Can Betfair see my stops!?

[Trader724]

Betfair knows everything you do on their platform. They don't know why you do some things(nobody does, not even you) but that's not important.

[Dallas]

Betfair knows everything you do on their platform. They don't know why you do some things(nobody does, not even you) but that's not important.

They only see the bets/orders once they arrive on there servers, they can't see pending stops, offset bets and bets/orders you've created a rule to trigger later or manual bets you are thinking about placing in the future - until you actually trigger/place them and send them to there servers.

[ilovepizza82]

Betfair knows everything you do on their platform. They don't know why you do some things(nobody does, not even you) but that's not important.

So true

[Derek27]

I think they can ,it happens too many times to be a coincedence

Markets are so volatile, you could consider it a coincidence if the stoploss doesn't get triggered. I've never used stoplosses but what is described on this thread is nothing more than what I would expect.

[Trader724]

Betfair knows everything you do on their platform. They don't know why you do some things(nobody does, not even you) but that's not important.

They only see the bets/orders once they arrive on there servers, they can't see pending stops, offset bets and bets/orders you've created a rule to trigger later or manual bets you are thinking about placing in the future - until you actually trigger/place them and send them to there servers.

Yes, and we are lucky that they do not know what we do in practice mode, otherwise they would steal our profitable strategies.

[PDC]

Maybe it is Bet Angel and feeding back into Peter's supercomputer

(Joking, obviously! )

The image in this Tweet from Peter is the answer:
https://twitter.com/betangel/status/1454515990138589186

[Morbius]

Hi all,

Just wondering if it is possible for betfair to see where stops are placed or likely to be placed, as when I use them they always seem to get hit.

I could be placing them just too tight for the market conditions, but have tried widening stops and then Im usually completely wrong and price goes off in the other direction after hitting my stop. Seems to be quite consistent, so am just wondering if I am consistently unlucky each time, or if there is some similarities with e.g. CFDs, which I know are synthetic products created by the broker who can see stop placements and run them for quick profits.

I seem to be doing better when just using mental stops, as long as I keep up the discipline to act. lol

TIA

Interesting post and one that crops up often when traders increase their level of sophistication to a level where they perceive this to be a possibility. While a design flaw in your system or method could be the root cause its certainly a question that any trader should be asking within an environment that is not only deeply adversarial but one that has a complete lack of transparency. The short answer to this multi-layered question is that yes they do "see" your stops but in no way must this automatically be connected to something insidious. Traders unknowingly place stops in well known locations and stops are often clustered in easily identifiable spots.

Remember that markets hunt liquidity and while I am not going to provide you with the research I found as it would be harmful to your progression, I will just say that it is a problem that is workable simply by collecting data when you trade beyond certain size. For example if your stop loss is set at 3 ticks and your take profit target is also set at 3 ticks [allowing for the spread} then your ratio of stops hit to profits hit should all things being equal be 50-50. Now clearly many factors will sway this so this is far from absolute so a large sample size is needed at trade levels where it would be likely that an attempt could be made to hunt your stop IF it was a relevant factor within the market. This is why trading much higher trade size is a different ball game to trading minimums and its not just to do with overall market liquidity.

There are just so many factors at work here that will impact on stops being hit that its a deep rabbit hole. Remember that BF/BDQ do not provide proper level 2 data so you cannot see who the participants are or even if the liquidity is genuine so you must assume insidious behaviour until proven otherwise and design your research and strategies around that. But remember that in no way am I saying this is "cheating", it is merely how the game is played and no one is merely going to hand you their money and will do everything within their power to get yours. Remember it doesn't need to be BF who see your stops but other advanced traders. You can "see" without "seeing" if that makes sense just like combinatorics and probability theorem can assist you to "see" someones hand in poker without actually "seeing" their cards.