Ongoing "Trader of the week" results - Week 4 (week ending 26/07/09)

[munk]

Please post all entries for this week's trader of the week prize in this thread. Entries for the week ending Sunday 26/07/09 must be posted here no later than Tuesday 28/07/09. The winner will be announced on Wednesday 29/07/09.

NOTE
All prize winning entries must be for trades placed entirely on your Betfair Trading account using BetTrader and must be in the spirit of the challenge.

Winners will be chosen on merit of their explanation that they give as to how they generated the profit, what strategy they used, how they found the experience, whether they'd do it again, if they'd change the strategy in future, etc etc etc NOT just on the basis of who made the biggest profit.

Please ensure you 'green up' on the market you have traded so that you make the same profit no matter who wins (click the green H button in BetTrader to hedge it before the market closes) - all entries that are not hedged will be calculated to work out the hedged profit/loss at the average prices for the purpose of winning prizes.

Trade of the Week Prize Entry Submissions
Please provide as much detail as you can when submitting your prize winning entries. The profit you made on the trading session is important, but not as important as the details as to how you managed to generate the profit. Anyone who just posts 'I made £xx' with no explanation stands exactly zero chance of winning any prizes! Please provide as much detail as possible about the strategy you used to generate the profit - the more interest/debate you generate the higher your chance of winning prizes.

With your prize submission please include a screenshot of the Betfair profit & loss page for the market you made your trades on:

1. In BetTrader, click Betfair > My Account.
2. Click 'Betting Profit & Loss'.
3. On the P&L page, find the market that you made your profit on (to see all your entries click on 'last 30 days' in the 'Period' drop down list and click 'Get P & L' and from there you should find the market).
4. Take a screenshot of the P&L for the market you netted your prize winning trades on - IMPORTANT - please make sure you have the 'average odds' turned on - this is the default anyway so it should be fine. You can also take a screenshot of the p&l page with the average odds turned off, although if there are more than 20 trades you won't see them all on one page so this isn't so important as the average odds screenshot. I would recommend Gadwin PrintScreen if you're after dedicated screenshot software.
5. Upload the screenshot into your post reply (see here for more information on uploading screenshots to the forum).

Current highest profit and loss for a single market in the week ending Sunday 26/07/09:

wndllll - £53.62 (21/07)
munk - £25.63 (21/07)
frankbutcher - £11.24 (24/07)

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Official Week 4 Results
Grandthrax wins the prize this week for his pre race trading - congratulations, you receive a one month extension for your BetTrader ladder subscription until the end of September - I will contact Adam at Racing Traders now.

Wndllll wins for the 3rd week in a row for his trading on the test match which concluded on Monday. You will receive £10 from me - I will contact you via email now to confirm the details.

Frankbutcher wins the much coveted TGT mug, I will contact you now to confirm details.

Well done everyone.

[munk]

I'm trading on the cricket this week for the trade of the week comp.

Day 4 of the cricket and England have a good lead 425 vs Aus only 215.

England take up the innings with the task of putting on as many runs as possible to extend their lead and knock Australia out cheaply to take the match.

With this scenario Australia were quite long at around 15 or so as they went in to bowl against England in their 2nd innings. I backed Australia at 12 just after England's first wicket had gone looking for a quick wicket as Australia got on a roll.

This happened as well, Australia took another quick wicket and the price fell from 12 to 9 very quickly - nice £18.75 profit. As it goes I layed too quickly, I layed £50@9 when I should really have waited a few seconds as the dust settled because the price actually came right down to 8, could have had £25 profit right there.

I kept with this strategy, backing £50@8-10 and laying £50 for a few ticks profit each time. Unfortunately Australia seemed to ease off a little bit and the price started to go out... so I had a go with the stop loss tool, setting it up so that when the LTP went to 9, the stop loss would kick in and auto-queue me a lay bet of £50@9. This worked perfectly so stopped the loss (actually 'limited' my profit rather) to £15 profit. Nice.

Ongoing, still debating whether to carry on with this strategy right now because Australia really seem to be coming off the gas right now and England are extending their lead right now... KP hasn't given his wicket away either!!!

It's quite difficult actually trading on longer odds because if you feel the price going out, you can't lay £50@9 if your float is only £76!!! Only alternative is to back england and wait until their price falls... but their price isn't moving as quickly/erratically as Australia's right now... doesn't seem to have moved from 1.56/1.57 at all England's price all through their 2nd innings despite the few wickets that have fallen.

UPDATE 1615:
Had a bit of a cheeky little bargain just now. Backed Aus £50@12 just as England seemed to be getting on top of the Aus bowling. There was a caught out decision that went to the 3rd umpire and somehow I managed to get my cheeky queued lay bet £50@9.6 matched ... finally the decision was not out as well hehe

So far then £26.99 hedged profit on this market, I think I will leave it at that now and not tempt fate! Will add my Betfair P&L when the market settles tomorrow.

UPDATE 26/07/09:
I copied this from last week's trade of the week thread since this market only settled on Monday this week so is eligible for this week's (wasn't eligible for last week's). In the end I managed to make £25.63 after commission. Screenshot below.



PS - no idea what the draw bets were about! I think I accidentally click on the draw in the ladder, luckily realized before it'd gone too far away from the price I took and actually managed to hedge for a profit anyway.

[wndllll]

-snip-
Wndllll - I've copied this from last week's thread - the cricket trades below are eligible for this week's trade of the week comp, you might want to edit out the other stuff perhaps... or whatever.


