Dealing with swings - in play

[jimibt]

All,

The problem
I'm sure it's the nature of trading that some wild swings come into play on a runner that's leading the field. A case in point was one that I had placed a back bet on last friday. It was sitting on odds of 3.75->3.5 for the 1st 30 seconds of the race (a 1 mile chase). The odds then swung up to 5 and then to 7.0, before descending back down thro 5.0 on it's way back to 3.75 ish. This resulted in my stop-loss being triggered during this churn period and what should have been a profitable trade, turned into a £'ss loss.

My thoughts
I appreciate fully that the obvious reason for this spike was a burst of profit taking but just wondered if there were any strategies (in terms of automation rules) that could determine that the price was drifting due to trading, rather than the fact that the runner was no longer in contention. I'm certain it would be possible to determine a pattern using a range of data points, but not so sure if such a comparison is available as a simple rule in the automation...

What I've tried so far
I've tried setting my loss greening up rule to only trigger after 45 seconds in play - not a great idea, but avoided a few false losses in some cases. I also manually removed the rule when I saw it spiking and turned it back on when the spike had settled. Again, not a great idea and was purely a Heath Robinson approach to circumventing my loss rule triggering. So, that's about it really!!

Over to you guys

All the best
jim

[LinusP]

Volatility is your friend inplay, try taking advantage of it rather than trying to cope with it using stoploss / greening. I don't believe that any strategy that is successful pre race will work inplay, the Peters will advise being selective and I agree.

I aim to take value and happy to take a red of the full stake instead of greening. The general rule that I have found is that the last 1/3rd of the race is where volatility is high so if you have a scalping strategy stay away from the last 1/3rd!

[jimibt]

Volatility is your friend inplay, try taking advantage of it rather than trying to cope with it using stoploss / greening. ... The general rule that I have found is that the last 1/3rd of the race is where volatility is high so if you have a scalping strategy stay away from the last 1/3rd!

I think you've hit the nail on the head. The little strat that I've been working on involves a pre-selected runner and focusses on only placing a few bets to both enter and exit the market. So in a way, I am by default taking advantage of volatility - however, it's the heavy swings that are scuppering the plan as it forces the outer edge of an acceptable loss. That said, you make a good point for not setting a greening loss as this would effectively prevent such a rule running. Just a matter of measuring the hit rate here to see if 1 loss over 5 races is an acceptable %age £loss to keep things profitable.

jim

[jimibt]

further to this initial question, I wonder if anyone could tell me if there's a way to access the entire historical data tree from a pre-defined start point until the last trades? My idea being that I could examine the relative strength on either side of the book, leading up to placement of a trade.

[Dallas]

A forum member (Switesh) shared an excellent data capture sheet which you may find useful.
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=8896

[jimibt]

Thanks Dallas - watched the youtube video as well, very informative and definitely a useful starting point for use pre event, as well as reviewing at the end of the day.