Newbies Trading in the Dark

Learn sports betting strategies and discuss key factors to consider when placing a bet.
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spreadbetting
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https://digitexfutures.com/team/


" Adam was one of Betfair's most successful sports traders ever, once going 8 months of full time daily trading without a losing day."


haha.. indeed
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RussellMarsh
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James1st wrote:
Tue Jun 29, 2010 12:43 pm
I have perused this thread through its 1500 posts and find it astonishing that nowhere in its history is there any fundamental advice for folk who are new to trading. etc..`
Thanks James for putting this up. You are right about everything and especially about using stop losses correctly.

This will be a new venture for me and I am in the process of researching all I can about the methods used to minimise losses (which really is what trading is all about). I have not even bought my copy of Bet Angel yet as I don't see the point until I am completely confident that this will work for me. I emphasise "for me" as this is the important bit. I have to make sure "I" can handle the various situations that occur properly without turning them into a series of gambles and ending up skint like all the other mugs out there..

I agree with you in that WOM is an important indicator but should not be the only basis maybe of your decision in whether to trade or not. Other things can easily affect that money movement such as a TV tipster giving his opinion on a horse in the parade ring and I am sure there are lots of other indicators which would help confirm the likely movement of the odds apart from WOM.

I am looking forward to more thoughts from you and people like you :-)

One thing that intrigues me is watching Peter's videos he makes profits of £1 or 50p and we are supposed to consider that an education as to how to do this job. In one video Peter says he was "making £24,000 a month at that point" - sorry if that's not exact but it's the gist - and I thought How many bloody profits of 30p do you have to make to earn 24,000? - To make a living at this it would seem you really have to be trading MANY thousands of pounds on a single trade and then doesn't that make YOU an indicator to others? - interesting...

Russ
spreadbetting
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RussellMarsh wrote:
Sun Sep 15, 2019 12:24 pm

One thing that intrigues me is watching Peter's videos he makes profits of £1 or 50p and we are supposed to consider that an education as to how to do this job. In one video Peter says he was "making £24,000 a month at that point" - sorry if that's not exact but it's the gist - and I thought How many bloody profits of 30p do you have to make to earn 24,000? - To make a living at this it would seem you really have to be trading MANY thousands of pounds on a single trade and then doesn't that make YOU an indicator to others? - interesting...

Russ

I'd have thought the educational videos Peter posts up are just that , for educational purposes only. It's unlikely he'll be using full stakes when filming a video to show something and unlikely to be videoing and commentating on every trade he does when trading day to day. For lots of reasons using large stakes to prove a point is likely to detract from the message he's trying to get across for a variety of reasons.

The problem with racing is the one you highlight, using large stakes can make you stick out from the crowd and get picked off by some gambler who knows more and is waiting to pounce. But £24K is acheiveable as the HR markets are generally more about how many markets you churn over rather than making large amounts in a single trade. With around 200 UK and IRE races a week even averaging £10 a race can net you a three figure salary for the year. And to make £10 a trade could simply be a trade of £100 at 11 laid at 10, 2 ticks. Exposures of a grand will easily go unnoticed at all price points and you can stick thru many a race. So whilst you may trade MANY thousands of pounds on a race it doesn't need to be in one trade.
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Naffman
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spreadbetting wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 1:27 pm
https://digitexfutures.com/team/


" Adam was one of Betfair's most successful sports traders ever, once going 8 months of full time daily trading without a losing day."


haha.. indeed
Our mate the badger also supports that exchange, could it get worse :lol:
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RussellMarsh
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Location: Rossendale UK

spreadbetting wrote:
Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:42 pm
RussellMarsh wrote:
Sun Sep 15, 2019 12:24 pm

One thing that intrigues me is watching Peter's videos he makes profits of £1 or 50p and we are supposed to consider that an education as to how to do this job. In one video Peter says he was "making £24,000 a month at that point" - sorry if that's not exact but it's the gist - and I thought How many bloody profits of 30p do you have to make to earn 24,000? - To make a living at this it would seem you really have to be trading MANY thousands of pounds on a single trade and then doesn't that make YOU an indicator to others? - interesting...

