Tag: trading

Trading the US Masters

Trading the US Masters

I like the US Masters. This is mainly because it’s the only major played on the same course each year. This means you can collect a ton of stats on how the course plays and form your strategies around that. It gives me a good guide as to when to trade in and out of a position. You can do this on most courses, but because the Masters is at the same location every year it is much more predictable.

02/04/2018 | By | Reply More
Impossible

Impossible

It’s all Impossible

When I was young, I was constantly reminded how some things were just impossible and why I shouldn’t try. I had many dreams, but a difficult start in life meant they were very, very distant. I  had no mentor, guide or path to follow so I didn’t know how to achieve the things I so dearly wanted. Life was going to be a whole lot of hard work!

I started to read up and understand how others …

10/03/2018 | By | Reply More
Betfair trading – Football trading – Who scores first?

Betfair trading – Football trading – Who scores first?

Watch a football match and often you will see the outsider team take a ‘shock’ lead according to most sources, but how often does the away team score first?

Goals

Football is a, generally, a low scoring contest. Not only that, you can have a lot of shots and still not score. The chance of a goal from a statistical perspective is interesting because goals are ‘rare’. This lends itself to seeing away teams taking a ‘shock’ lead more often

09/02/2018 | By | Reply More
Trading the FA Cup

Trading the FA Cup

It’s the FA Cup third round this weekend and marks just over halfway point in the season.

Has the FA Cup lost it’s ‘magic’?

If you are talking about a smaller club meeting up with a goliath, then perhaps not. But it may be that the smaller club faces a diminished version of said goliath. As they say, Money talks and it doesn’t say much in the FA Cup, apart for smaller teams.

Win a game in the second round …

06/01/2018 | By | Reply More
Binary thinking

Binary thinking

Imagine you are a caveman meandering through a landscape, you hear a rustle in the bush. “What’s that…?”

Your brain kicks into action and provokes a flight or fight response. It could be lunch, or it could kill you! Your primitive brain makes a really simple judgement and decides that the payoff here for ‘kill you’ is pretty bad, -100% in fact. The pay off for food is there as well, but it can’t offset the negative. So you walk …

16/12/2017 | By | Reply More
Little and often – On Greyhounds

Little and often – On Greyhounds

Greyhounds markets are another good example of little and often. The average Greyhound race only turns over £15k or so per race so it’s really not a very liquid market. Even then, the money arrives really late. but there are very large amounts of greyhound races.

I recently revisited the Greyhounds markets after a seven-year absence.  If you want some background as to why, have a read of this blog post: –

Going Grey

Since revisiting the markets I’ve now …

01/09/2017 | By | 4 Replies More
Unbelievable Jeff – Trading comebacks in football

Unbelievable Jeff – Trading comebacks in football

I think it’s safe to say we all had fun watching some of the opening premier league fixtures last weekend.

While it would be nice to think the whole season will be packed full of action of this kind, with remarkable comebacks and sterling fightbacks,  it’s unlikely.

Trading opportunities

Obviously, a notable match was the champions, Chelsea, losing at home to Burnley who struggled to muster any decent away form last year. I and a number of people picked up …

19/08/2017 | By | Reply More
More Moore at Goodwood

More Moore at Goodwood

Goodwood should have been renamed Greywood at the start of the festival, such was the miserable weather that accompanied what should have been a glorious week on the Sussex downs. But it was notable for one particular day.

The weather had a huge impact on the meeting last week and produced a below par performance from me and from the markets. I’d imagine most attendees on course last week, spent most of their time hiding from the incessant rain and …

10/08/2017 | By | Reply More
Had a good week last week? Here’s why…

Had a good week last week? Here’s why…

You may have seen me post up results or information along the lines of ‘If you did this with £100 you would have managed to achieve this’.

I collect and analyse a lot of data and it’s all with the aim of identifying biases and the structural nature of a market. You would be surprised how many markets exhibit biases. Some have exhibited a structural bias for my entire trading career. I’ve casually dropped hints now and again and it’s …

03/08/2017 | By | Reply More
Ascot 2017 post meeting summary

Ascot 2017 post meeting summary

I’ve been meaning to summarise Ascot. It’s always worth doing as you can refer back to it next year for comparison, so here goes: –

Turnover

Betfair ended up matching, at post time, around £70.5m which was up on last year by about 23%. Last year was down quite a bit so this returns the matched bet turnover to levels that would be deemed ‘normal’.

