Ok, yes it does, but my point is that the market is bonkers nowadays. I doubt if this is helping out and out scalpers. A few years ago you could put an order in wait for it to get matched, or nearly match and then put the other one in. Worked well.
I then learnt to scalp more stable markets as others would move around a lot and create a few problems.
Now it seems every market goes up, down and all over the place but very few are stable enough to scalp with any confidence. Every order I put in the market raises my heart rate!
In contrast my swing trades are doing much better. It seems the market is more volatile that it has ever been. Probably all us lot poking around I guess?
Does scalping really work any more?
You read my mind!
I remember learning to trade at the beginning of 2007 and found scalping so easy back then! There were lots of big price movements, but they usually weren't as sudden and sharp as they are nowadays.
With scalping the hardest bit nowadays is figuring out what's real and what's not, in past years the front prices were almost always real with occasional spoofs on the 3rd boxes, but now even the medium-sized amounts at the front of the queue often end up cancelling and panic ensues!
My swing trading record is still laughable so I still scalp 95% of races and get by, but it's definitely much tougher than it used to be, lots more 2 or 3-tick losses that would be 1-tick losses when the markets were more stable.
Not the most relaxing technique for sure!
I remember learning to trade at the beginning of 2007 and found scalping so easy back then! There were lots of big price movements, but they usually weren't as sudden and sharp as they are nowadays.
With scalping the hardest bit nowadays is figuring out what's real and what's not, in past years the front prices were almost always real with occasional spoofs on the 3rd boxes, but now even the medium-sized amounts at the front of the queue often end up cancelling and panic ensues!
My swing trading record is still laughable so I still scalp 95% of races and get by, but it's definitely much tougher than it used to be, lots more 2 or 3-tick losses that would be 1-tick losses when the markets were more stable.
Not the most relaxing technique for sure!
Football used to be quite easy. Prices moved, but gradually, and they were easy to spot. Nowadays, you can get caught out because the markets have become far more volatile. A good example was Aberdeen v Hibernian last Sunday. Aberdeen were trading at a solid 1.97, within 30 minutes they had drifted to 2.22! Then suddenly, somebody comes in with an £8000 back bet and within another 30 minutes they are trading at 1.95! This is becoming increasingly difficult to read
Peter has asked us to set up a random trading experiment today by scalping with £1 tick sizes. Basically we will trade the favourite at random with no guess on direction.
We will posts the full results later this afternoon for discussion.
We will posts the full results later this afternoon for discussion.
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darkpunter
- Posts: 33
- Joined: Wed Apr 15, 2009 8:04 pm
cool, going to be very interested how your little experiment works out!
OK, Here is the data from this afternoons session.
We traded 14 markets, as described above. We had seven winners and seven losers. Using £1 tick sizes, a maximum of £100 stakes, we put through trades worth £20812.60 in total. Today wasn't an exceptional day by any standards, but that turnover would have got us to an annualised rate of over £6m.
We traded 14 markets, as described above. We had seven winners and seven losers. Using £1 tick sizes, a maximum of £100 stakes, we put through trades worth £20812.60 in total. Today wasn't an exceptional day by any standards, but that turnover would have got us to an annualised rate of over £6m.
Interesting, thanks for the data.Bet Angel wrote:OK, Here is the data from this afternoons session.
We traded 14 markets, as described above. We had seven winners and seven losers. Using £1 tick sizes, a maximum of £100 stakes, we put through trades worth £20812.60 in total. Today wasn't an exceptional day by any standards, but that turnover would have got us to an annualised rate of over £6m.
If the average odds of a favourite is in the 2s, a £1 tick size would put your orders at £50 each so £100/average completed trade, so probably a bit over 200 trades today... around 14 trades/race, not a bad sample size.
A few questions about this experiment: how many ticks away was your counter-order placed when you opened a trade? Did you cut the losers at a pre-determined spot, did you close them when it was clear they were losers, or did you just let them go until 30 seconds pre-off?
Had a mare today despite carefully picking my entry/exit points. In fact my strike rate and P&L only narrowly beat out this random scalping strategy... interesting.
We only closed one tick away from the entry point. When a trade didn't 'work' we wouldn't put any new orders in until our net stake was zero. This probably wasn't a great strategy and is where the big losers came from, but it adds to the simplicity of the random trading.
Peter gets us to run these types of experiments most days as we are always looking and watching the market to see how it behaves.
Peter gets us to run these types of experiments most days as we are always looking and watching the market to see how it behaves.