Archive for February, 2009

I blogged an entry a little while ago about the issues that some companies will have based on the knock on effect from the global financial crisis. Several companies have revolving credit factilities to fund their day to day operations, working capital and forward investment. One of those companies, as previously highlighted, is William Hill.

Typically these facilities are just fine as you go back to the market when the previous agreement runs out and get funding at the current rate. However, with the serious financial problems in the banking system, William Hill amongst others, are finding that banks just don’t want to lend at all at any rate. Therefore they have had to go to shareholders and ask them for money. Will Hill are asking for £350m, they have also cut their dividend.

These sorts of issues are one of the reasons that we are entering probably the most difficult economic period for at least a generation. It’s a bit like being given an umbrella when its sunny only for the umbrella to be taken away when it starts to rain. Just at the moment companies need funding to fulfill their basic needs, the system is rejecting them; even perfectly sounds requests. It’s a huge economic issue.

It was also interesting to note that William Hill Interactive, basically their web site, produced operating profits of £54.6m, up 7% on the previous year. That’s nearly double Betfair’s profit.

The company announced its withdrawal, which it said was necessary in order to streamline business and focus on its core retail betting markets in Germany and Spain.

“We no longer see exchange betting as part of our core business,” said Simon Bold, director of Betbull Holding, in a company statement. “We strongly believe in the durability of the retail model and see great potential for growth in the European markets.”

Mr. Bold said that the company will give attention to Germany — where he said Betbull has achieved sustained growth and healthy margins — as well as Madrid, which Betbull gained access to last October.

While waiting at an airport recently, I picked up a copy of wired magazine and found this excellent article. It reminded me of a blog I read way back in 2005 that discussed the same issue but in the future tense. Some great hindsight from the blogger back in 2005 who basically predicted the sort of issues this formula could throw up if mis-used.

In 2007 one Bet Angel user took on the grand challenge of trying to trade a small starting bank to £100,000. Not to be outdone, several new blogs have appeared this year trying to up the ante. Two of the more proninant ones are pre-off racing traders John, who is aiming to reach a profit of £100,000 for the year, and Adam, who has a target of £150,000! Both are well into their blogs and looking in good shape.

Not all bloggers do so well and it’s worth remembering that, but most blogs generally make interesting reading and give you an insight into the mindset of others. Trading can be a lonely existence and listening to others going through the mill helps you to be reflective. Don’t get envious of others though, if they are doing much better than you. Envy is the most destructive emotion I know. Don’t let it get a hold of you as its very counter productive.

The best thing to do is to learn to take encouragement from others achievements and use that to put new energy into your activities. That’s a path that led me to meet the two richest people in the world and I am much better off for that experiance and journey. That never would have happened if I was just envious of them. I know its a cliche, but always think positive!

You always wonder how you will adjust to getting back behind the desk, especially as the guys warned me that the BetfairAPI has had its problems recently. It turns out I shouldn’t have concerned myself, as my first trading day since returning from holiday proved just fine. No real problems to report and a fairly clean run with only three losses. Two tiny losses and one bigger one. My biggest concern was jet lag. I tried to get some sleep on the flight back, but with three restless children that was never a realistic possibility. I was pretty much wiped out by the end of the day though and had an early night. A good result for the first day back.

Having read the noise on a couple of blogs about proof, I have uploaded a video of this P&L as well. View it here.

After the events of last year and early this year it was great to take a complete break from things, well as good as a complete break. I did do a little work while away but that was to test some new stuff we have been working on to meet a couple of collegues while away, but purely for leisure time. Other than that pretty much no email or contact with my day to day world. I have returned to my desk fully recharged! In hindsight, this was a complete break that has been long overdue. I’d recommend one if you haven’t had one for a while.

If you aim to take a break, you are running out of time. We have Cheltenham soon, then Aintree before the flat season starts, things are starting to warm up again. I think I timed the break pretty well with the weather in the UK so bad. When I left it was all snow and ice. While away, the only ice I saw was ice cream. I took the opportunity to catch up on some reading while away so I have a mind full of fresh ideas.

If you haven’t got a reply from an email you recently sent, I’ll get back to you in the next week as I work through things.

As you already should know, you can link Bet Angel to a spreadsheet. This gives you massive benefits as you can custom create your own view of the market and design your own trading tools. In fact it is possible to trade automatically using a spreadsheet and some imagination.

