Posts Tagged birth of a strategy
Death of a strategy
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 7th, 2010
If you read the ‘birth of a strategy‘ one thing you can see how is long it takes for a new idea to fade, but why?
Well, people were in this market before I was, so my arrival no doubt had an impact on them. It must have or else I couldn’t have made any money. So was their response to sit there and let it happen? No, they would have tweaked their strategy to take account of the new kid on the block. So, eventually, my strategy faded from it’s previous highs.
But to describe it as ‘dead’ is wrong. As my fellow market participants did when I arrived, I have simply tweaked a few parameters and am now continuing on a slightly different path but upwards again. It’s beautiful market efficiency in action! For me to continue I need to find a better way. When I find that better way, existing participants will have to respond to find a better way. If they do, it will be my turn and so on. It’s the same in any market and always will be. It’s one big game of cat and mouse!
I have seen quite a few people come and go in time on Betfair. Finding a strategy that has a pay off is one thing, maintaining it completely another. The things I teach people on my course today, are very different from even a couple of years ago. While the market can exhibit similar traits, the participants don’t and that is just part and parcel of the market. You have to adapt to continue to hold your position in response to other moves, you run to stand still. Some strategies that worked really well a few years ago just don’t work anymore or in different manners. Likewise, strategies that didn’t exist a while ago have come into full view now the markets have matured.
One constant that has always been there though is profit. When I first started doing this I wasn’t sure if I was kidding myself. But I slowly learnt that potential profit exists in every market, every day. Finding it at the lowest risk is where the skill and psychology comes into play. I’ve mentioned on other posts that sometimes just sitting and waiting for a clear opportunity is often the best tactic. If you can see on opportunity, one probably doesn’t exist.
I am always restless to understand more, so I am sure that I will witness many more births and deaths. The quest continues!
A game of cat and mouse
The birth of a strategy
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on March 13th, 2010
I’m always on the lookout for something new, preferably complimentary, to what I already do. But the path to a new strategies always starts with low expectations and its often a bumpy path. I think it’s probably the same for people starting out. In fact the first part, low expectations, is probably essential.
I recently headed off again down the path of blind alleys but on this occasion the blind alley turned out to be a new path and the results are shown below. The reason for putting this up is to give you some encouragement to try something new, but also to be warn you about how you do it.
The top image is the ‘nice’ one. When trying out this strategy I went in low with, £10, then £20 stakes and you can see by the end of Feb it had produced £250 in profits. The second graph tells the ‘true’ story however and the fate that often befalls new strategies or starters in a market.
The second graph plots the day to day totals. You can see it got off to a good start so I raised stakes and immediately ran into trouble. In hindsight I should have kept stakes at the same level to see if it was luck that was producing the results or some real underlying reason. In short, I got ahead of myself. Week two was a mare as you can see and it forced my hand. I chopped and changed my original strategy, a typically stupid error. As I exited the week, I went back to square one and started again and the market responded by giving me a clean bill of health going forward. With that decided, I could again increase stakes gradually until I find the tolerable staking limit for this strategy. I knew all this before, but for some reason I got carried away when I got off to a good start. It was a useful reminder though, which is why I am posting it up for everybody to see.
The summary is: -
If you try something, give it time to work through. Second, don’t raise stakes too quickly if you get off to a good start, it could be luck. Third, while it may take some time, always make sure you increase your stakes, even slowly. This will allow you to eventually reach bigger numbers in a safe and controlled manner, without the emotional baggage that comes with it!
