Hi,
I am quite new to betangel but it seems like it is a lot to do with identifying trends and the correct time to act, more so than stocks? From what I have read from others on this website, it appears to me that success is in large part very much down to skill. With that in mind I have been thinking that this might be a suitable problem to try and tackle with machine learning. I have had a search around on google but couldn't find very much on using it for a betfair trading bot. Before I go to all the time and effort of giving it a try I just wanted to see if anyone has had any success with this? I appreciate that specific details might be out of the question but I am hoping to see if there are major flaws in my thinking and to gauge if it is worth pursuing.
Thank you very much for your time and help.
Machine learning query
Machine learning can certainly help you in that sense, I for example used some elements of accelerated learning which in a nutshell is similar. I did not have the luxury of 10-15 years of trading experience behind me because I was a bit late to the party so I needed to somehow catch up with the rest, that was at least my reasoning behind it. The good news is that there is enough information out there to come up with an intelligent approach that should almost guarantee success if you put enough effort and time into it.
The basic concept is quite simple, once you learn how the markets behave you only need to apply a bit of common sense to work out what style of trading would suit those markets the best and after that it's all about perfecting that style to a high enough level until it becomes routine. But it also helps if that style of trading suits YOU as well, not only the market. However, it all starts with knowledge, if you don't know your market you won't be able to see any room to consistently make a profit from it.
You're right about skill, for me it's all about skill, skill that can be practiced to a very high level, that's the thing that attracted me most to sports trading in general. When I saw my first few videos of people trading on the ladder I was pretty confident that I could learn how to do that as well, because I've done it before when I was younger in online video gaming. Contrary to popular belief, just like in sports trading, there is also money to be made in the gaming industry if you are skilled enough to play at the highest level. I approached trading just like I would approach any other game that I was trying to get skilled at, so I may use slightly different terminology than other traders.
The best example of skill that I can think of is scalping, which is a big part of what I call ladder mechanics. Once you reach a high enough level in scalping you can basically scalp anything you want, some markets will be easier and more suitable for scalping and some may be much harder, but if you're skilled enough you should have longterm profit on all of them.
If you look at somebody's P/L screenshot or something you more or less already know what style of trading they're using on that particular market etc, for example a good scalper or somebody with a different mechanical edge will not appear to have any losses on his P/L. They do have losses because everyone has losses, but they are "invisible" because of the high amount of entries that scalpers usually have, so statistiscally it becomes almost impossible to end up with an overall loss.
It's worth noting that only a mechanical edge can get you close to 100% hitrate on your P/L, but there are many styles of trading to choose from. Somebody might click once and open a longer term swing position because they're confident in their reading of the market, while somebody else might click 50 times because they are scalping the market noise, and in the end they can both have identical profit. For someone who is starting out I think it's best to try a bit of everything and see what suits them best, it's easier to progress if you stick to your strengths, drastic change can be very slow and painful.
I hope that clears a few things up for you, good luck.
The basic concept is quite simple, once you learn how the markets behave you only need to apply a bit of common sense to work out what style of trading would suit those markets the best and after that it's all about perfecting that style to a high enough level until it becomes routine. But it also helps if that style of trading suits YOU as well, not only the market. However, it all starts with knowledge, if you don't know your market you won't be able to see any room to consistently make a profit from it.
You're right about skill, for me it's all about skill, skill that can be practiced to a very high level, that's the thing that attracted me most to sports trading in general. When I saw my first few videos of people trading on the ladder I was pretty confident that I could learn how to do that as well, because I've done it before when I was younger in online video gaming. Contrary to popular belief, just like in sports trading, there is also money to be made in the gaming industry if you are skilled enough to play at the highest level. I approached trading just like I would approach any other game that I was trying to get skilled at, so I may use slightly different terminology than other traders.
The best example of skill that I can think of is scalping, which is a big part of what I call ladder mechanics. Once you reach a high enough level in scalping you can basically scalp anything you want, some markets will be easier and more suitable for scalping and some may be much harder, but if you're skilled enough you should have longterm profit on all of them.
If you look at somebody's P/L screenshot or something you more or less already know what style of trading they're using on that particular market etc, for example a good scalper or somebody with a different mechanical edge will not appear to have any losses on his P/L. They do have losses because everyone has losses, but they are "invisible" because of the high amount of entries that scalpers usually have, so statistiscally it becomes almost impossible to end up with an overall loss.
It's worth noting that only a mechanical edge can get you close to 100% hitrate on your P/L, but there are many styles of trading to choose from. Somebody might click once and open a longer term swing position because they're confident in their reading of the market, while somebody else might click 50 times because they are scalping the market noise, and in the end they can both have identical profit. For someone who is starting out I think it's best to try a bit of everything and see what suits them best, it's easier to progress if you stick to your strengths, drastic change can be very slow and painful.
I hope that clears a few things up for you, good luck.