Matched betting vs Trading

@Dave_Jones I totally get that last saying. It’s absolutely the reason I found scalping difficult. I was basically swing trader working in reverse lol. I’m happy with not losing much right now. Still doing the bookie offers as and when i can to build the bank a little bit.

Tony,
Steve Howe has a youtube channel ‘MGEducational’, he has plenty of good videos of him trading pre off horses( using a mac, as it happens)

@Starlord – cheers, I checked out those blogs last night – more interesting reading. I will be sure to watch Steve Howe’s YouTube vids too, thanks. Do you trade during the day, or only after the working day? Seems that the evening racing has less liquidity, I just wondered whether you had noticed whether it was ‘harder’ or not? I would imagine Saturdays offer the most liquidity and opportunity.

@Dave_Jones – I think using the software in practice mode for a few weeks is a good idea, provided it is realistic of “real money” trading in terms of interface and usability.

I’d also be interested to know if the trading seminars are worth the money, or whether they are aimed more at total beginners.

Well done ss1412, I think getting to break even in any form of trading is a major hurdle to have over come. If you cut out a few more errors you will probably find you become a winning trader. I have a lot more pounds I want to take out of the match betting environment before I seriously consider turning to trading. I will however start watching some of the BA videos on you tube.

Dave have a go at trading in practice mode on bet angel. You will gain a better feel if you are actually in the market.
You are correct in that the people selling courses are not including everything in the free videos.
I’ve booked and paid for bet angels horse racing course on the 7th of October. I thought it would be a good idea to use some of my matched betting profits to see how far one can go with trading .
A few years back I got accepted on a online poker staking group and found talking to people with the same interests helped me understand the game at a much quicker rate. Unfortunately people who trade and post on forums do not like giving out what the have learnt. Where poker players are much more friendly at sharing information.
I let you know my thoughts on the course once I ‘ve completed,but keep posting about you own findings as the more of us that do the faster we can find out if trading is worth the effort to learn.

It would be good to hear how you get on with the BA course in October ss1412. I have done well out of matched betting since I started beginning of this year and so paying for a course or two would not be an issue.

I’ve been reading the BA forums and have found that many people that do their courses carry on loosing for some time often over a year or more. The BA owner himself has posted that he often sees students doing the entirely opposite thing to what they have recently been taught. So my guess would be once one learns some basic entry and exit techniques, trying to stick to those rules is the real difficult part.

It would be good to know if anyone can learn to trade, or do you actually need a particular mindset to succeed long term. Its unlikely anyone selling trading materials is going to answer that question honestly, after all if they told you, you had a less than 5% chance of being successful would you take their course or buy their videos.

From what I have read the consensus appears that less than 5% of betfair-traders make money. I doubt if the successful ones are only the ones that have bought the courses and books etc. In fact I have heard that most of the full time pros haven’t done any courses but worked things out for themselves (I certainly don’t think I could do that). So perhaps the 5% don’t really know that much more than the losing 95% but what they do have is the right mindset and discipline to be successful at this.

I don’t know if its possible to learn the right way to think when trading, I taught myself to become a winning poker player years ago, but that was when the player pool was full of fish. I suspect trying to become good at trading would be a much harder thing to do.

I have also read that many of the current sports trading course students are ex match bettors who have been gubbed and restricted by most bookies and are now looking to use some of their match betting profits to learn to trade . I would imagine the successful 5% on BF must be licking their lips at the prospect of getting our money lol.

Have you watched any of Steve Howes vids, he comes across as a down to earth guy and his presentation and style is fairly basic which is what I like. Slick vids and presentations always get me thinking, does this person actually trade or is he a trading course sales man.

If I ever do take a course I would probably take Steves one, and I also think its cheaper than most of the others, but probably not as flashy. He used to post on the BA forum under the name mugsgame, don’t think he posts there anymore. Probably because he now poses a bit of competition to BA for wannabe traders money. If you get a chance check out some of his older posts, comes across as a guy that knows what he is talking about and also mentions that if he had his time again he would not have packed in his job to trade full time but would have traded part time instead. Not because of the money but because of other factors.

