Matched betting vs Trading

@ jrubbers, beaser is absolutely right, there is plenty of easy money to be made MBing. No one is going to sell you a profitable trading system that you can use on BF, if you think about it for a while you will see why.

I personally am interested in trading, but not just for the money. I see it as an interesting challenge that I want to see if I can over come. If it doesn’t work out its no big deal, I shall give it my best shot and if I am like most other people (over 95% of new traders are losers on BF) then I will have no regrets.

I am investing a couple of hundred quid in a training course at the end of next month (made many many times this amount from MBing in the last 10 months), and will then use play money. If it doesn’t work out using play money then wont bother using real money. If it does then will start using small stakes real money and so can limit losses to pennies. If successful then gradually increase stakes. I am not looking to make a fortune in the short term. In fact I suspect its going to be quite a battle to get to the break even stage. Then again if it was easy everyone would be doing it wouldn’t they.

Recently read a post on another forum about a trader new to using the BA software, cant remember the total but I think he lost close to £1000 over the first couple of days. This was not down to trading mistakes but purely down to mistakes with operating the software. Now to me it doesn’t make sense to start using trading software with significant amounts of money, while there is a practice mode available that allows you to get familiar with the software without putting real money at risk.

When I read things like this, and similar stories, and also about all the people that have blown up many starting banks while learning to trade (using stakes that are too big), I think that perhaps I have a slightly better chance than 5% of being a BF winner. I am hoping its more like 30 to 40%.

@ beaser. No not got the Caan Berry video pack. I’ve watched some of his videos but he uses a sort of pixelated hide screen system that blanks out some of the information that I really find annoying (his intention is obviously to encourage you to cough up some money to get the non pixelated version). I am sure he knows his stuff and lots of people are very impressed by him, he reminded me of people who used to be in the financial trading teaching industry years ago (they are probably still there). I thought £150 was a bit steep for a video pack, however if your finding it useful then that’s great.

I’m getting a one day course plus an informal evening the night before at a Hotel for any trading questions I want to ask, plus lots of videos all for £220.

I think I need to be careful about giving more information about this guy (Steve Howe) otherwise Matt might close the thread, this guy is not in competition with Matt however he is not teaching match betting, so hopefully Matt is ok with it.

I think Caen Berry’s methods although good won’t do, he’s too popular and when too many people start trying to do the same methods they don’t work as well and aren’t worth it in the end and too many are fighting over crumbs. The same happened with the common lay the draw system years again, it did work at one time but more and more people trying it meant it became a dead end. I have another trading system that I use myself and although it does worth and makes pretty good money, it used to fucking clean up back in the day but now the weight of money and other factors means it’s not as good as it was.

Keep going with it all lads, if you have a patient approach then no doubt you’ll do well in the end.

Excellent results ss1412 not many people end up with some profit after their first month or twos trading. It usually takes several months to get to the break even level (most people give up long before they get there).

I’m sure you know what your doing but my slight concern would be the size of your stakes in relation to the size of your betting bank. I understand that you will only be risking say 1 or 2% of your bank on each trade, however that’s if everything works correctly. You have already said that you have gone in play (not on purpose I understand) but it would only need that to happen once and your connection to BF to fail for any reason and you could blow up your bank.

I guess if you have money in reserve to replenish your bank if such a thing could happen then that’s ok, however I have read of many instances where something similar has happened to other new traders and it completely destroys their confidence.

As promised previously in this thread, I have now done Steve Howe’s horse race trading course and here are my thoughts on it. I have just re read what ss1412 wrote about Peter Webs course, and Steves was very similar so there is not a lot of point writing the same thing twice.

One thing that was different (and I think this is a really good thing) was on the night before we all had a chance to meet up in a hotel bar, and there were about half a dozen guys who had done a pervious course with Steve in the past. I made sure I had a chance to chat to most of these guys.

The guys that had done the course in the past said Steves methodology worked but sticking to the rules was the hardest part. In all fairness Steve said that he can’t teach us discipline, we have to learn that for ourselves.

The consensus of pervious trainees seemed to be it took most of them months and months of hard work before they began to make money. Several of them had come from a match betting background, and Steve said a lot of his students had made money from MBing and due to gubbings and restrictions were now looking at sports trading.

One thing to bear in mind though, the vast majority of people who start match betting are profitable from day one, it is a fairly easy way to make money once you get to grips with it.

Sports trading on the other hand is much more difficult, virtually no one makes money straight away, in fact most people will never make money long term from it. For a tiny minority the rewards can be life changing, but sports trading is not an easy way to make money. You need to spend hundreds and probably thousands of hours in front of the trading screen, if you only have time to trade Saturday afternoons and the odd evening now and again your chances of success are extremely low.

If anyone has any questions I will try and answer them, obviously in fairness to Steve Howe and all the other people who have paid to learn his methodology I cannot give away specific information. You can however get an idea of what he does by taking a look at some of his you tube videos. They give away more information than most people do, however there is a lot more to it than what is shown in those videos.

Finally do I think the course was worth it, well I don’t regret taking the course, I learned a great deal from it. Do I think I will succeed at sports trading, well I really don’t know, all I can do is give it my best shot, and I probably won’t know for many months if I can do this profitably.

Would I recommend the course to someone, well that all depends on that someone’s expectations. If they think they can take a course today and profits will start rolling in tomorrow, then this course will not be for you. If you want a trading methodology that does work, but requires a great deal of practise before it can be applied successfully then yes I would recommend it.

@ Dan not much point posting up P & L results as I don’t intend to trade for quite a while. If I was to start off now, the sharks on the exchanges would gobble up a little fish like me in next to no time. I would end up with no money in my exchange account, and my confidence would have been shattered.

The methodology Steve Howe teaches, although not rocket science, it takes a while to get the hang of it (I’m sure some people will pick it up far quicker than others, I am not a particularly quick learner).

Here is an example of what I mean, an experienced winning trader will look at a pre off horse racing market and in less than 10 seconds will know the following.

1. If there is an opportunity for a trade.
2. Which horse to trade
3. Type of trade, back or lay
4. Where to get out if the trade turns against you (stop placement).
5. Likely profit target

If everything looks ok they will then make the trade, let’s say the trade makes the profit target but then things start to look dodgy, trader closes trade for decent profit, all this can happen in less than 30 seconds.

I currently will take around a minute just to do parts one to three listed above this is far too slow. Before I have even entered the trade a good trader will have made his profit. BTW using Steves method, there are often no trading opportunities on a race, and when there are there are often just one decent entry opportunity.

Only lots and lots of screen time will get me to the stage where I think I have a possible chance of being successful at this. I am nowhere near thinking I am ready for risking real money in the markets yet.

If I have made any money this time next year, I shall be both surprised and extremely happy, as I said previously; trading is far more difficult than match betting. Be careful of people saying they have done such and such a trading course and were profitable almost immediately. There might be one or two who have managed to do this, but it’s unlikely. Every successful sports and financial trader I have ever met all said it took them a long time to become profitable. Often taking years and losing thousands of pounds in the process.