Hello all

[odiwbg]

Hello everyone. New member here. Messed around with the trial a couple of weeks ago and now upgraded to the full version, now the fun starts Im completely new to trading and trying to absorb as much info as i can via this forum and youtube videos ive recently found. I have deposited £200 onto betfair and will likely be doing min bets whilst getting my feet wet and learning.

Im a big football fan and i think i will look to trade/automate a strategy there, Esp when the EPL season starts up. Thats the plan anyway.

In the meantime ive been "trying" to trade on the UK horse markets via the ladder interface, again just small £2 min bets looking to grab a tick or 2 and gain a couple of pennys. Im down a pound or two which i guess is expected as a beginner. I seem to be getting my entry points wrong as more often then not it seems it bounces or changes direction as soon as my £2 is matched. (my huge bets swing the market lol) Maybe im focusing too much on 1 or 2 fav horses and not paying attention to the other close runners that could make a price drift slightly if they nose dive in. My timing could be off as i seem to get in the middle of spoof money or a huge bet/lay will come in and work against me once my 1st bet is matched. or quite simply im doing it wrong.

Ive watched videos where people back at 6.0 for example and then lay 60secs later at 4.0 for a nice profit. I seem to struggle to get a tick at best, usually its a few pence loss. They are obviously more experienced and reading the market alot better then me so i have alot to learn/improve on in order to predict these movements better

Im trying different graph set ups, settings etc to try to read the data and signs better within the market. Hopefully it will come with time and practice. Its still overwhelming currently and confidence obviously isnt there and im sure that plays a huge part in trading.

Maybe i should post a short video of me butchering up trades to get some feedback, tips and advice.

Anyway i think this intro post has prob gone on too long so i will end it here. Hopefully ill be here for a while and improve along the way and can look back at this thread and laugh

[Seymour]

Hi Odiwbg,

Welcome! May I suggest you use practice mode and spend your time just watching markets in order to learn the ropes. There is plenty you need to read here, so enjoy yourself and good luck.

[L.o.S]

It sounds like you've started the way I did: opening every market and trying to scalp single ticks at a time, regardless of time before the event/type of race etc.

I am by no means a fully fledged trader yet (you can read my dire experiences on Wednesday on the 'Today's Racing' thread)!

But realizing that I would just continue to lose more than I could gain by adopting that one size fits all approach was a big leap forward. It works on some markets (few in my experience), but on most there's a better chance of success if you try and read the trend of the market and swing trade.

There's a great blog full of advice at http://www.quiteamug.co.uk and Peter's blog is full of dynamite information!

Best of luck, and see you around!

[GMBing]

At the risk of being shot down in flames by others may I advise that simple mathmatics dictates that what I call short trading or scalping is doomed to failure - If you enter for a two tick win with a two tick stop then you are starting from a 20% negitive position as you are always one tink in negitive. To save you months of learning that we all went through think about longer term trends and don't lose sight of that strange old world of picking more winners or lossers than there implied probobilaty

Regards

G

[freddy]

Plenty of people make money from scalping and short term trends, so what you sat is not quite true.

You seem to be leaving a traders skill out of your equation,

It all depends how many times the trader wins two ticks against how many time he loses two ticks, nothing else really matters.

If you were trading at random then what you said may be true, but a good trader should be better than this.

[GMBing]

Hi

I already said that not all would agree but I still believe that pure Maths is the greatest guide to success in the markets
And short trading and scalping is the biggest breach of the most basis laws of mathmatics barr backing horses in a 130% book - To those who think they are having some success may I offer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... _3CsKoXwfA



Regards

G

[henryluca]

Agreed GMB...unless these "traders" have spend thousands of dollars in ink printing graphs and patterns they may as well throw a dart and hope it hits something that will swing to their benefit.

[Euler]

I already said that not all would agree but I still believe that pure Maths is the greatest guide to success in the markets
And short trading and scalping is the biggest breach of the most basis laws of mathmatics barr backing horses in a 130% book - To those who think they are having some success may I offer

I was invited to talk to the maths society at Exeter university who wrote to me to 'prove' the markets were random and therefore couldn't be traded to a profit.

After a two hour lecture they were all asking how they could sign up to Betfair!

[LeTiss]

[quote="Euler
I was invited to talk to the maths society at Exeter university who wrote to me to 'prove' the markets were random and therefore couldn't be traded to a profit.

After a two hour lecture they were all asking how they could sign up to Betfair![/quote]

Nice work mate, I didn't realise you gave talks of that nature

[kelpie]

Euler - very impressive.

Yes, whoever said that scalping was ultimately unprofitable missed the point. Not that I trade scalping purely but really, when you boil it down, the history of capitalism is just scalping.

Colman's mustard, US rail barons, JP Morgan and banking... all worked out how to scalp markets for profit.

[GMBing]

Hi again

In accepting that the markets are not completely random and can be traded for success I would need many two hour lectures to be convinced that scalping while starting from a large negative position could bring long term gains. Bearing in mind that any selection is locked in a dynamic market of around 102% back 98% lay any judgement to scalp a selection would have to be based on a vast market analysis criteria. And I would go as far as to suggest that a flux of 1% (3 ticks) is completely random on any selection at any time.

I offer the work of the great French mathematician Sir Francis Galton with longer term trends and collective wisdom as a better guide to newbies investigating and searching for success in the markets.

“In 1906, the great statistician Francis Galton observed a competition to guess the weight of an ox at a country fair. Eight hundred people entered. Galton, being the kind of man he was, ran statistical tests on the numbers. He discovered that the average guess (1,197lb) was extremely close to the actual weight (1,198lb) of the ox. “

PS. I wish I been at your lecture – You would have either hated me or spent the next week in the SU bar discussing calculus and probability theory.

Regards
G

[Euler]

It's funny but it's the academics that have the hardest problem trading, because they just can't see things that others can. They are seeking a firm, perfect, model and miss some of the most obvious things in the market. I've worked with a number of PhD's to solve specific problems that I couldn't' solve or didn't have the time to get that involved in, but almost all of them don't bother trading or doing anything in the markets as they don't believe it's possible. Which I find absolutely fascinating.

I'm not an academic or PhD but I do know enough to create quite complex models and know the market inside out from the next 100ms to many hours away. But more importantly I can pull the trigger and on a big scale. So I think too much of either, especially without the other, is a dangerous thing. I feel I've got just about the right mix of both.

I think you are overlooking a few things on the scalping. It was one of the first things I did and I still do it today, but some other strategies have a better payoff so I tend to dip in and out of scalping.

My mantra, for every market there is a strategy and every strategy a market.

[L.o.S]

At the risk of being shot down in flames by others may I advise that simple mathmatics dictates that what I call short trading or scalping is doomed to failure - If you enter for a two tick win with a two tick stop then you are starting from a 20% negitive position as you are always one tink in negitive. To save you months of learning that we all went through think about longer term trends and don't lose sight of that strange old world of picking more winners or lossers than there implied probobilaty

Regards

G

Surely you only start 1 tick in the negative if you take a price? If you offer a price rather than take, you have a much better chance of scalping, the market doesn't even need to move and you can scratch more easily

[LinusP]

I agree but if you offer a price and get taken, then surely the chances of the market going against you increase.

[L.o.S]

Wouldn't say so, the chances of the market going either way would stay the same. If there's still £100's behind you you've got that buffer zone. It'll still go against you sometimes but this way you can scratch much more often and also get more profitable trades. If you take a price it's doomed!