Evening Winter Racing

Now that it is pitch black when I get back from work most of my trading has to focus around the all-weather racing at Kempton and Wolverhampton. These markets can be very different from the markets in the day. Big Steamers and Drifters are very common mainly due to two factors
1) The racing is usually very poor in quality
2) This means that it takes very little money to move the price of a horse

Moves like the picture above are fairly common place. This horse halved in price in about 5 mins. If you are really brave you can even try the markets at Dundalk. Although these can be very thin. Anyway it is possible to make a decent amount and tonight I was able to clear £40 with small stakes.

Some improvement.

Today saw me return to some profitable trading. The highlight being the race above. I was very pleased with this as I thought carefully about when to enter this trade and things went perfectly. Sometimes I think I enter the market with very little thought and this is when I get caught. The rest of the trading was steady if unspectacular, that one race accounted for two thirds of my profit for the day. I think this was a good example of letting profits run however sometimes I think I look for big trades too often. I traded some of the breeders cup races and am looking forward to trying a few tonight.

Odds On

Many traders really like to trade Odds on favourites. These horses attract nearly all of the money in the race and therefore provide good liquidity. In this race in Ireland the liquidity was not as good as many UK races but I was still able to use £250 stakes to make a decent profit. In the video you can at times see several £250 stakes, I was using these in case of some large orders going in and also to be first in the queue if the horse trades at that price. These types of markets can be very profitable although I think they do take a bit of practice.

Fast Pictures not Always an Advantage

I have been away for a few days to visit a friend and he gave me back my copy of A Definitive Guide to Betting Exchanges. This book is a very good introduction to Betting Exchanges although it may be a little bit dated now. I found the section about tennis very informative as I had little knowledge about these markets.

My favourite section is the one that lists all the strange things that have happened on exchanges. The best of these is the time a lady placed a 500 bet @1.01 to back a favourite that was cruising to victory in a hurdles race in Ireland. The bet was placed just as the horse was approaching a hurdle on her pictures (At the Races). Now as you probably know if you have SIS or are at the actual race course you have a perceived advantage. Someone with this "advantage" saw the horse make a mistake and the price shot out to 95. Next thing to happen was Ruby Walsh clung on and made a miraculous recovery and the horse promptly went on to canter home netting the lucky punter a £47000 profit when she was hoping to make£5. So just remember the guys with fast pictures don't always win.

G'Day Australia

I was up fairly early this morning and had a bit of time to kill so I had a quick look at the Aussie Horse Racing markets. The liquidity in some races is not to bad (about £66,000 matched in this race). It has improved markedly since I last looked about a year ago. Whilst still being a long way short of the English markets there is the potential to take some small profits. Hopefully these markets will continue to develop and reach the level of the Irish Racing.

As you can see from the video This wasn't my best trade ever and I was a bit slow in canceling my order when the big money came to move the market up. However I did react in the right way and still managed to make a profit.

A few things to bear in mind though

1. If you are trading from the UK the response times are slower
2. How do you get pictures to see when the off is?
3. The markets have less liquidity so you should probably use smaller stakes

Trading Video

Here is a video of a trade from yesterday. As you can see it was reasonably successful could and probably should have got out a tick earlier. Any feedback on the trade would be useful. I managed to make £50 from 6 races yesterday.

Hard Slog

Over the last week my Horse Racing Trading has reached a bit of a plateau and it has felt like I am treading water. It has been one step forward and one step back. Take today for example I had a rare day when I could trade most of the races. I started very cautiously and went without a loss in the first ten races. Then for the rest of the day I made a bit in one race only to lose it in the next. The only thing that pleased me was the fact that I managed to keep my discipline. In the past I am sure I would have lost it especially on a Sunday usually my worst day by far. On days like this I know I couldn't do this full time and I take my hat off to those that can.

I have also decided to reduce my bank back to £500 as I am not feeling confident using larger stakes at the moment. This may have been part of the problem this last week. Since last week I have made just over £85 profit in too many races.