Firedave trading Betfair with Bet Angel

Documenting my experiences with Bet Angel using BetFair. This will be used to record my progress as I take trading on full time.

Bet Angel - The most effective tool for Betfair
Mar 17, 2010

Cheltenham

The festival is in full swing and it is totally awe inspiring seeing how much money is traded on these races. Before it was a good race if £700k is matched by the end of the race. The first race of the festival had £8 million! It is still good to see that the races vary even with the higher levels of liquidity.  Some stuck to their trending patterns and took a while to get matched but you knew the price wasn't going to shoot off.  Others the price fluctuated much quicker but again you knew that the true punting money was making sure the price didn't go too far.  Both of these extremes were much easier to read and I managed to get money through the markets but with reduced stakes whilst I get used to the feel.

I got to the bottom of my difficulties I was having, and in essence I was right with my previous post. The underlying issue, which is obvious when thinking about it, was to have greened up at the current price it would've exceeded my total bank as liability. Therefore, if the runner did manage to get over the line first I wouldn't have had sufficient funds in my account for Betfair to have settled.  To regain some composure and think things through I have reduced my stakes again.  This will give me a solid base to try out differing tactics and really work on closing bad positions and changing between speculative and aggressive styles. Today I used just £2 stakes, right back to basics. I managed to get these through the market more than ever before and had a positive day.  Nothing like the losses I have incurred, but a 2% increase with those stakes.

I was asked the other day whether an increase in stakes would result in bigger P&L. This is a multi answer question, but based on my particular progress to date, is that the bank must be sufficiently large to allow for the bigger stakes.  The positive here, is that I am readdressing the basics to help with an increase in stakes.

3 comments:

D.Halliday said...

Good to hear things are going positive and you are maintaining composure. See you tomorrow for a quick bit of pub.

lammy said...

good to see you're getting back into it!

Clarence said...

I won't be making it to the pub today since I am working from home. Good to see that you are back - was wondering what was up when you didn't post on the 16th.