The Sports Trader

Friday 19th September 2008

This was a very quite day or trading for the Sports Trader. I only traded on 11 horse races and 1 golf tournament.

My first 8 race trades resulted in 7 small profits and 1 small loss. Then in the 17:20 at Listowel I backed Baltiman for £943 @ 1.11, when well clear and approaching the final fence, to result in a profit of £104. I followed this with another small winning trade and then my final trade came in the 20:20 at Wolverhampton where I laid Girl of Pangaea for £78 @ 15.5, when coming under pressure with no response, about 2 furlongs from the finish  to give me a profit of £78.

So my race trading had finished with a profit of £194.

Late in the evening I watched the Ryder Cup and had a very small trade on the Mickelson/Kim v Harrington/McDowell game where I finished with a profit of £6.

So I had finished this day with a profit of £200.

Thursday 18th September 2008

It was a much better day for The Sports Trader. I traded 10 horse races, 1 football match and 1 snooker game, but I had no child care again as our au-pair was off ill.

I started the day with a couple of small winning trades at Listowel and Ayr. My first significant trade was in the 14:25 at Listowel where I backed Holly Trade for £888 @ 1.08 to return a profit of £72. After a break when picking the children up from school I laid Kahuna for £25 @ 25.0 in the 15:55 at Listowel to result in a profit of £25. I followed this with a small winning trade.

My next trade was in the 16:30 at Pontefract where I laid Tribe for £39 @ 20 to give me a profit of £39. I followed this with 4 more small winning trades.

My race trading had finished with a profit of £158.

As soon as the racing had finished I turned my attention to the Tottenham v Wisla Krakow football match. The match was well into the second half and I backed the under 2.5 goals for £98 @ 2.30 and a further £57 @ 2.21. I had just entered some lays on The Daq when the third goal was scored, which left me with a loss of £155,  so I was on a recovery mission using the under 3.5 goals market where I backed the unders for £320 @ 1.60 and laid off between 1.36 and 1.04 which left me with a profit of £150 on the under 3.5 goals market. So my football trading had resulted in a loss of £5.

In the late evening I watched the Premier League snooker match between Ronnie O Sullivan and Joe Perry. Joe had got into a 2 frame lead when I backed him for £374 @ 1.42 and laid off @ 1.32. With Ronnie clawing his way back to 3 -2 down and looking good to secure a draw there were some very tasty prices on offer and it made for a great match to trade. I later backed Perry for £400 @ 2.25 and £242 @ 2.00 before laying this off @ 1.4 to 1.54. then with Perry taking the match ball I backed him again for £500 @ 1.41 to leave myself with a profit of £630 on the match. A great and very satisfying result, it is always good to trade in matches with Ronnie being behind as most people think he will make yet another great escape.

My day had therefore finished with a profit of £782.

 

Wednesday 17th September 2008

The Sports Trader had a bad day today and it was caused through a momentary lack of concentration, will I ever learn. I only traded on 5 horse races. One small loss, three small gains and one big loss.

The loss came as I was trading on the 14:35 at Beverley. My son Oliver had come to see me for a while and we were deep in conversation about family matters when I saw the chance of backing what I thought was Spiritofthewest so I duly clicked the mouse and backed for £555 @ 1.35, when in fact I had got the colours wrong and had backed the favourite, Kingship Spirit. An easy way to lose £555. It was, of course, totally my own fault I should have been concentrating 100% which is imperative when trading in-running horse races. I should say another lesson learnt but in reality this type of thing is bound to happen on occasions.

Later in the day I traded the match result on the Celtic v AaB football match. I only caught the last 10 minutes of the match but I did manage to back the draw for £882 @ 1.45 and then proceeded to lay off at prices ranging from 1.39 down to 1.22 to leave me with a profit of £163.

My day had ended with a loss of £390.

Tuesday 16th September 2008

It has been another very short trading day for the Sports Trader due to visitors, the school run and then more visitors.

