With no tennis this week I have had to keep the old brain ticking over. I was going to fine tune my pre race horse trading but got sidelined by the FTSE 20 minute markets.
I had a look at these last year but was approaching it all wrong. I was trying to come up with a mechanical method to trade them and whilst it worked sometimes it wasn’t enough to be consistently profitable.
Over the last 12 months I have looked at other sports and markets and must have picked a few things up because when I looked at the financials again this week they seemed to make a bit more sense. Rather than trading like a bot I traded based on how I anticipated the markets moving at least in the first 5 or 10 minutes of the 20 minute market. I used to do a little market trading years ago as a bit of a hobby so wasn’t a complete newbie.
The betfair markets don’t really support big stakes so I limited myself to stakes of £20 to £50. Monday was a bit of a steep learning curve and cost me a few quid but Tuesday was much better and I made back what I had lost plus a bit more. Today has seen a profit of £75 which I am quite pleased with.
One thing I have learned today though is that I need to find a website or forum or something that gives a heads up of what significant financial news is due out each day. The 10am market looked to me that the price should rise so I placed my opening trades accordingly. Initially it looked like I was right and the trade briefly moved into profit. It didn’t hit my £5 to £10 target so I left it a little longer. The FTSE price was rising 2 or 3 points and all looked well but then the betfair market started moving the other way. I rechecked the FTSE price which was hardly moving. WTF?? Something’s not right here….
The FTSE was just above its starting position yet the betfair market was trading as if the FTSE was collapsing. It was like they KNEW. There were 1 or 2 other idiots in the market who hadn’t got a scooby what was going on and I could have got out for a couple of pounds profit but when the chance was there I just thought the market had seen sense and I had been right all along so I missed both opportunities!
What the shrewdies knew was that the unemployment figures were out at 10am and they were shite. By the time this information flashed up on the website I was using it was too late and the stake was lost. £50.
So all in all I am quite happy with my profit but I need to get clued up!