Using the link to a spreadsheet you can do pretty much anything, it’s a very popular part of Bet Angel and underused in my opinion. I am always fiddling with it to create new ideas for trading tools, views of the market and to understand  market dynamics. If you have more than one screen available use it to focus on particular activity you are interested in.

In the latest version of Bet Angel we have bundled a specialist charting tool. Using this tool you can view and create your own unique look at the market. I recently used exactly this spreadsheet to help design the advanced charting tool we have on Bet Angel. If you are into fiddling around and looking for a new view of the market goto the Excel tab on Bet Angel and link to a spreadsheet. In the template directory you will find the ‘normal’ spreadsheet and the specialist charting spreadsheet, complete with trend lines.

Enjoy!

You may have seen that quad screen image a lot on Bet Angel related material so I thought I would expand the image for you and show you my full set up. Anybody who has visited me will have seen me beavering away at this desk. I’ll give you a brief description of what you see.

(1) Under the desk I have a quad core all singing all dancing PC. You don’t need anything this fancy, as a standard PC will do just fine. I just regress to my techies roots and often get the latest thing. I also use the raw processing power for a lot of analysis and other real workhorse stuff I do outside of my day to day activity.

(2) The four monitors are LG flatron 17″ displays. I bought low profile monitors so the surrounds wouldn’t ruin the quad display. Also the buttons are hidden behind the displays.

(3) I use an Ergotron stand to support the monitors. You see these used quite a lot in these sorts of set ups so I followed suit. I ordered mine from Dell.

(4) I can swap my PC displays from being a quad to a dual display. I have two raw TV feeds coming into the top two monitors if needed. I don’t put these through the PC as I figured out that increased the delay.

(5) On the left I have a decent laptop. I have chosen one with a long battery life and have spare batteries for it. It is also a touch screen laptop which looks pretty cool if you trade from it!! Overkill again but it does a great job for me.

(6) Attached to the laptop is a Vodafone HSDPA modem. I only chose Vodafone due to the local coverage, yours may vary. If I have a problem with my main PC I can switch immediately to the laptop and work from there. I always have a spare copy of Bet Angel running on this so I can switch instantly.

(7) A plant, it’s always worth adding some greenery into the room. Hey, a bit of carbon offsetting never did any harm did it!

(8) Last but not least to my right is Caroline who is effectively my PA. She keeps the whole ship running for me by keeping my affairs in order and tells me off when I return to my desk with a biscuit as well as a cup of tea!!

There are a few other things you will be interested in, but those can wait for the moment. If you are looking for an opinion as to the set up, I suggest you can easily trade from just the laptop, preferably with a spare screen on it and a 3G or HSDPA modem as a back up to your broadband. I’ve often traded while off site with just the laptop and chucked in some decent totals. In fact, in the archives there is a post about trading from a car!! So don’t get hung up on having an all singing piece of kit. The person operating it is generally more important!

Betfair chart of tusculum

Whenever I see the red, white and black colours of a Curley leisure horse on the card, I know it’s going to be an interesting market. It was no different tonight at Kempton. Tusculum was ‘backed off the boards’ and eventually accounted for 76% of the total volume in the market. You would think most of the other horses only had one leg or something. Anyhow,  Tusculum won.

As you know I have done a lot of public speaking in my time. My most nervous moment was probably addressing the chair in front of 20,000 people in Nebraska. However that paled into insignificance when I stood up to say a final goodbye to my Dad at his funeral yesterday.

I think I was quite fortunate to have had plenty of time to say goodbye to him, but it was still a very difficult moment. I had a sheet of notes to read from, or if needed for somebody else to read from, but it wasn’t necessary in the end. I couldn’t see them anyway! Anyhow with the speech carefully delivered I could relax and contemplate my Dad’s life. I’ll never forget the last time we spoke, as I said goodbye he gave me his trademark smile and wink of the eye. A nice way to remember him. The following day he was in a very poor way and we stayed with him right through to his final moments, we knew it wouldn’t be long but it’s really agonising going through that. My thoughts will always go out to those that have to experiance the same thing.

Surprise of the day at the funeral was when my old drinking buddy turned up with his mum, after having read the announcement in the local newspaper. We were great friends and his mum treated me like a son so it was really touching to see them. It sent us all into tears.

Any how, now that’s over I am going to take a break and spend some time with my family before returning to work proper towards the end of the month. I look forward to returning with batteries fully charged.