I only traded 4 horse races with 3 resulting in small profits. The best trade of the day was in the 15:50 at Lingfield where I managed to back Cool Art for £941 @ 1.50, well inside the final furlong, to result in a profit in the race of £470.

I missed all the evening football trading, again due to visitors, so I ended the day with a profit of £476.

Earlier today one of my readers, Carolyn,  left a comment which included a very good youtube clip, relating to the new Premium Charges over at Betfair Towers, it's well worth a look.

Monday 15th September 2008

As Bob Geldolf once sang, I don't like Monday's. This is the most difficult day for me to trade as I now have no child care on Monday's. We have also recently moved house but the children all go to the same school as before so I have to leave home at 2:55 to pick them up and by the time I get back it is around 3:35 and this is all five week day's. I also interviewed a young Brazilian lady for my new live-in Au-pair job. Once the Au-pair is in place I will have cover most days and will not have to miss an important time of the day for trading on horse races.

I therefore only managed to trade on 4 horse races, which, after a loss of £40 on my first trade left me with a profit of £10.

In the evening I traded in the last 10 minutes of the Spurs v Aston Villa football match which resulted in a profit of £44.

My day had finished with a profit of £54.

Another good piece of news filtering out of Betdaq today is that their Exchange Forum should be up and running within the next few days.

I Predict a U-Turn on the Betfair Premium Charges

This is probably the biggest story about Betting Exchanges since their inception 8 years ago. I do have to sympathise with the 0.5% (who do they think they are kidding) of Betfair customers that are to be hit with retrospective charges on the profits they have earned over the past 60 weeks.

Of course Betfair will either water down or drop these outrageous charges over the next few days. The accountants may well have a say but to let them ruin what has been a brilliant business with an act of total greed would be sheer folly.

It is great to see so many new people jumping aboard the Betdaq Exchange. I have often spoken about the need for realistic competition in these markets and now we are going to see it. Liquidity has been improving over the past few months but is now set to reach levels that no amount of advertising by the Board of Directors at Betdaq would have been able to attain.

Betdaq will give, to anybody opening a new account, a fixed 2% commission until the end of this year. From January you will then enjoy the much fairer commission scale of between 2 and 5% depending on your level of turnover. There will be no Premium Charges.

The whole ethos of a Betting Exchange is to provide a piece of software and technology that allows people to match wagers with each other, in the same way as the Stock Market allows individuals, traders and companies to match share sales and purchases. 

It is accepted practise that the bigger the trade and the higher the turnover the lower the commission rate should be. This is essentially because the exchange platform is there right from the start but as the exchange grows you get greater efficiency due to economies of scale. It is therefore quite right that the more liquidity you provide the lower you should be charged.

To alienate many of the longer term traders, by penalising them for being good at their job,  is surely flying in the face of the whole principle of Betting Exchanges.

On Betfairs own forum tonight there has been a thread by, CLYDEBANK29, that highlights the case where he may well now be paying four times as much commission on a wager struck under the old terms and conditions. Some relevant parts of the said T&C's have also been pasted on to the thread with the most relevant part being: Any bets matched prior to the time of amendment and notification of the changed terms and conditions will be subject to the pre-existing Terms and Conditions.

It would be interesting to hear the views of Warren Buffet or George Soros if their preferred Stock Market was to say to them ' Thank you for your business over the past 60 weeks, but we have decided to charge you between 4 and 10 times the amount of commission that we have already charged you as a Premium Charge because your account costs us more to operate than our smaller customers accounts'.

 

Alive and Kicking

The Sports Trader is back and I intend, once again, to give a short summary of my days trading and promote a little discussion on anything that is connected to Sports Trading.

I thank all the loyal readers that have kept in touch over the past 9 months since my last blog entry.

I have continued trading on Betdaq throughout this period of silence and have seen steady profits. I started the year off very slowly due to my problems that I have written about earlier within my blog. These profits have been steadily growing over the past few months. My trading style has changed and you will see that I conduct fewer trades / day.

If any reader would like to discuss a particular subject please just add a comment on my blog and I will try to include your suggestions over the coming days.