... He Gets The Ball, Scores A Goal, Jermaine, Jermaine Defoe!
Hello and welcome!
Tottenham won 2-1. Granted, we had a dodgy Jermaine Defoe penalty, but it's all irrelevent to me and yours truly is brimming with glee. On the happy note, I'll commence with today's blog post on trading...
I know there are a growing number of traders out there striving to pack-in their day-job and become a full-time gambler. It's certainly possible and The Betfair Trader (see links) shows how even intermediate traders can have staggering success. There are people who make six-figure incomes from their trading and I do genuinely believe it's like driving a car - anyone can learn to do it.
I know this because there was a time when I was extremely interested in trading. To begin with, I struggled to break even, but I began to improve dramatically when I applied myself, to the point when I could consistently churn out profit.
For some reason, my interest faded and I came to the realisation that I prefered betting to trading. Since then I've gradually eased off trading, but from past experience I have one suggestion for all traders looking to be successful. Simply put, if you follow the suggestion, and you'll become a good trader.
Before branching off into that. I'll briefly cover the two different types of trading...
Firstly, there is WOM trading. WOM stands for Weight of Money and without, going into depth, it refers to trading using supply and demand principles. If there is a larger demand of people hoping to lay, they will all compete with each other and the price should rise. The opposite also applies. Unfortunately, things don't always work out as expewcted, however. It's this obstacle that makes trading difficult. 'Spoofers' (people who create false bets to get the price to swing in their favour) are one cause for this as are large bets that enter the market and news feeds on the latest happenings of an event.
Anyone interested in learning more about WOM trading can download the free trading manual (see my links), which will explain things in much more detail.
The second type of trading open to punters are strategical, that type of trading I prefer by a country mile. If we think something will happen in an event (for example, a lot of bookings being dished out in the first half of a derby match), we can back 6 booking points, wait for a few of the bookings to happen, and lay at a shorter price, to secure a 'free bet' or profits on either outcome. Again, there is a downside to this type of trading as things don't always turn out as we plan or expect.
I actually wrote a series of articels on stragies I had come up with on this type of trading. Anyone interested in reading them can locate them here:
http://www.laytheodds.com/articles/165/1/Profitable-Trading-Strategies/On-Betfair.html
http://www.laytheodds.com/articles/166/1/Trading-Football-Bookings/On-the-Betfair-Markets.html
http://www.laytheodds.com/articles/168/1/Trading-the-Over-and-Under-Market/On-Betfair.html
By now I imagine some of you just want me to cut to the chase, thinking something along the lines of...
OK, Josh. That's great. So do you want to tell me the suggestion you mentioned earlier or what?
So here it is. My suggesion to every beginning trader aspiring to improve is just to PRACTICE!
Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.
I expect some of you may sighed in disappointment when you read that. Unfortunately, I don't have a super-simple, secret formula to earn us all millions (I wish I did, though!). Without wanting to get over-philiosophical, the problem with life is that there is no such thing as 'something for nothing'. To become a good trader, you've got to put the hours in. In fact, this principle works for just about anything, but that's a topic for another day...
Imagine there is a complete beginner to trading. He's just learned the basic 'weight of money' techniques and wants to make money on the side for a holiday. He realises that there is going to have to be a learning process before he can even begin to think about beginning to make a profit consistently and he decides to sacrifice an hour of every evening to trading. I'd be willing to bet by the end of the first month, he's at least breaking even with small stakes. After a couple of months, I expect he'd be making a profit and had probably thought about increasing stakes and, by the turn of the year, I expect he'd be a good trader and well on his way to take the plunge full-time, if he so desired.
That's my two pence on trading anyway. There is more to come from me on trading, but we'll save that for another day.
Tomorrow comes the analysis of the systems performance from the past few days, so keep an eye out for that.
Have a good one,
Josh.