How do you make over 1k in 1 race?

[Iron]

Thanks

When you look at weight of money, are you more interested in the top 3 prices either side of the spread, or the price directly either side of the spread?

Jeff

I'm happy opposing in either direction. You tend to get a low strike rate when doing this, but high win values when it comes off. Every trend has a tendancy to exhaust at some point on a sports market.

[Euler]

The trend, if it's persistantly skewed in one direction it helps lend weight to the trend. If that starts to break down then it's a signal people are not willing to back or lay any more.

[Iron]

I don't suppose you could do a video demonstrating this approach please?

Jeff

The trend, if it's persistantly skewed in one direction it helps lend weight to the trend. If that starts to break down then it's a signal people are not willing to back or lay any more.

[Euler]

No, When I do the courses, people pay for detailed information. So to publish that for free is unfair on those that have paid for it and would probably be counter productive anyway to be honest. Anything that is public in an open format will soon be copied so it's better that people find their own niche / specific way into and out of a market. I will always suggest this, even with tuition. If you want to do better than the crowd you need to do something different from them.

I'll often hand out clues and hints, but something for people to copy verbatim just isn't going to work for anybody. The best advice I can give overall is to try something and if it goes wrong analyse why and start striking out those errors. That is the best path in any market.

[andyfuller]

I feel WOM needs to be used carefully. It is very easy to be manipulated. We see it day in day out, people lining up orders to create the impression something is really being backed or laid. I think Sam Wilson did a video which showed him putting in big amounts to create the impression someone wanted on so as to move the price where he wanted to close out a trade or get a move started.

It is not something I do regularly but I do do it from time to time and there are clearly others who are doing it numerous times a day - in its most crude you see them lining up thousands at several prices on one side - they get their orders filled and then whoosh it all vanishes and they get their counter order matched.

So I would use WOM just as you would use any other indicator - as only part of the big picture and be very aware of how it is being manipulated and to what end as then you might be able to take advantage of someone else manipulation.

[James1st]

I was trading them, they weren't going in play. Months of experimentation have proved to me that trying to follow steamers is a big losing proposition. By the time a trend has become obvious it is already too late to get on.

Obviously not everyone can get on every steamer/drifter and certainly not for the whole ride but aside from scalping, trending markets are the most fun and the most profitable. You really would have to be asleep at the wheel not to "get on" when the opportunity occurs and just to illustrate the point, I logged todays movements in 22 races (I did skip a few due to time pressures).

Of the 22 races, 17 of them showed swings of worthwhile proportions, one of them yielding 33 ticks. I counted only races where there was a movement of 7 or more ticks and logged multiple movements in the same race.

20 ticks up and 18 ticks down
10/7
16
12
10/7
7/7
7/8
15/8
17
15
7/8
20
33
17/20
10
28
8/9/9

Thats a grand total of 353 ticks available, an average of 20 per race. How you cannot make a profit out of that I am at a loss to explain.

[Zenyatta]

Hi James,

It's only in retrospect that you can see what the real trends were. I have never done anything but lose, lose, lose trying to follow a trend... whenever I try to 'get on' an apparent trend sometimes the price suddenly retraces on me and these occasions are enough to wipe out all my profits.

I only win when I know in advance what the trend is going to be and get on before the price moves (and that only happens when I have form-based knowledge about a particular selection).

I'm just stating my particular experience.

[Euler]

It is possible to look forward and see possible swing trading markets. Today for example, will be tough for scalpers. But when you arrive on that market there is still a lot of work to be done.

[James1st]

Zenyatta, I fully appreciate that its not easy.

Unfortunately the nature of most money driven markets is that we can never predict the money flow, and hence the market direction. All we are able to do is to react to moves as and when they happen.

I am not a great believer in forecasting what might happen in any market, whether its based on pre race odds, news items, tips etc because in my experience there is usually counter-news, tips etc that can and do upset the apple cart. Of course gathering information about what might happen is useful but one can never rely on past data or rumours to pre-commit to a market direction; all we can do is to wait for what the market is telling us at any given fixed point in time.

