Tra-mbling

[Evertonboy]

Tra-mbling A few months ago I dabbled with trading on betfair using The Geeks Toy. I dove in head first and as you might expect lost (literally) a couple of quid. This small loss encouraged me to do a bot of research into trading. In the end I came up with the following set of Trading Rules; (horse racing only at this point) 1. Target profit is 1.5% of bank per day. (Slow and seady wins the race) 2.Identify only 1 horse per race. (No need to run before i can walk) 3. Study the market and Use the graphs to identify a specific patern in a horses prices before entering a trade 4. Back (with a view to lay) only to begin with to limit liabilities 5. Exit point is 3 ticks difference to entry point. (Even if that means a small loss- its better than losing my whole stake) 6. Exit 60 seconds before the off no matter what. What I found was that I was having a bit more success, I wasn't making a profit but I wasn't losing either (so a bit of a pointless exercise really!) and eventually give up the ghost. That is, until now. I have come up with a new method that will hopefully prove more profitable than the last. This time around, I will be trading on any live sporing event that I am watching and trading a variety of inplay markets, my method is as follows; 1. Initial bank shall only be £10, I'm still relatively new to trading so I'm not willing to risk losing more than that at the moment. I'm still learning and I feel with trading you have to "learn on the job" so to speak. 2. Initial stake shall be 50% of bank. Remember my bank is only small and should I encounter any losing trade, I will not lose my whole stake Thats the financial side of my plan, now to the actual selection method. 3. I aim to exploit any gaps in the Market. For example, the selection is available to back at 15.0 and to lay at 20.0. There is a gap of 5 ticks. My aim is to get a bet matched at the higher end of this gap, ideally at 20.0 or 19.0 4. Once I get a bet matched, I will then seek to lay the selection off at lower in the gap, ideally at 15.0 or 16.0. Obviously this relies on me getting the*original back bet matched. This is where the gamble comes into it, the success of my system is relying on the price falling rather than rising. 5. I will incorporate a stop loss, it will not be a set amount, it will vary depending on the back price taken.* 6. to begin with, I will trade on 1 Market per game/ race to try and keep things nice and simple. 7. After the event as finished, I will look back over all the trades made to see what worked and what didn't. (forgot to add, all horse racing trades will still be exited 60 secs before the race starts no matter what) I will run this for a trial period before hopefully becoming confident enough to Increase my bank (and of course restructure my finance plan!!) and refine my methods to make me a steady profit. I know this kind of system will not make me a millionaire over night but hopefully it can gradually increase my profit in the long term. Any advice anybody can give me? With regards point 5, could Somebody advise me as to various stop losses I could use? I'm struggling with this part as obviously a the difference in value on a 2 tick loss on a 2.2 that drifted to a 2.24 is less than a 20.0 drifting to 22.0! All help and (constructive) criticism will be taken on board.

[froment]

Re: Tra-mbling Hello, Jamie; I'm not keen with horse racing, I trade only football, but anyway let me tell you my thoughts on some points of yours.

Tra-mbling A few months ago I dabbled with trading on betfair using The Geeks Toy. .... 1. Target profit is 1.5% of bank per day. (Slow and seady wins the race) 2.Identify only 1 horse per race. (No need to run before i can walk) 3. Study the market and Use the graphs to identify a specific patern in a horses prices before entering a trade

I, for one, avoid setting any targets, either profit, either loss, I don't like them; they create some kind of pressure - you compare your actual profit to targeted profit, and either force yourself into another trade just for sake of reaching the target and not because the trade looks profitable, either miss promising trade just because target has been reached. Instead, I rather set strict criteria to enter trade, and then obey them - sometimes there will be as many as 10 trades per day, but sometimes there will be no single one that meets criteria, so it's better to walk off, than to enter suspiucious trade. In light of such an approach, I consider your point 2 as very good decision, just ensure enough discipline to stick to it! This especially applies given that, as far as I know, in this time of year, amount and quality of races decline due to weather conditions, so your choices are narrowed down. As for The Toy, I don't know if you're still following what happens with that software, but, given that you plan to base your decisions upon graphs, let me tell you that new version of The Toy is just about to be released (it was scheduled for late September, but, as The Geek explained, no IT project without delay... :D ), and it will have improved charting; from what I saw, it will be like heaven and hell difference in comparison to standard Betfair charts, and I'd reccommend you not to miss it! Beside, there is another tool, free of charge as well, Quantsports, which returns powerful charts, too, and can be integrated into The Toy; though, I don't rely too much on charts, as well, because they show what happened in the past, and it doesn't guarantee what will happen in the future. Anyway, when I bothered myself with technical analysis of the charts, I stumbled upon two interesting articles, if you want to read: EDIT: when simply copy-pasted, these links won't work; I suppose because they both have word "betfair" in their URL, so forum's automatic linking of that word corrupts link; I wrapped them into code tags, so you'll have to copy them and paste into browser address bar.

http://www.jimmakos.com/gr/betfair-trading/technical-analysis-in-betfair-horse-racing-charts.html

http://www.jimmakos.com/en/betfair-trading/technical-analysis-support-and-resistance-levels-in-betfair-graphs.html

3. I aim to exploit any gaps in the Market. For example, the selection is available to back at 15.0 and to lay at 20.0. There is a gap of 5 ticks. My aim is to get a bet matched at the higher end of this gap, ideally at 20.0 or 19.0

Gaps rarely occur, and mostly in the events with poor liquidity; at least in football matches. If you place back bet at best lay odds, you will be at the end of the queue; if liquidity is poor, you're not likely to get matched; and if liquidity is good, gap will probably soon dissapear, again before you get matched, so chances to "reverse the book" at such a big gap are quite small, in my opinion. If best back and lay prices are 15.0 and 20.0 as you say, I would look at placing back bet at 19.0 (or even less), and if it gets matched, lay bet at 16.0 (or even higher); of course, if odds don't change in the meantime - if best back available in the meantime goes up to, let's say, 16.5, I'd place lay at 17.0 or 17.5.

5. I will incorporate a stop loss, it will not be a set amount, it will vary depending on the back price taken.* With regards point 5, could Somebody advise me as to various stop losses I could use? I'm struggling with this part as obviously a the difference in value on a 2 tick loss on a 2.2 that drifted to a 2.24 is less than a 20.0 drifting to 22.0! All help and (constructive) criticism will be taken on board.

Just like targets, I also don't like stop losses, and I'm trying to avoid them as much as possible. The way I look them is not by number of ticks, because of the obvious reason you mentioned, but by percent of initial stake I want to lose (errrrrm... not "want"; "forced", better said... :@ ); let's say I intend to red the screen when loss reaches 3% of initial stake; when equalized, profit or loss actualy amount to (Lay stake - Back stake), so I want Lay stake to be 0.97*Back stake; then, I calculate Lay odds for stop loss to be placed as (Back odds / 0.97); that means, if back odds are 2.20, stop loss should be placed at 2.27, and if back odds are 20.0, stop loss should be placed at 20.6, in order to lose 3% of the stake in both cases; obviously, both odds, 2.27 and 20.6, are not available, due to different tick increments, so you must decide if you will place stop loss at next higher or lower tick, or combine stakes at both odds to get desired level (I mean, half of stake at 2.26, and other half at 2.28 will give you 2.27). For your further reference, this calculation was made upon the basic hedging equation: Back odds * Back stake = Lay odds * Lay stake You might need handy hedging calculator, and here's one: http://www.chromaweb.com/bets/calculator/index.php Good luck with your quest! :ok