed neatly into one another and overall volumes on average were down 20% year on year. I struggled to get any fluency into my activity and couldn’t really build any momentum. In fact I had quite a few losers in a row as I struggled …
Boxing day bonanza?
Hope you had a good Christmas, we are back with a bang today.
It’s a another boxing day holiday in the UK and the sports schedule will be stuffed full of fixtures, meetings and all manner of sporting events. On racing, even with one meeting abandoned there will be 80 race in the UK and Ireland today.
That’s sounds like heaven to sports traders, but it can be a bit of a nightmare. So many things happening at once often …
Connect
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.