Betting / Trading Articles

Easy Trader Pro Review

2008-05-21T01:20:00.000-07:00

Easy Trader Pro is an ebook and video package that shows you how you can make consistent profits from backing and laying horses on Betfair. It's not one of the newest courses on the market, but in my opinion it's still one of the best.

The method itself is very similar to a method that I myself have used many times on Betfair but this one is far more effective. It basically involves being at your computer in the morning and using the rules and criteria given to find suitable horses to back or lay. It's then just a case of hopefully closing out for a profit later on in the day when the horse's price has moved in your favour.

For example, you follow the rules outlines in the course and find a suitable horse to back, placing £100 at 2.5. The price then drifts in to 2.2 and you can then either lay your original £100 stake at 2.2 giving you a profit of £30 if the horse wins, or lay off say £114 giving you £14 if if loses or £13.2 if it wins, ie a guaranteed profit.

The system is very simple to follow, but even if you're new to betting exchanges and don't fully understand the concept of backing and laying, don't worry because everything is explained in great detail in this course.

Overall Easy Trader Pro gets my highest recommendation because the method itself works extremely effectively, even if you only start off with a small bank of say £50. It's priced very generously at just £47 and more than pays for itself, plus you now also get some excellent bonuses including how to profit from football trading, night racing and in-running betting. Click here for more information.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

What Makes A Successful Exchange Trader, Forex Trader, Investor, Poker Player, etc?

2007-06-10T02:38:00.000-07:00

(my article)

In order to become a successful player in any of these areas, you need to learn the required skills and acquire the knowledge needed to make consistent profits, but with the internet anyone can learn these skills fairly quickly. So why do so few people make regular profits in these fields?

Well the obvious answer is lack of discipline and focus.

The most successful players, whether it's betting on the betting exchanges or playing internet poker, for example, have developed a tried and tested game-plan and specific processes and techniques to give them an edge, in order to make consistent profits.

They are extremely disciplined and never deviate from these plans. If they lose money at any time they don't panic and change their system, or go on tilt, which you see so often, but know that in the long-run they will turn these short-term losses into profits.

This is particularly true for me as a full-time Betfair trader because I basically traded the FTSE every day and used exactly the same indicators every single day for four years, making profits that I wouldn't have dreamt possible when I first started out.

I had some knowledge of charts and the effect of news releases before I started trading, but simply honed my trading techniques to make consistent profits to suit Betfair's markets. I have to admit that at the start, I did occasionally make rash decisions after I'd made a loss, but over time I developed a very disciplined form of trading, and just told myself that any occasional losses were part of the game.

For more information about my trading career with Betfair, and to find out about the trading techniques I used, please visit the following site:

http://www.bfguide.com

Discipline - The Key Attribute Every Aspiring Trader Must Possess

2006-10-04T07:28:00.000-07:00

(my article)

Every day there are thousands of people entering the potentially lucrative world of trading. Unfortunately most of these aspiring traders will ultimately fail to become profitable over the long term. In some cases this may be because they don't have the skill or knowledge to find profitable positions, but mainly it will be because they lack discipline.

It doesn't matter what area of trading it is, whether it's spread betting, CFD's, or betting exchanges, for example, if you don't have discipline then you will not succeed. This is an important lesson that I learned very early on in my trading career.

I was a full-time Betfair trader for four years, and although I have always been very disciplined, there were a few occasions, particularly in my first year, that I committed the cardinal sin of chasing losses. This is something you have to drum into yourself not to do, otherwise the results can be catastrophic for your bank balance.

I taught myself to just walk away from the computer if I suffered a significant loss, and to come back refreshed and focused later on. This is particularly important if, like me, you trade the hourly financial markets on Betfair. This is because if you lose a lot of money on one hourly intraday market, then it is very tempting to lump on at the start of the next hour and try and win it all back.

For example, say you lost £1000 in the 9.00-10.00 FTSE market. At 10.00 you could easily back up or down for £1000 at close to evens, to try and cover this loss and win it back. Sometimes you may get lucky, but if you lose, the downward spiral can escalate, and again where do you stop? £2000 on the next market?

If you are disciplined you would have walked away after the £1000 loss, or simply continued trading in your usual way. Not trying to win back the £1000 in one go, but using your trading techniques that you have profited from in the past to win it back slowly.

My biggest ever loss on Betfair was about £3200. It wasn't from bad trading either. It was simply down to the fact that I was late for a dentist appointment, and in my hurry to close out a position inadvertently pressed the wrong button, and in a split second had guaranteed myself a loss of around £3200 whatever the outcome. Possibly the most expensive dentist appointment ever.

