Trading on the Exchanges

[krispy]

Hello everyone,

I am a newbie and this is my first post, so forgive me if this post is in the wrong place - if so perhaps you could re-direct me.

I am interested in pursuing a course of trading (horse races) on the betting exchanges, and saw a course advertised on www.nolinksplease.com for £500.00+. Has anybody had any experience of this course and could they say whether it is good value.

I realise that £500.00+ may not be a lot of money to some people, but it is to me. However, I am prepared to spend this much, if it is considered to be good value, but I don't want to part with that much without being reasonably confident that my money will be well spent, so any advice would be very gratefully received.

[Datapunter]

The Forum is fine but usually a first post like this, containing a website, is simply spam and is removed. All links posted require prior authorisation from the board owner Paul Ross. In this case i'll give you the benefit of the doubt .

So the subject and question is fine but without mentioning any specific sites.


Oops, almost forgot :

[Datapunter]

So to answer your question : more than 500 pounds to learn about trading on a betting exchange, being Betfair , let me see .....

ARE YOU COMPLETELY NUTS, BONKERS, CRAZY ?
STRUCK BY LIGHTNING ?
or as we say in Holland : VAN DE POT GERUKT ?
( note this represents my personal view only, others may disagree )

Or simply as you say a newbie, in that case GOOD QUESTION



I will tell you the basics of trading on the exchanges, right here,
May even do an afternoons trading with you,
All for free, how's that.

If you can make money with the basics, then you have all anyone can teach you. The rest is experiance and practice.

If you cannot make money with the basics, then there is nothing wrong with that, you just haven't got 'IT'. Plenty of other things to have fun with.

Deal ?

[krispy]

Thank you for your clear advice Datapunter. Sorry I unwittingly broke the rules on my first post. I will take care not to post any URLs or links again.

Thanks also for your offer of help. I have in fact played around with getting free bets by backing and laying the same horse, and I understand how you can lock in a profit, whichever horse wins, by backing for one amount and then laying for a different amount. But, it seems to me that the really big, important question is, before you start to bet, how do you tell which way the price of your chosen horse is going to move. Obviously this is vital in deciding whether to lay first or back first. If you read it wrong it could end up being very expensive. I presume the price/time graphs are useful to an extent, but they can suddenly change direction.

Any advice or tips on how to read the direction of the market would be very, very much appreciated.

Many thanks,

krispy

[Datapunter]

before you start to bet, how do you tell which way the price of your chosen horse is going to move

This is the question indeed, and here's the answer : you can't.

If you where able to tell how the price will move you would be able to predict the future. All you can do is make an educated guess. Then apply a predefined strategy to trade with, and take your chances.

First how do you make an educated guess ? Key word is educated. Basically many traders simply use the market information. The history of what the price has been doing and also what the volume of money has been doing. Price really means nothing if no offers are being matched. Its the combination of price and matched volume that tell a markets story. So yes, look at the graph and see what has been going on. Here i can help you no further i'm afraid, we'll need a true trader to come along for more in-depth info.

Second part of making an educated guess is where you actually have some knowledge about the market you are trading in. Not required, but very usefull. In case of horse racing for example something i look at is HYPE. If a horse is favourite and gets mentioned on key places in the press like Racing Post chances are extremely good that the price will drop. An opportunity for an early Back and later as the price comes in a Lay.

In the end, its still a gamble.

This is where the 'STOP-LOSS' thing comes in. At this point i should tell you i am not a trader by origin but have done some back-lay and lay-back trading. I consider myself as someone who does NOT have 'IT', mainly because i get bored with it and then i lose my discipline and then my money . Back to STOP-LOSS. This is a predifined point where, if the market goes against you, you take a loss and get out. And then simply move on to the next trading opportunity.

From what i've read on trading, documentation and peoples experiances, including my own, the STOP-LOSS aspect and the discipline that goes with it is ESSENTIAL for making it work. The whole trick is of course to get more profitable trades than stop-loss trades, but applying a STOP-LOSS is what will make you survive.

To come back to your original question. To make trading work you need a mindset suitable for the task, some people have it some don't. Assuming you have it then the most important thing to learn is to apply discipline to your chosen strategies. I fail to see how a course can teach you that. Practice and some guidance from other experianced traders is where the learning is, not a book you buy on the net.

[Reged]

Know exactly what you mean about the discipline point Datapunter. My problem is I get bored waiting for something, so get involved in a quick game of solitaire and ... bang, whatever I was waiting for has come and gone!

But from my experience of the exchange markets - 4 years off and on of trying to play the price movements - the big boys with their BOTs and so forth have it pretty much sewn up. It is an open secret, I am told by those in the business, that the biggest players on Betfair nowadays are the regular bookmakers, for all that they slag it off.

That's not to say it isn't a great deal of fun trying it for yourself. Just don't put your shirt on it.

[krispy]

Thanks for your advice Datapunter and Reged. I will keep in mind the points you raised

[ima.mugpunter]

krispy,

are you the same krisspy who asked the same question on the BF forum yesterday?

Bet Trading Manual - Anyone bought one?

[Mike]

To be able to trade you have to have to be 95% sure that the price will increase or decrease. There is a way of doing this and i will try to explain it to you.

The first rule is never start trading until 10mins to off. This is when all the action starts. This example is unfortunately not the best but it will go some way to showing you how to read the market.