If a market has been going down for the past 15hrs, it is just as likely to reverse as it is to continue its downward path. All we can say about pre market prices is that shorter odds usually lead to more volatility in the market (and hence more trending opportunities) but that statement tells us nothing about direction in advance.

The only strategies that successfully capture trends are those that "guess" a direction and stop out quickly if wrong, or those that await a pre specified number of ticks and then commit to that direction, again stopping out if wrong. The latter method offers at least a greater than 50% chance of being accurate. Trend trading really does mean large profits amongst a sea of small losses but it also implies a much looser degree of loss tolerance the further the trend continues.

The other obvious approach is to await the end of one trend, hoping for a reverse swing and Peter, I believe, favours this methodology. Of course not every race affords this second bite of the cherry (9 of the 17 races I mentioned in my previous post had a reversal of 7 or more ticks).

What remained unsaid in my previous post was that scalpers were confined to only 5 of the 22 races previously noted, where they could scalp with impunity. In the other 17, they ran the risk of being stopped out more than once in those races.

Swings and roundabouts, in the adult world, have no soft landings.

[Iron]

All we can do is to wait for what the market is telling us at any given fixed point in time.

I favour this approach too (whether we are talking about Betfair or the financial markets).

The market's perception of reality is the only reality that matters IMHO.

If a market has been going down for the past 15hrs, it is just as likely to reverse as it is to continue its downward path.

Trends are self-perpetuating, so I'd say it would be more likely to continue.

But I wouldn't enter a trend at any random point. I prefer the 'buy in the dips' approach, as otherwise you risk entering a market that's overbought or oversold.

BTW, if you're interested in trend following, you might be interested in the book Trend Following by Michael Covel. He backtests various trend following strategies using moving averages, and found that, despite a strike rate of just 30-40%, the strategies made a vast profit over a large number of trades.

Jeff

[Euler]

The difference on Betfair and financials is that a trend must end on Betfair. On the financials the market can remain irrational longer than anybody can remain solvent. Even national states by the look of it!

[andyfuller]

In its most crude you see them lining up thousands at several prices on one side - they get their orders filled and then whoosh it all vanishes and they get their counter order matched.

Perfect example in the first race today - the fav drifted from 1.52 to 1.58 WOM was about 75% on the lay side, in comes 5 figure amounts to back it on 4 or 5 prices all pretty much at once. Pushing the WOM to about 90% to Back, market panics and in it comes from 1.58 to 1.54 then the money all vanishes at once form the back side the WOM returns to 80% on the Lay side and the price drifts back out to 1.57 as can be seen on the image below and mr/mrs manipulator has walked off with a nice few quid.

It was pretty obvious what was happening and it will happen several times more today I am sure.

[andyfuller]

What remained unsaid in my previous post was that scalpers were confined to only 5 of the 22 races previously noted, where they could scalp with impunity. In the other 17, they ran the risk of being stopped out more than once in those races.

I wouldn't agree with that statement, you can be stopped out on every market as on every runner every race a price will move back and forth at least once. There must not have been a market ever where the price has moved on every runner constantly in one direction since its creation.

[Iron]

Perfect example [of market manipulation] in the first race today

Are there any signs that make you think 'this is bs' before the big money disappears?

Jeff

[andyfuller]

Are there any signs that make you think 'this is bs' before the big money disappears?

Yes:

the fav drifted from 1.52 to 1.58 WOM was about 75% on the lay side, in comes 5 figure amounts to back it on 4 or 5 prices all pretty much at once. Pushing the WOM to about 90% to Back

And I should have said the amounts were totally out of line with the rest of the market - why would all of a sudden a horse that has been drifting with 4 figure amounts all of a sudden attract 5 figure amounts to back all at one and at several prices?

Do you watch these horse racing markets Ferru123?

The day I win the lottery is the day this manipulator will learn an expensive lesson