Recent Trading: False Signals? | A Personal Gripe

It’s been a while since I added a personal update. So after this week’s events, I think it’s in order…

I’ll be talking about a couple of weekend trades, false signals pre-race traders should be aware of and a wave of reports from followers.

False Trading Indicators?

I’ll start with false trading signals as it sets us up nicely to talk about a couple of big market movers from this weekend.

First; this isn’t anything particularly new. It’s always happened, although it seems to be getting worse. Why? I’m not entirely sure. Possibly it’s something to do with bookmaker data and how they express odds on their respective websites.

Here’s the issue: As many of you will know, pre-race pundits will occasionally make comments about market movement on the lead-in to a race. Depending on who it is and how strong the comment, it can lead to a flurry of market activity (short-term).

Now, that’s great, but I’ve noticed that more and more there will be comments like “the favourite has gone a real steam here”. But in fact, when you look at the exchange marketplace – it hasn’t. Worse still, another horse in the same race has steamed into 3/1 from 6/1 with very substantial amounts of volume backing it.

This isn’t a complaint against pundits though, I don’t think they realise. They are simply looking at odds on the likes of Ladbrokes or something.

It’s like a micro-version of the points raised in this recent YouTube upload below. To new traders, it can appear quite misleading…

Understanding Exchange Movement:

As you may now realise after that video, following sportsbook odds is a bit of a dead-end. The real market information is right under our nose, on the Exchanges.

A quick word of warning though!

Over the last week or so we’ve had a growing number of followers complain about Betfair suspending accounts on ‘business grounds’. If you haven’t seen the last blog post, check out the previous link as it could help you get your account re-instated, or at at least avoid being flagged.

Prevention is often better than cure, so taking a few seconds to understand where you could be affected is wise.

Now for the good stuff…

The Weekend’s Morning Trades:

Following on from this week’s YouTube topic, I thought I’d record a couple of morning trades. For video pack course users they will be available later in the week under the morning trades module.

Saturday mornings are usually best for morning to afternoon price activity due to the increased liquidity, as seen below.

Having more money in the marketplace earlier on reduces risk.

New traders often forget that there isn’t the opportunity to endlessly scale-up stakes, because when it comes to exiting a position, a lack of unmatched money means you are at increased risk of chasing away your profit, in order to close out.

For example: look at the image above. The lay position is just £150, this means I would have been able to exit the trade at almost any of the following 4 prices if needed. However, if the position was open on the fourth column to the right at a price of 8.6, it would have taken all the money down to 8.0/8.2 in order to exit.

The Trades:

Here are the charts for each of the recorded trades. Entry points marked in blue.

The second trade I lost a little faith in at 2.62, scaling out a portion of the stake (entry 2.28). Race clashes and overlaps never help smooth market movement.

The first was a little more straightforward, a no-brainer so to speak. On reflection, I was a little keen to enter the market because of this and could have got a slightly better entry (2.56). The Betfair chart doesn’t do it justice, flying out past 3 in the final minutes.

Video course users: don’t forget to check back and see them later in the week!

All Traders Must Read: Betfair Suspended My Account (What to Do)