The other thing you will need is an autorefresher as the market will move very quiclkly do not rely on Betfair's refresh.

Go here and download the betfair refresher.

Now onto the example we will choose Rangers.



Now to try and read the market you need to take into account what the layers (the back side) and the backers (the lay side) are asking for.

On the back side the layers are laying £2968 @ 1.59, £420 @ 1.60 and £302 @ 1.61.

On the lay side the backers are asking for £498 @ 1.62, £73 @ 1.63 and £770 @ 1.64

By this i would say that the price will drift as there is more money trying to be laid than there is trying to be backed.

My advice is don't buy a manual. Spend the next two weeks just watching the market on every race if possible. Watch what happens on the market. I will try and post an actual race from tomorrows racing. To show you what you can look out for.

A few things to look out for is spoof money. This is someone trying to manipulate the market by asking for vast sums of money then cancelling them making it look like the horse is being backd therefore making the price crumble.

Good luck. Please post back if you have any questions i will do me best

[Datapunter]

Fully agree with you mrjt,
especially about not buying a book but doing your own research.

One think i don't agree with is where you make a descision by looking only at the marketscreen,
( maybe if we go deeper into it we do agree , lets see ) :

By this i would say that the price will drift as there is more money trying to be laid than there is trying to be backed.

When you look at a market and there is more money available on the Lay side, does this mean :
A) the market will move with the money and drift out, price becomes bigger, simply because there is more demand for a higher price.
B) the market is moving in, price becomes smaller, because nobody is actually matching the high prices, so the matching drives the price down.
C) both A and B exist at the same time and the market is actually stable around the same price for a long time.

All 3 are possible and contradict each other to a point, well thats no help .

My point being that there is more to it than just whats on the market screen, and you need to include the information of volume that is actually being matched to come to a prediction of how things will evolve. I understand that on very fast moving markets like horse racing time is limited and descisions need to be made fast but still matched volume should be part of the process.

Note also this will likely be different for slow markets like, cricket or even football, than for very fast markets like indeed the 10 minutes before the off of a horse race.

I am able to make recordings of the price on betfair that show exactly how the price on a marked moved, this by recording the price/volume every minute for example. I'll see if i can post a graph for a race or 2 this weekend. Should be interesting.

[Reged]

Datapunter, might I ask what software you are using to extract the information from the exchanges? I've been looking at a few offerings on the market but they seem a tad pricey.

[DeepBlueDevilFish]

I think Datapunter may have written his own software. Have a look at the techy forum for excellent details about how to do this.

[Datapunter]

Aye, all my own work ,
i never intended my stuff to be used by other people so it would be too complicated and time consuming for me to give copies. ( i'd need to explain a lot )
If you want to have an idea of whats involved check my programming course in the Techy Forum. A program to make a recording of prices on a betfair market will take the 10 lessons from the course and then a fairly big bonus lesson about using timers. But if you enjoy the art of programming its well worth it.

I expect in the next 6 month you will be able to get some commercial software in this area for a reasonable price. Now that the Betfair API is up several companies are entering the Betfair trading tools market. Competition should bring down the prices. I even expect some free tools to pop-up .

[Datapunter]

I'll have a go at these 2 races,

Newbury 14:40 Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup Chase (Handicap) (Class A)
Newcastle 15:00 Pertemps "Fighting Fifth" Hurdle (Class A) Grade 1 (4yo+)

recording odds and volume overnight every 5 minutes,
20 minutes before the off i'll set the recording to 5 seconds and let it run to the end, so inluding in-running. Also will do Winner as well as Place markets.

Not 100% sure all will work, i've had to make some adjustments because of the new site setup, so don't hold me to it

[Datapunter]

Here we go :

Newbury 14:40 Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup Chase (Handicap) (Class A)
Win market, overnight every 5 min.
Win market, from 20 min before OFF, every 10 sec. (includes in-running)
Place market, overnight every 5 min.
Place market, from 20 min before OFF, every 10 sec.

Newcastle 15:00 Pertemps "Fighting Fifth" Hurdle (Class A) Grade 1 (4yo+)
Win market, overnight every 5 min.
Win market, from 20 min before OFF, every 10 sec. (includes in-running)
Place market, overnight every 5 min.
Place market, from 20 min before OFF, every 10 sec.

Right click on a file and use Save As to save the file to your PC.
Then use Excell to open the file and once in Exell you can make graphics.
A few things you need to know :
- you may need to change all the DOT characters into a COMMA depending on your International settings of Excell.
- the time is in CET so substract 1 hour for UK time,
- the columns are exactly as you see them on the market betting screen, so the available Odds and Price to BACK is in the 5th and 6th column for each horse, the LAY price and odds is in the 7th and 8th column.
- the money volume is in english pounds ( i think )
- REMEMBER the money volume you see is what was AVAILABLE, it is not what was actually matched.

I'm afraid not a lot happened in these markets, bit boring, anyhow, have a look and i'm open for requests next weekend. I think i will do a few with a fast setting, 10 sec. seems a bit too far apart.

Here's one i did earlier,

Newcastle 15:00 Pertemps "Fighting Fifth" Hurdle (Class A) Grade 1
Win market, from 20 min before OFF, every 10 sec.
the down spike is where the market went in-running