Excellent post Foggy, from what I have seen, some of these traders know a great deal about horse racing, that Steve Howe I mentioned has probably forgotten more than most of us will ever know about the sport. He watches around 8000 horse races a year (isn’t that an awful prospect think I would be slashing my wrists after the first 10000).

Other traders however admit to knowing virtually nothing about horse racing, they don’t know anything about the horses, the trainers the riders they just work via the movement of the numbers on the screen (I don’t really understand how they do this).

It can apparently be a disadvantage if you come into trading knowing a great dead about horse racing. The thinking here is that if you are on a horse you are expecting to come in due to your racing knowledge and instead its drifting. You will be reluctant to give up your position for a loss, because you (know) its going to come in.

If however you were on that horse because you had some kind of signal provided by your trading software, (I don’t know what this might be), but the trade was now moving in the wrong direction. You would come out of it for a small loss, because you did not know the horse and you did not (know) that it should be coming in.

Thanks for the info beaser, it will be good to hear what you think of the Caan Berry videos. I have watched some of his youtube stuff and he seems like he knows what he is doing. I wouldn’t be surprised however (and there is nothing wrong with this) if he makes far more money from selling learning materials and click throughs and referals to geeks toy etc. than he does from trading. He runs a very slick marketing site doesn’t he.

It would be informative to know just how many people watch all of the videos in his video pack, I would not be surprised if you are in the majority beaser of not viewing them all.

From what I have read the consensus seems to be that it takes the few that become successful at least a year to stop loosing money. Most people will of course have stopped trading long before they get to the end of that year. Some people don’t get there for many years (doubt if I could keep at it if I was loosing money for years on end), and some people trade for years and never make it.

The odd gifted one seems to get it (what ever it is) in a few weeks, I imagine we all hope we would be one of those but chances are we are not.

I agree with you that it takes a lot of time and effort to get there and that this is extremely difficult if you have a full time and demanding job. Having said that, a lot of people make decent money trading part time in the evenings and weekends. Knowing that you still have a wage coming in every month and hence don’t have to rely on trading to pay the bills must make it far less stressful. I hope you find the time to give it a go and feedback to the site your findings. Good luck for the future.

Dave Jones. I am interested in that you traded stocks before. I am not sure how successful you were.

But did you (or the ppl that you knew that were successful) just follow the stock exchange numbers without knowing the value of the stock you were buying/selling. I would imagine you would have to have your ears opened and follow the business news and rumours, understand how different economic events can impact on different kind of stocks. So that it is not just about spotting a trend and jumping on it, its not about just buying low and hoping the price increases.

I think it would be the same with horses – surely you have to understand the true value of what you are buying/selling whether it be horses or stocks? You need to understand why the market has valued the horse/stock at the current price and if you have any extra info or any reason to think that the price is too high or too low. Or any reason beyond just hoping that the price will continue to drop/rise or assuming because it was falling for the last 10 mins that it will continue to fall for the next 10. You need to know why it is falling, what conditions are causing the movement and if those conditions are still valid and will continue to cause a fall or if the market price has already met the true price.

Knowing why a horse’s price is dropping would require understanding a lot about horses, is the weather changing? How does the horse run on soft ground? How does his competitors run on soft ground? Who is the jockey? Has there been a jockey change? What draw? Is he drawn beside an erratic runner? Is there a horse in the race that likes to take them a long at a high pace? Does our horse like a fast pace? Did this horse just become non-runner? How does that affect our horse? Does the horse look tired/sweating in the paddock? Is he nervous/reluctant to go into the stalls? Is he wearing blinkers? I don’t even know all the questions to ask!

Anyway, that’s where mind is at, at the moment.