-snip-
--munk

I decided to try and have some fun on the cricket as I would be watching most of it anyway. It's waaay harder than tennis as the odds shoot about so much but it also presents more opportunities to make some good trades! Once more I always traded the underdog as the odds moved a lot more and I also learnt a few lessons the hard way.
After day 2 I think i was looking at -50 England, -30 Aus and -50 draw due to some bad luck and bad decisions. I spent most of the time i was trading trying to recover things and thankfully got some good luck this morning. I did a ton of scalping, mostly for example :

Australia started at 3.6 this morning. They lost an early wicket and the odds shot out to 9 or so. I backed as high as I could get and then laid as they came racing in again. After the next wicket they went to 15ish and again, came back in pretty quickly so i kept backing then laying over and over. To try and describe any tactics I had is impossible other than that! Anyhoo, I ended up with £10.60 after commission

I think it's fair to say I'm more confident with the tennis but I'll definitely have another go at the cricket now i have more of a feel for what happens to the odds in certain situations.

Sorry for the essay and crappy attempts at explanations, I still find it tough to put into words some of the things I've tried!

Summary: Scariest profit £10.60 on the ashes


NOTE:
The greened total for the cricket is the only one that counts for this week's prizes. The potential greened profit was actually £56.44 (£53.62 net of commission).

[frankbutcher]

£11.24 from one race today.

Backed the fav 1 hour before the off at 2.88 for £20. A 2m 1f race with a smallish field, I decided to leave it til in running and watch how it was travelling before hedging. 3/4 of the way round is, horse was travelling well, just behind the leader: layed at 1.81 for £31.82.

[munk]

I've juts copied in two posts into this thread above ^^ from myself and wndllll for trading on the cricket which only finished on Monday - so they were not eligible for last week's but they are eligible for this week's.

Can anyone posting trade of the week entries please remember to post your p&l screenshots for any trades, see the first post for full instructions. Cheers.

[Cloverleaves]

My balance just keeps going down and down. As earlier in the month, I am back to my old habits of being able to spot a losing bet at fifty paces! (Or if I manage to spot a winning bet, I hedge out at a loss before it gets to the winning bit. What can I say?)

My biggest hedged win this week was £6.65 on the Mathieu/Brands tennis match (live play) on the 23rd, but I don't think that is going to compete with the big boys above. Munk, can you let me know if there's any point in uploading my screenshots, as I think - sadly - probably not!

[munk]

My balance just keeps going down and down. As earlier in the month, I am back to my old habits of being able to spot a losing bet at fifty paces! (Or if I manage to spot a winning bet, I hedge out at a loss before it gets to the winning bit. What can I say?)

My biggest hedged win this week was £6.65 on the Mathieu/Brands tennis match (live play) on the 23rd, but I don't think that is going to compete with the big boys above. Munk, can you let me know if there's any point in uploading my screenshots, as I think - sadly - probably not!

Sorry no I don't think that will qualify. There will be a prize this week for anyone who's trading on non-live bets this week - ie horses before the off. Not sure if anyone's gone for that this week though.

Very sorry to hear you've not been having much luck though, hope it's given you a chance to see how easy it is to place bets with BetTrader though and has been a bit of fun (although not sure how losing money is fun ... suppose more the banter on the forum really).

[Grandthrax]

Sorry no I don't think that will qualify. There will be a prize this week for anyone who's trading on non-live bets this week - ie horses before the off. Not sure if anyone's gone for that this week though.

Well seeing as i'm one of the few trading horses before the off...

My best result from the last week was a £1.97 profit on the 17:45 on the 25th July. In fact it should have been a lot more as a horse was withdrawn from the race and i wasn't quick enough to take advantage.

When a horse is withdrawn noone is quite sure what the new value of the horses should be and so the market becomes extremely volatile with money being taken as much 10-15 ticks away from each other. It normaly takes about 10 seconds for the market to stabalise but in that you can make huge profits. Even when it has stabalised it will still be a lot more volatile and easier to trade than before the horse was withdrawn.

On the negative side to my pre race trading I reckon i lost close to £12 out of stupidity and not obeying my own rules. I have posted my worse loss of 2.91. After getting that loss (and a 1.27 loss a couple of races later) I went through what i was doing and put my losses down to 2 things:

First I was being greedy, trying for that extra 1 tick and having it backfire to a loss. Also if i got taken on one side but not the other and was expecting to get taken i would sometimes go in again doubling my position in an attempt to double my profits.

Secondly I was getting cocky, starting to think that my money was effecting the market. If i was waiting to be for the price to go up so i could exit from a previous trade, i would sometimes go back in in an attempt to push the market up. Which, unsurprisingly, often backfired.

Thirdly I was jumping in front of the price too often. Instead of queing and hoping to get taken (and risking not getting taken and thus loosing a profitably trade) i would jump in front of the money. This meant i needed a 2 tick price movement rather than 1 tick to lock in a profit.

[wndllll]

Nice explanations in there Granthrax. I have done a lot of the things you describe though have never thought I might be effecting the movement of the money!

I haven't got any trades to add to my original Ashes effort. I've done a lot of tennis but to no real effect, lots of small wins and a few small losses. I'm actually pretty happy though as once again I've managed to change some very bad situations into manageable ones. I think one game I was trading had -70 one side and -30 the other which i recovered for about -5 loss. Phew.

[Cloverleaves]

Very sorry to hear you've not been having much luck though, hope it's given you a chance to see how easy it is to place bets with BetTrader though and has been a bit of fun (although not sure how losing money is fun ... suppose more the banter on the forum really).

Obviously losing money is not fun in itself, but the challenge itself has been great fun so far, and I think I may try a bit more after the challenge to see if I can finally learn those darn tricks!!! Love the BetTrader software too.

Grandthrax, I am extremely intrigued by your horse racing methods. Do you suppose after the competition is over, you might be willing to divulge a bit of info about your signs for trading etc?

Well done in managing to do so well in what is clearly a really difficult market to call!