Nobody wants the trend at the end…

As you will have heard all over the internet “trend is your friend, until the end” But when’s the end?

Situation: As you’re watching a pre-race market unfold, BAM! a tidal wave of money enters the market. To make matters worse, it’s just where you anticipated a trend developing…

What do you do?

• Dive in clicking like a maniac to get an order matched?
• Take whatever price is available?
• Sit and watch the price drift off in the direction anticipated without a single bet matched?

As much as you may want to do the first two, it’s a no-no. But the third point isn’t going to be ideal either!

Trends form every single day in the markets. Some move a little, others a lot.

Predicting a move isn’t all that difficult. Predicting how far it will go can be a whole new problem though…

So what’s the best course of action?

Like many things in life you can only control you’re own interaction. You can’t control the market, trading like you can will leave you with no money very quickly.

By being able to choose when you place an order is a massive advantage. I often think of it like participating in a boxing match where you have the opportunity to stand ring side until your opponent is tired, that’s when you step in to land the killer blow! (or trade as it is for us).

Trends…

Very rarely does a trend go in just one direction. Obviously they do for limited periods of time, but they always bounce back and forth on route. This alone provides an opportunity, that’s when we’re going to step in and issue the killer punch.

Have a look at the image below:

You can see there was a small flurry of money backing the favourite Marjus Quest (bottom graph & market overview chart). This was the green light to get involved, for various other reasons it was anticipated to shorten in price.

However, diving on as soon as this happened would have meant we only got a price of 2.68 or there about. A little patience allowed the market to do its thing and revert back to 2.76.

Suspecting another flurry was about to occur, with the trend getting off to a start two bets were placed at 2.74 (see matched bets on left). One is more or less immediately taken out at 2.7, Why?

It’s a confidence thing, I’ve always been keen to do it… by doing this it allows me to see thing with a little more clarity, purely because the profit v’s loss crossover point is now further away from the active price! (2.76/2.78).

When you compare that to the 2.68 position we could have taken if we dived in initially it’s given us an extra 5 ticks, and piece of mind. The latter being far more important!

How did the rest of the move work out?….

If you look to the matched bets box. You’ll see I’m only human too. With support coming for the second runner I bailed a bit early, before the move carried on.

Would you have felt like you missed out because of that?

As frustrating as it can be, it’s really not worth it. Taking a positive from the fact you done the right thing is far more important in my experience.

One market and a few ticks is pretty short-term, confidence and application in the market is far longer!

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