Why everything looks like an opportunity to me
When Betfair has an outage, I know immediately what I should be doing. One of them shouldn’t surprise you and one of them should!
Important things first
I know it’s rare, but because I actually am trading and betting most of the time, the first thing I do is warn other people.
If I feel something is not right I’ll do my best to alert people on social media. Of course, sometimes I have other commitements and I can’t trade manually, but there is another place to look for alerts if you are unsure if there is a problem.
The Bet Angel forum is a very active trading community so I and others, often post there at the first hint of trouble. We have a dedicated thread for if anybody feels there is a problem with the Betfair API or if anybody see’s that Betfair is down: –
https://forum.betangel.com/viewtopic.php?t=1162
Its a useful resource for alerting people to problems, but also to help clear up any mess from the result of an outage.
The first thing was to warn other people, the second thing is usually to moan about it. That said, realiability on Betfair has been very high for sometime and they deserve credit for that. Manage the number of transactions they do is a tough ask and any body in IT will know the nightmare of looking after complex systems.
But if Betfair is completely offline the final thing on my list of responses to the outage, is to immediately switch to Betdaq and start trading there.
Lack of liquidity is no reason not to trade
I often hear people say that they want to trade on Betdaq, but it doesn’t have enough liquidity or it’s gappy. Basically, they just can’t trade it the same way.
That last comment is fair enough. However, there are ways that you can effectively trade.
The key is, as I’ve mentioned many times before, every market has a strategy and every strategy, a market. And your role as a trader is to match the two together.
So necessarily, you shouldn’t be trading on Betdaq the same way they would trade on Betfair.
Back to basics
To make this point clear, let me take you back to when I first started trading Betfair. The markets were gappy and illiquid.
The strategies that I use on a day to day basis now, would not have worked at the very start of my Betfair trading journey. Therefore, you shouldn’t expect strategies that you use on a day to day basis on Betfair would work on Betdaq, especially when Betfair has just crashed.
Markets change over time and the strategies I used in my earlier days, don’t really fit the markets as they stand. As the market evolved, so do my strategies. However, I often find a place for old strageties as well. Often in underdeveloped markets.
This is why every market looks like an opportunity to me.
Over many years, I’ve transitioned from those very early markets that I saw on Betfair, to the state in which they are now. That means there’s a strategy to use in each one of those markets.
Each market looks like an opportunity to me, all I have to do is figure out which strategy is going to be best applicable to what I see in front of me.
No need to be down
As an example when Betfair is down, I switch to Betdaq.
Yes, the markets are gapping and illiquid. But upon my arrival, I can start putting liquidity into the market and closing those gaps. This is the sort of strategy that I used when I started on Betfair. It’s a bit like winding the clock back and having the markets the way they were when I first started.
There is also a deeper question here. It’s very easy to find problems with anything. If you’re looking for a perfect solution to a problem, you will never find it, because such a thing does not exist.
But as a trader, what you should be doing is understanding and acknowledging the fact what the market looks like. Then you are trying to find a strategy that is suitable for what you see.
As I’ve often stated before, if you approach things in a negative manner, you’ll always find problems. But if you approach things in a positive manner, you will always find opportunities.
And that is why, for me, every market looks like an opportunity!