Firedave trading Betfair with Bet Angel

It's been a few days since I've last posted, and I wanted to let everyone know that things are still going well! I was often getting to the end of the day pretty exhausted and not wanting to see the computer for a little while and started to chill out for the evening. This meant I missed out on posting to the world and receiving your comments. Thank you to everyone who emailed me asking what had happened though, as I don't want to lose the committed followers I have.  This image is the best trading situation I've managed to put myself in. It shows every outcome greened up to £9.70.  I mainly wanted to post this as a target to beat and remind me that I can achieve good results if I set my mind on it.

Another project I have been working on is a software application to provide additional charting.  This was to show traditional trading indicators, oscillators and such on the real time data feed from BetFair. This showed some really interesting trends and patterns emerging.  I was wondering what the interest would be for me to share the application to other traders. I have set up a poll on the right hand side of the blog for you to give me some feedback as to whether I should polish the application off and make available. Any more detailed comments you would like to leave please leave them on this post as a comment.  I know there are a few applications out there that let you show additional charting however, most of them require extra software to use and not just your BetFair login. Any comments are more than welcome.

With the flat season under way now there are a lot more sprints, and a lot less favourites being turned over. Or are there? Today some very short favourites were beaten by miles (figuratively speaking)
From a trading angle, the markets are still quite sporadic, but I managed to make a small profit. Confidence is slowly growing, hopefully the bank will follow suit!

I enjoy watching the masters, and this year was no exception. If you managed to watch the final day's play as well you had a real treat. Hole's in one, plenty of eagles, and a near albatross were the order of the day.  I was really rooting for Lee Westwood to bring the green jacket back to England but it wasn't to be. Phil Mickelson was playing some remarkable golf. He definitely deserved the win.  I'm glad the level of golf was so high, to take away from what would've been a masters talked about just for Tiger Woods. After 5 months out, I was wondering why it hadn't affected his golf. His final day showed more signs of it, and he missed a couple of, easy for him, putts. Despite this, he still ended in fourth which just shows what a class player he is.

Trading today was good, despite making a mistake and not greening up a loss. This meant that naturally it went on to win and took the full loss. However, I had still made more on the day and ended positive.  

BetFair is pretty close to being an efficient market however, it is not totally efficient. There is always an element of error due to the ever changing opinions and money going through the markets. The most efficient time is the start of the race as all money to either back or lay has been matched at this point. This doesn't make it the best time to trade though, the market can change violently just before the start.  This is because traders are trying to get out of their positions in the last few seconds before the off and any trend that may have formed will be disrupted. This is another reason to make sure you are out of the markets at this point and not to let it go in-play.

The book overound is a piece of information we get from BetFair and will vary according to the number of runners. What value will my "efficient market" be? Well, each runner should produce 0.1% error/margin/profit so you should expect a book as follows:

12 runners = 100% + (12 x 0.01%) = 101.2%

4 runners  = 100% + (4 x 0.01%)   = 100.4%

When the book is moving towards 100% then something is going to have to shorten in price to push the book back towards efficiency and likewise if it is moving towards the upper limit something will have to drift to pull it back into line.

The move to correct the book usually revolves around the favourite as that is where most of the money is. A collective drift or steam on multiple runners can have the same effect but if you watch the favourite's price you won't go wrong too often.  This isn't a piece of information you can use on its own but does help give some confirmation when making a decision to enter, or exit a trade.  This is a good indicator when there is only one clear favourite in a race. When there are multiple favourites, it is unclear which runner will move to correct the book.

Hey traders! It's my birthday! Good times, though it does mean I'm edging ever closer to 30 :-S

So Aintree started today - much more volume in the markets, with £2 million matched on the first race! The extra liquid in the Aintree markets meant that the other markets were far more volatile, which caught me out early on. After this reminder, I made good progress and ended up with £20 of profit at the end of the day. Typical of trading, I did manage to lose £98 overall, but fortunately my total gain reached £118 so positive experience on final review!

How did you do today then?
No real reason for the picture other than it amused me. The markets were a little crazy today and it felt that it was being manipulated quite a bit.  I had some very good positions only to see the market turn with a couple of large orders and then it never really settled again afterwards. I had a lucky market today where I made £5, but another unlucky where I lost the same so on balance the day was average. Another positive day overall, which is the current target at the moment.

With Aintree festival starting tomorrow, we could see the markets being a bit more readable. Then the grand national is on Saturday.  A pretty difficult market from all accounts. At the moment it looks as though anyone could win it.

Hopefully many eggs were consumed over Easter - they certainly were here.  I did a lot of event watching rather than trading over the weekend. Some football, rowing (The Facebook millionaires will have to stick to that), Grand Prix (with all the fast cars at the back of the grid) and a bank holiday packed race card for horse racing.  The problem with so many events, is that they tend to overlap and it only takes one of them to be delayed to put the whole day into a bit of shambles from a trading perspective. This meant that I had a good catch up with family and friends and left worrying about an income until today!

Trading today was pretty good. Very nearly, very good.  I had one race go very against me but being disciplined I cut the trade out. The other races all made up for this loss and the day was profitable overall. Without the large loss from the one earlier on it would have been even better. I am slowly but surely learning the lesson that you can't win them all and that taking a loss in the short term will make greater returns in the long run.  Lets see if I can keep it up for the rest of the week.

The new month hasn't brought that many opportunities unfortunately. Another racecourse was abandoned today and the weather has meant that a lot of the punters may be staying away. I'm still using my reduced stakes and I have regained a lot of confidence. This was helped by making sure I haven't been going in play. Today I took a £2 loss instead of going in-play. This was immediately rewarded with the next race where I made £4. No other negatives on the P&L today so happy overall. There is no UK racing tomorrow, and bank holidays are notoriously busy to try and trade, so I won't be trading horses until Tuesday. I may try and get something out of the grand prix or have a look at some of the football over the weekend.  Have a good Easter!