Tag: trading
Newton would have used exchanges
Newton’s Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Sometimes people are perplexed at how you can correctly call price action on an exchange, but sometimes it’s quite easy; thanks to referancing Newton’s third law.
Every betting market must add up to 100%. It’s impossible for it to exceed that value in either direction for any prolonged period of time. So if something is coming in, in one direction, this means something else, either …
Trading the unexpected
Reading 5, Arsenal 7 – This was obvious the stand out football result from the last week. A most remarkable scoreline.
For so many goals to be scored in one match is rare, especially seven goals away from home; though Leeds fans may have more recent memories. But to win 7-5 from 4-0 down is remarkable. I’ve been scanning my records to see if I could find an example, but I can’t. 4-4 draw’s are rare, but I do …
Trading psychology in a nutshell
Some time ago I sat two people down and gave them each a simple trading strategy. I wanted to observe first hand how people executed them.
The reason I did this, was that it had become apparent to me sometime ago, that given the same set of instructions, people often execute differently. The difference appears to be psychological.
On one desk we had one person executing fairly well and making a small profit. On the other desk we had another …
Trading the Ryder Cup Golf
Looking forward to the Ryder cup this weekend. Nothing like a bit of Patrotism to spice up a sporting event!
I did a full write up on the Ryder Cup last time around but have been too busy to do so this year. One thing I remember really well from th 2008 Ryder cup was how ‘the tie’ played out in a competitive competition.
This year looks very competitive, though I was surprised to see home advantage priced in as …
What Betfair traders have forgotten
Back in the ‘good old days’ when gambling meant just backing only, your objective was clear. Back then, excuse the pun, you had to back something that won more often that the odds would suggest.
Participate in these modern markets and you would think that this quaint old fashioned strategy had long since completely died a death. Everybody seems to be doing all manner of things in the market and you could be forgiven for thinking you couldn’t do anything …
Losers, winners and strike rates
Further to my previous post about strike rates, I thought I add some flesh to the discussion.
At the end of the day people have a variety of different risk profiles. Your tolerance and reaction to risk is predominantly a psychological factor. The good thing is you can learn to overcome any psychological failings. When I was not as experienced as I am now I would often over analyse things and let the market be my master. Now I am …
High probability Betfair trading
Sounds nice doesn’t it, winning positions regularly topping up your account?
If you look at any ebook or system sellers nearly all of them focus on high probability trades. Basically positions that win very frequently. That’s great, it makes the person who just shelled out some cash feel really good. They keep winning on a regular basis and in an excited hubris they often credit the author with some positive feedback, then booooooom; It all goes wrong. Eventully reality dawns …
Tennis trading – Faking it
Great match last night between Tipsarevic and Ferrer, probably one of the best of the tournament for trading. I was getting a bit tired though near the end. Two of three kids are back at school and it’s early mornings again!
Ferrer went a set up only to find himself two sets to one down, only to turn it around and win on a tie break in the fifth. This match is a great illustration of how some matches are …
Trading Tennis – The US Open
While the summer evening racing markets have finished, thanks to the US Open tennis there is still plenty to do in the evenings at the moment; as long as it’s not raining! It’s raining at the moment, which is why I thought I would pen this post.
Because of the time difference to the US, it is a really useful tournament to trade and the level of interest in a grand slam will ensure good liquidity. It’s a good opportunity …
Manic Monday
The late summer bank holiday brings with it, not just the traditional rain in the UK, Cartnel is abandoned due to waterlooging; but a plethora of racing as well.
That’s an issue. Even with the one abandoned meeting there are still 64 races in the card. But quite a few of them clash directly and during the day it’s unlikely that all will go off on time so that will bump up the number of clashes.
It’s going to be …
Trading the Olympics
Wow, what a busy few weeks it has been!
For me the School holidays and the Olympics on home soil has been too much temptation to miss. There are not many chances in life to do what I have done over the last couple of weeks, so I’ve jumped at the chance to do it. It has been really great experiance.
Doing that has meant putting trading on the back burner recently. But that’s no problem really, a couple of …
Home advantage when trading the Olympics
So it’s here, never thought it would be possible but I’ll be going to the Olympics on home soil. At 08:12 this morning bells rang out across the country, which woke me up, and announced that the Olympics games has officially started.
When I was young, I was very sporty and dreamt of being in the Olympics. That never happened but I did join at Athletics club when I was older where some of the members were Olympians and we …
A different way to profit from Euro 2012
As you know Euro 2012 is a seeded tournament. When the little balls came out of the bag it was designed so that the higher ranked teams would progress to the latter stages of the tournament and make UEFA more money, sorry, make the tournament more entertaining.
To be fair to UEFA, it is the same in most modern tournaments, the big teams and big audiences fund the sport and therefore want to be favoured. Tennis grand slams are …
A tale of two different tournaments
You couldn’t wish for two more different tournaments in the French open this year. On the men’s side Nadal is playing consistently and has eased through to the latter stages. His opponents meanwhile have stuttered and at times looked in real trouble. If you look at the men’s draw; all this has meant that Nadal, ‘the king of clay’, has shortened from 1.72 at the start of the tournament to just 1.58. All the other top seeds have drifted.