In the run up to Ascot, I reckoned it would trade around £65m so that’s …

30/06/2017 | By | Reply More
Punting on Politics – General election turnout

Punting on Politics – General election turnout

I did a little piece on the General election recently for Betfair. Underlying it was some work I’d looked at recently on turnout for elections.

Apathy

When the election was called the markets shifted significantly anticipating a Conservative landslide. I immediately wondered if there would be a correlation between certainty and turnout. But first I had to work out what a ‘normal’ turnout would look like.

I looked back at elections since the second world and munched through some …

06/06/2017 | 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 Christmas racing markets

Trading Christmas racing markets

It’s almost time to relax, but typically this can start and end sooner than you expect on racing markets.

Pre-Christmas period

The markets in the run up to Christmas day can be a bit barren. Indeed, this year, they thin out completely. We have some low-quality fodder through the week, then one Irish evening card on the 23rd and, obviously, nothing on the 24th and 25th.

It actually works well this year, as it means you can most likely take …

18/12/2016 | 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
Two books that will change the way you think

Two books that will change the way you think

In my quest for unreachable perfection, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand how people think. There are several reasons for doing this.

The first is to make better decisions myself, sometimes people make decisions or say things that just don’t make any sense.  You often also get stuck making a decision which you can’t seem to resolve.

Having thoroughly explored the markets, what to do, when and how (so far) in my career I’ve switched my main …

04/11/2016 | By | 1 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
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
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
Ebor or Ebore?

Ebor or Ebore?

Summer racing isn’t over quite yet and today kicks of the Ebor meeting at York. I’ve traditionally done OK at this festival each year so I am looking for something above average this week.

The Ebor meeting can yield some good results, but nothing is ever guaranteed and this meeting can be a bit random at times so it’s probably not going to be all plain sailing. It should be better than what we have been seeing recently though.

Traditionally, …

17/08/2016 | By | 2 Replies 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
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
An Ace is worth more than a point

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. With Murray about to line up against a big server in the Wimbledon final tomorrow lets look at the perfect serve.

Wimbledon

Wimbledon is the home of mighty servers, with alternate big servers booming the ball past their opponent. But what effect does it have? Some, it appears.

Over the last couple of years, …

09/07/2016 | By | Reply More
Trading Royal Ascot

Trading Royal Ascot

And so here we are another year, another Ascot.

Ascot is obviously a big deal and, generally, I target it to be at least the second biggest week of the year. I’ll look to do more in a week than I can normally do in a month, so it’s a significant meeting. Wall to wall, quality racing, from Tuesday till Saturday. You also get the added bonus of lots of drunk people places bets on horses because they like the

13/06/2016 | By | Reply More
One Bank Holiday you may want to trade

One Bank Holiday you may want to trade

Bank holidays can be a bit of mare. Four billion horses, racing over a thousand meetings. OK, A slight exaggeration there, but you get the picture. Too much racing, too many courses, not enough quality and everything falling over itself.

But today that actually isn’t the case and generally isn’t on this holiday. We have a lot of runners and they are spread many races, but the card is lined up well. That means, even allowing for later starts, it’s …

30/05/2016 | By | Reply More
Trading Horse Racing – Workshop

Trading Horse Racing – Workshop

Why trade horse racing?

Trading horse racing markets pre-off is big business. In 2015 just short of £9bn was matched on horse racing before a single stride in the race had been completed.

That’s more than twice as much as football and nine times the same amount that is matched on Tennis. Racing is the biggest pre-off market on Betfair and provides some unique trading opportunities.

As I write this, today there are eight race meetings, with a total of …

06/05/2016 | By | 6 Replies More
Chester May Festival

Chester May Festival

Chester May festival starts today and it’s a welcome addition to the card, but based upon previous years it’s nothing amazing from a trading viewpoint.

Obviously we all love some extra liquidity that the quality racing will bring, but it’s never been a meeting that I’ve got really good amounts from. By that I mean I’m not banging in three figure results a race. Just the odd one or two a day. The thing to note about Chester is its

04/05/2016 | By | Reply More
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