Tonights results

Well, there the last races of the day were later today, so I got to trade on a couple. I would have got onto more but my wife has become addicted to Facebook and I couldn't get her off the computer! I didn't do bad, but I didn't do great either. The first race, I ended up taking a small loss and the second a small profit, so I pretty much stayed where I started. On the second one I had built up a few quid from repeated trades, just taking a tick here and there, but the price was pretty high and so the green up amount was low. I thought, as it was the favourite, it might lower in-play. Nah, it went out the running pretty quick and I struggled to get anything. A lesson against being greedy. Lots of people have said, not to go in-play, even if it is to green up and that is a good example why. Still, if I hadn't been greedy I would have got a better price in-play, if I had got out sooner. Though hind sight is a wonderful thing with 20/20 vision!

There was no in-play football on in time for me to get in at the start, which is part of my plan. So, not a lot happening again. I need to make up for it this weekend.

Football is different

My last few posts seemed to have mainly been links to useful web sites. Well, not wanting to disappoint(!), here is another one. I found it useful for finding out quickly when football matches are kicking off and what the scores are. It updates itself every few minutes and although not something to rely on, I found it helpful. Go to http://www.livescore.com/

I did a few trades on the match between Blackburn and MyPa. I started off pretty well, but ended just a couple of quid up, was lucky not to lose anything, as I didn't think it through beforehand. I was in the under/over 2.5 goal markets. I learnt a fair bit with this game. I've been trying to treat football markets similarly to how I have been treating horse racing, because that's been all I've known, but they are worlds apart. The horse racing markets all get lively around 10 minutes before the off until a couple of minutes before, when they go a bit crazy. The football markets are not that lively before the off and then you are in the world of in-play betting. In-play on the horses seemed to jump all over the place and was not a very safe place to be. The football in-play teases you with obvious trends to scalp but there is always the risk of a goal happening and making the price jump like crazy. You can go in technically, i.e. just using the numbers, scalping a chunk of ticks at a time, as the price follows a steadily developing trend, but the market gives and it takes away. You could be lucky and get a nice group of trades done and be able to green up, then again, a goal could be scored and you have an open trade and be looking at a loss. I've come to the conclusion that to play football in-play, you need to look at the fundamentals first, i.e. to get an idea of how the game may pan out and have a plan of what you will do from the start.

First touch at football

After getting home, giving the little one his bath and dropping the missus off for her company night out, I had missed the last UK horse race. No way I was touching the US market, so I decided to take Stan's advice (Stan is a regular contributor, via insightful comments, to the blog) and give the football markets a look. I'm not a big watcher of football and I play like a 4 year old, so I don't know much about the game, teams or market. Then again, I don't know much about jockeys, horses or racing but that doesn't stop me trading the horse racing markets, as I am only interested in the movement of prices not the fundamentals (i.e. form, etc). So, feeling a little trepidation, especially because the football was in-play, I checked it out, using small stakes and the same kind of approach I use for the horses.

I came out with a small profit but I think these markets can turn on a hap'enny, if something happens, e.g. a goal is scored. So, I can see it as a risky market but also one that is fairly liquid and seemed to be trending quite clearly. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, moving forward. I don't dare to use bigger stakes on this market as I don't understand the risk levels yet. It may be an option though. I wasn't able to see the game I was working with, which I guess is pretty important, so as to use events happening as guides of what to do.

As a newbie to the football market, I am open to any advice.

I tell you what, I'm going to annoy the missus when I tell her that the weekends are now being totally put aside for horse race trading!

Racing, risk and the in-play

I want to talk a little bit about risk. I'm going to go off track a bit first, but remind me and I'll get back to the point again.

So, I trade the horse racing market and during the week, sometimes the earliest I can get in front of my computer can be 8pm, which means I may only get the tail end of the racing. First a question to you knowledgable traders and punters out there, when winters comes and the racing stops earlier, what is a good market to trade? The USA racing is pretty illiquid which is really annoying, although sometimes you can get a good race, but the sums of money floating around are usually very small till around 2 minutes out. Also, the US race market may suspend earlier or later than expected. So any advice on a good alternative evening market would be much appreciated.

Last night I opened up Bet Trader Pro, which as good as Bet Angel Pro is, I seem to be using more. I found a race and had a look around, as I normally do. I saw a price that I thought would rise for a couple of minutes (it was about 12 minutes before the off) and put on a lay. I watched the price go up a tick and relaxed a bit, knowing I could release my "get-out-of-trade-now" trigger finger which was hovering over the mouse. I'm watching the prices then and nothing seemed to be happening. I looked at the countdown clock (something I really like, even though it is not always an accurate indicator, if it isn't there then I have to keep checking my watch, which is annoying) and it wasn't moving.

"What?!!", I said out loud, getting a this-guy-is-crazy look from my cat, Pete. I tried to click on my web browser but it had frozen too. My machine had died. Oh crap! I had to turn off the power (it wouldn't restart or shut down normally) and then power up again. I don't know why but when you're watching it, I'm sure windows takes longer to start up. My machine finally rebooted and then took an age to launch the firewall app and connect to the internet and finally launch the trading software. I got back into the market and I was not in a great position. The price had dropped 6 or 7 ticks and my trade was open. I could leave it open and hope it would come back but I have preached on about not doing that, so I got out, took the hit and started to try to build it back. Luckily, the price was perfect for scalping, staying between two prices with a constant influx of money at both ends, back and lay. I just kept joining the queue and gaining ticks back.

Now, here's where I took a bit of a chance. The time had nearly ran out and I was still down, but not by too much. The race suspended and went in-play. Recently, I have sometimes been waiting till in-play to green up. If I think the price has been raised artificially high by trading happening in the last 2 minutes, I may hold off greening up and watch in-play to see how the prices are moving. If they are moving down steadilly then I will let them ride for a minute, if they are fluctuating then I'll try to get out quicker but hopefully at a better price. I decided not to leave it without greening up after I left what looked like a definite winner that then got beaten in the last seconds, leaving me with nothing for my efforts. Okay, it means I will get potentially less but it means I consistantly get something. I prefer to see my bank steadily rising, day by day.

Well, that was quite long winded to get to my final point, which is about risk. I know in-play is risky and in order to get out with a small profit yesterday, I didn't just wait to green-up in-play, I also did some scalping, taking advantage of the gap between back and lay. To keep my risk low, I used a lot smaller stakes and got in and out as quickly as I could. i ended up in the green but in-play also cost me about 20% of my bank recently when I made a careless mistake a few days ago. So, is the risk worth the reward? Do many of you guys trade horse in-play? Do you use the same stakes? How do you manage risk or do you just fly by the seat of your pants?