Russ

I'd have thought the educational videos Peter posts up are just that , for educational purposes only. It's unlikely he'll be using full stakes when filming a video to show something and unlikely to be videoing and commentating on every trade he does when trading day to day. For lots of reasons using large stakes to prove a point is likely to detract from the message he's trying to get across for a variety of reasons.

The problem with racing is the one you highlight, using large stakes can make you stick out from the crowd and get picked off by some gambler who knows more and is waiting to pounce. But £24K is acheiveable as the HR markets are generally more about how many markets you churn over rather than making large amounts in a single trade. With around 200 UK and IRE races a week even averaging £10 a race can net you a three figure salary for the year. And to make £10 a trade could simply be a trade of £100 at 11 laid at 10, 2 ticks. Exposures of a grand will easily go unnoticed at all price points and you can stick thru many a race. So whilst you may trade MANY thousands of pounds on a race it doesn't need to be in one trade.
Good advice - thanks very much. This is one fascinating job I must say and I have been going through all the automation and servants videos Peter has done and I must say I am blown away by 1, the simplicity of it and 2, the complexity of it!
MAGTRADEUK
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I have also watched many of the videos, one thing that struck me is that the entries always seem to be at the right to perfect time and the amount staked is very high, well for me anyway.

The price updates seem to be quite sedate, and even getting these amounts into the market with only 5 mins to go and also more importantly get out with a good profit and before the off, seems to be a monumental task for a new trader on the HR Betfair markets.

When I go into a market with 5 mins to go the prices are flying around, there is hardly any time to build a position before you have to start getting out, that is of course if the thing is going the right way. !!!!
Archery1969
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I wonder what refresh rate Peter uses because in his videos it sometimes seems to be in slow motion.
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Euler
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I use a fast refresh rate but that makes the market 'noisy' so I would actually suggest using a much slower rate when you are learning.

I've just had a lot of practice and seen almost every scenario, so that's why it looks uncomplicated. But trading is anything but uncomplicated. The biggest leap for me was changing my thinking. You often have to do the opposite of what you think when you are learning.
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firlandsfarm
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spreadbetting wrote:
Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:42 pm
... even averaging £10 a race can net you a three figure salary for the year. And to make £10 a trade could simply be a trade of £100 at 11 laid at 10, 2 ticks. Exposures of a grand will easily go unnoticed at all price points and you can stick thru many a race. So whilst you may trade MANY thousands of pounds on a race it doesn't need to be in one trade.
I agree your calcs SB but I've often wondered what is an efficient return per race/market. I appreciate actual trade size will vary with how the market is viewed but just as a wild stab in the dark what would be considered a reasonable return as a %age of average trading stake (not total staked ... average stake per trade)? So if your trading stake averages say £10 per trade would you hope to average £1 per race/market, £5, £10 … maybe more. I'm just curious because when you start trading it's difficult to know if you should be satisfied with your returns (accepting that you should be happy with any profit! :) ).
spreadbetting
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So much depends on your style of play, scalpers will generally be lower as they'll do more churning of stakes compared to a swing trader. Been a long time since I've done any number crunching on it but, with my bots etc,I'd definitely be running below a 1% return on the total stakes I put thru the markets.
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firlandsfarm
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spreadbetting wrote:
Fri Jul 17, 2020 12:50 pm
So much depends on your style of play, scalpers will generally be lower as they'll do more churning of stakes compared to a swing trader. Been a long time since I've done any number crunching on it but, with my bots etc,I'd definitely be running below a 1% return on the total stakes I put thru the markets.
Thanks for that SB, that's interesting. So you are looking at less than 1% of turnover, a very small margin. I try to look for a 5% margin with mine … I guess 6 BOTs at 1% is better than 1 BOT at 5% but at 1% I would be worried that the slightest change in how the market behaves could become a 1% loss.