On …
Nuts, lightly roasted
I’ve been experimenting with a new strategy recently. I’ve learnt from past experience that data mining can be statistical deja vu. So whenever I make the transition from theory to practical, it always pays to be cautious. So on this occasion I have hedged my position on separate accounts to understand how the main strategy performs but without putting myself at too much risk.
Immediately the strategy started working, with a couple of glitches, so the main account started to …
Why a lack of fuel is linked to sports trading
On the walk into the office this morning I passed the local petrol station, there were a queue right out into the road. I saw somebody I knew who had driven in from some distance and he revealed a similar story across a wide area. It’s all down the fuss about whether tanker drivers will go on strike. People are scared that fuel may run out if this happens. You can summarise this situation up quite simply, people are acting …
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 …
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 …
FA Cup Fifth round
Rather predictably we reach the fifth round of the FA Cup today with 99% of the market made up from Premiership teams. In round three that figure was 94.7% and round four 96.10%. What’s the betting we reach the final with 100%?
The fifth round is more likely to make that happen as there is only one clash this weekend where two premiership teams meet up. I think this looks the most interesting, Sunderland vs Arsenal, as it has the …
Aussie open – open!
Just about to head off to bed, but in half an hour the Australian open tennis will kick into gear. It’s a great opportunity to get stuck into the Tennis, even if you are not into Tennis, as a lot of matches will appear in the UK early in the morning when not much else is going on.
I have set up Bet Angel to do some simple automation in the early rounds of the tournament as I know where …
Big over-reaction
Sometimes I just want to roll Gael Monfils up in a bundle and kiss him.
One of my biggest ever wins came on a match with Monfils in it. He overstretched himself and called for the trainer. I had just backed his opponent and his priced rocketed in and netted me a very lucky big profit, so I greened up. After a brief spell with the trainer Monfils carried on and looked like he had never been trouble and went …
Is Darts the new Tennis?
Some great matches again at the PDC world darts championship this week. Dramatic comebacks from impossible positions, turnarounds, low odds turned over, high odds coming in, big matched bet turnover. Darts certainly has the characteristics of a great trading market. It’s popularity is picking up now as well.
Its scoring and ‘feel’ is similar to Tennis, you also have familiar concepts such as a break of throw / serve. But a big advantage of Darts is that the games are …
Back to open
It looks like we are going to have some fun and games in the market today. I’d recommend adopting a ‘back to open’ trading policy!
For more information read up on this thread: –
https://www.betangel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4934&start=240
Winding down..
We are well on the run in now for the Xmas break now and this are going to get a little quiter as the week rolls on. Quieter apart from at home because the kids are off school now! Racing comes to a close on Thursday and there is no racing on the Friday or Saturday.
Plenty of decent racing on the Saturday just gone and it proved a good days trading. Best result of a good bunch came from …
Give your football 150% this weekend
I love those throw away phrases where people say they are going to give it 150%. Of course you can only give it 100%, or can you? Not when trading.
In a betting market the market is framed at 100%. A football team can only win, lose or draw a match. There is a 100% chance of that happening. But when trading, you are trading how volatile those odds will be and that is always over 100%, whatever sport you …
0-0 Continued…
Well the two key matches I was looking at worked pretty well in the end but the other ‘deserved’ 0-0 at half time ended up 3-0 to the home team. This illustrates a key point.
With any in-play market you are hostage to what happens during the event. If you take a rigid approach to the underlying event you can’t really hope to out perform the statistics that can be modelled in the market.
In yesterdays match Joey O’Brian was …
An ‘interesting’ Saturday
Well that was an interesting Saturday. I sort of got the feeling that the day may not go as planned right from the off.
Went shopping with the kids to stock up the office and got back a little late which left me no time to put the stuff away. I just had to dump it on the stairs. Sat down to the early start and immediately realised there was a problem… The Internet was at a virtual standstill. I …
Automation – Major new release of Bet Angel
We are delighted to announce a new version of Bet Angel!
This morning we have released a new beta version, 1.30, which includes a brand new feature.
The new feature focuses on automating your betting or trading activity and builds on the work we have done with Guardian and the Excel spreadsheet link. In fact you can use this new feature along side any activity in your core market and / or any activity you have in a spreadsheet.…
Bombs away
Every now and again in the racing market an individual arrives that doesn’t make much sense. From a trading perspective at least!
The come into the market and back a selection for a large amount of money, then back again and again and again! I’m not sure the oft quoted description of ‘mad bomber’ is accurate, maybe there is a better description. But what is certain is the impact they have on the market. You could view this as a …
Quietly moving ahead..
It’s interesting to see that liquidity and market conditions continue to improve on Betdaq. It’s quite possible to sqeeze someting out of most races now and thanks to the favourable commission rate it’s proving a good use of my time. We appear to have gone from waiting for perfect market conditions to a wider range of acceptable reasons to participate, which is encouraging.
I’d honestly recommend using both major exchanges as competition is good in all markets, but some of …
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