I was more interested in the relationship between the average set stake (stake per individual back/lay trade not total staked) and the average race profit. I have no idea but just putting some numbers on the table would traders hope/expect/target to achieve an average profit per race of 10%, 50% maybe 100% or more of "average set stake". I appreciate that will depend on the number of trades made in the race but just looking at averages.

I believe in "it's never wrong to take a profit" and am tending to adopt a "stop at a winner" tactic for manual trading because I found that sometimes by continuing to trade after making a profit I could lose it! So I was just wondering what is an average profit% of 'average stake per back/lay' just as a target/guide to compare with.
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ShaunWhite
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There's two components, the edge from raw numbers you can automate (such as how SB and I trade and I agree with him about the size of that. Even 1/2% is perfectly fine when you trade over 1000 selections a day) and then there's the edge you can add to that as a manual trader by using your skill and judgement. Peter might add 10% and I might deduct 10%.during execution. But a 5% edge without your 'soft' manual input is very very unlikely.

But even then profit is a combination of edge, turnover and frequency of opportunity. A scalper might turnover £1000 and make £10 on every race or a swing trader might turnover £100 and make £20 on every second race.
spreadbetting
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firlandsfarm wrote:
Sun Jul 19, 2020 7:59 am

Thanks for that SB, that's interesting. So you are looking at less than 1% of turnover, a very small margin. I try to look for a 5% margin with mine … I guess 6 BOTs at 1% is better than 1 BOT at 5% but at 1% I would be worried that the slightest change in how the market behaves could become a 1% loss.
I find it the oposite to be honest, the lower the percentage the more reliable the results become as you're playing such a large numbers of markets the eventual outcome is more predictable.

firlandsfarm wrote:
Sun Jul 19, 2020 7:59 am
I was more interested in the relationship between the average set stake (stake per individual back/lay trade not total staked) and the average race profit. I have no idea but just putting some numbers on the table would traders hope/expect/target to achieve an average profit per race of 10%, 50% maybe 100% or more of "average set stake". I appreciate that will depend on the number of trades made in the race but just looking at averages.

I believe in "it's never wrong to take a profit" and am tending to adopt a "stop at a winner" tactic for manual trading because I found that sometimes by continuing to trade after making a profit I could lose it! So I was just wondering what is an average profit% of 'average stake per back/lay' just as a target/guide to compare with.

I'd be very surpised if people were returning 10%,50% or even 100% average profits from their stakes. If we consider prices around 2's you're looking at 10 ticks just to return 5%, back £100 @ 2's close by laying £105.26 @ 1.9 and that's not even factoring in the fact you'd have losers.

I'm sure there are probably people making double figure returns on average but like everything it comes down to the amount of work you're prepared to put into your original bets and the markets you play. There are situations where I'll be confident of double figure percentage returns but because I take the approach of betting on anything I think will give me a positive return in the long run my overall average is always going to be small especially when botting volume via bots.

At the end of the day you have to take your own approach but should never lose sight that the ultimate goal is to return a profit not a percentage. Churning over your stake is a big plus for a trader because there are so many small opportunities that are around to take a percent or two but not so many opportunities to take 10% or more.
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firlandsfarm
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ShaunWhite wrote:
Sun Jul 19, 2020 2:54 pm
There's two components, the edge from raw numbers you can automate (such as how SB and I trade and I agree with him about the size of that. Even 1/2% is perfectly fine when you trade over 1000 selections a day) and then there's the edge you can add to that as a manual trader by using your skill and judgement. Peter might add 10% and I might deduct 10%.during execution. But a 5% edge without your 'soft' manual input is very very unlikely.

But even then profit is a combination of edge, turnover and frequency of opportunity. A scalper might turnover £1000 and make £10 on every race or a swing trader might turnover £100 and make £20 on every second race.
spreadbetting wrote:
Sun Jul 19, 2020 3:14 pm
I find it the oposite to be honest, the lower the percentage the more reliable the results become as you're playing such a large numbers of markets the eventual outcome is more predictable.
Shaun/SB in comparing the returns we are not comparing like for like strategies. I agree with your comments re your strategies and the difference manual input makes but my 5% active trading, manual or automatic … it refers to making selections from what I refer to as statistical advantages, like the now well known draw advantage at Beverley of a few years ago. My BOTs run in conjunction with my database and seek to find value by comparing prices with possible historical/trending edges and placing individual bets on selections … B2L and L2B would be further examples but this is not what I wanted my question to refer to. Maybe I confused the topic by mentioning the BOT %age I look for without thinking of the different types of BOTs being used. I'm actually not wanting to explore your 1,000's of automated trades either, I am thinking of manual trading!
spreadbetting wrote:
Sun Jul 19, 2020 3:14 pm
I'd be very surpised if people were returning 10%,50% or even 100% average profits from their stakes. If we consider prices around 2's you're looking at 10 ticks just to return 5%, back £100 @ 2's close by laying £105.26 @ 1.9 and that's not even factoring in the fact you'd have losers.
Thanks for your continued interest guys but I think my point is being missed. I'm not asking the %age of turnover (total stakes) I'm asking that if someone usually trades with say average £100 stakes per trade would they want/expect/hope to have an average profit of say £20 per race i.e. the average profit is 20% of the average individual stake of £100 (not the total stakes). Yes, to make that £20 profit they will most certainly have to make multiple trades (of £100). What I'm trying to get at is a comparison of the profits of someone who trades at £2 per trade with someone who trades at say £100 (or more per trade). Some guys here post their profits from trading in the £'s hundreds but the readers don't know if they are staking £2 per trade to achieve their claimed profits or £1,000 per trade (or Photoshop! :) )!

The number of trades performed is obviously relevant but just as relevant is the average stake used. To make an average profit of 40 pence per race when trading can seem pathetic and demoralising but if you are only trading with £2 stakes that's equivalent to making an average profit of £20 per race if trading with stakes of £100.
spreadbetting
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firlandsfarm wrote:
Sun Jul 19, 2020 4:15 pm
Thanks for your continued interest guys but I think my point is being missed. I'm not asking the %age of turnover (total stakes) I'm asking that if someone usually trades with say average £100 stakes per trade would they want/expect/hope to have an average profit of say £20 per race i.e. the average profit is 20% of the average individual stake of £100 (not the total stakes). Yes, to make that £20 profit they will most certainly have to make multiple trades (of £100). What I'm trying to get at is a comparison of the profits of someone who trades at £2 per trade with someone who trades at say £100 (or more per trade). Some guys here post their profits from trading in the £'s hundreds but the readers don't know if they are staking £2 per trade to achieve their claimed profits or £1,000 per trade (or Photoshop! :) )!

The number of trades performed is obviously relevant but just as relevant is the average stake used. To make an average profit of 40 pence per race when trading can seem pathetic and demoralising but if you are only trading with £2 stakes that's equivalent to making an average profit of £20 per race if trading with stakes of £100.
If you're looking for comparisons you really need to have some reference standard and the easiest one is always going to be the return to your total staked thru the market. Many swing traders will simply do one trade thru the market whereas a scalper may do 10, staking 10 times the swing trader so comparing their market return to the same stake isn't really relevant. Plus the majority of us don't play to set stakes, it's more about taking advantage of what you thnk the market can take when the opportunity of an 'edge' arises. Like others I'll have various stake boxes set up and may click them numerous times in one trade if I think I can manually and botting stakes get adjusted depending on the available liquidity.

I do get where you're coming from as we all want to know where we stand in the trading 'league table' but you're always comparing apples and oranges because we all play differently. The simple truth is we're playing into near 100% books so any little edge you find can give you a decent living if you can constantly exploit it.

I'd guess most of the £2 traders on here will return a much healthier percentage than I would playing with the same stakes but when it comes to upping those stakes for worthwhile amounts it's a whole new ball game for a variety of reasons. My approach has always been about sticking volume through the markets so you'd probably need more swings traders to comment and give you an idea of the figures you're looking for.
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