As you would expect, I was completely devastated, but thankfully by just employing my tried and trusted trading methods, I managed to make about £4500 the following month. I didn't try and win it all back in one day, but simply told myself to remain focused. I had made good profits in the past, so there was no reason why I shouldn't win it all back slowly over time.

To conclude, whatever area of trading you specialise in, if you are serious about being successful, then you must be disciplined. Pin a note next to your computer telling you to walk away if you suffer any losses, or whatever method you choose, just stay focused. Think of occasional losses as being an inevitable part of trading. Compare your trading profits to long-term stock markets. Over long periods of time they will generally trend upwards, but not necessarily in a straight line. There are always dips along the way.

Jim Buccini is a former full-time Betfair trader who has produced a website detailing proven profit-generating tips and strategies. For more information click here:

Betfair Guide and Strategies

Betfair Trading

2006-06-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

(by Amazing Lay Profits)

Betfair Trading

Many people are now discovering Betfair Trading and i think you should be taking an interest in it as well. If you are already a Betfair user then you might already be familiar with this style of betting. Apart from backing and laying odds, you are able to "trade" them. Trading on betfair means that you either back odds then lay them for lower to guarantee a profit or you lay odds and then back them at a higher price to guarantee a profit. The main principal here is to "Back High and Lay Low". It doesn't matter which one you do first.

Betfair Trading can be very rewarding but it is not easy. There are a variety of different markets to trade but perhaps the most popular is Horse Racing. I trade Horse Racing markets frequently but it requires watching the screen for serveral hours waiting for an opportunity. This type of Betfair Trading is very fast-paced and very enjoyable, if you can do it right.

Some of the most successful Betfair Trading experts claim to earn around £1000 per week from trading. I've witnessed first hand proof of this but it requires stakes of up to £1000 for each trade. This means that if you wanted to make £1000 every week, you'd need to have around £1000 to begin with.

BetMatching.co.uk has some information about how to get started with Betfair Trading and provides some trading tutorials and resources that should help you. We hope the information on this site will give you a good start on how to trade Betfair Markets for profit.

Bypassing Minimum Bet on Betfair

The minimum bet on Betfair is £2. However, placing a bet for under £2 is easy. Betting for under £2 is useful because it allows you to test out strategies without commiting a lot of money. Here is how to back for under £2 (we will back for 25p)

We want to back Davenport to win for 25p. The first step is to offer to back at higher than the current odds (i usually choose 100 for backing and 1.01 for laying). So offer to back Davenport for £2 at odds of 100, your bet will be displayed as unmatched.

Click on the "Continue" button to modify the bet. Now enter the amount you want to back onto the original £2 that was already there (in our case, our stake should be £2.25):

Click "Submit" then "Continue" to submit the bet. You should now have 2 unmatched bets displayed. Click on the "X" next to your £2bet and then modify the odds of your 25p to the current back odds:

Now click "Continue" and then "Continue" again. And that's it! Simple! You have now made a bet of 25p. Your screen should now look like the first picture in this tutorial.

To lay for under £2. All you need to do is follow the same steps but instead of offering to back for 100. You need to offer to Lay for 1.01.

Good luck! Amazing Lay Profits

Learn how to make a lot of money using Betfair/Betting Exchanges! http://www.amazing-lay-profits.co.uk & http://www.amazing-lay-profits.com

Join our FREE affiliate program - 25% commission!: www.amazing-lay-profits.com/affiliates

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ See all our proofed results: http://www.amazing-lay-profits.co.uk/results.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How to make amazing lay profits using betting exchanges! www.amazing-lay-profits.co.uk

How to make amazing lay profits using betting exchanges! www.amazing-lay-profits.co.uk

How To Profit From Football Betting On The Betting Exchanges

2006-06-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

(my article)

There are a few betting strategies I use to make profits from football, but in this article I shall concentrate on one market that I do a lot of research on, the bookings market. This market is generally offered for all the live matches on TV only, but nevertheless there are still a few good betting opportunities to be found every week.

I use Betfair to place bets on this particular market. Their market is based on three possible outcomes;

5 points and under 6-8 points 9 points and over

where a yellow card is worth 2 points and a red card is worth 5 points.

The selection I always look to oppose and therefore lay is the 5 points and under. Therefore I want to find matches where there will be at least 3 yellow cards, or 1 red card only to win my bet. This is actually remarkably easy to do, as there is so much diving and cheating in the game these days that few matches nowadays end up with fewer than 3 bookings. Those that do are usually easy to predict because they are between 2 well-disciplined teams or teams with nothing much to play for.

Despite this the prices are still very generous from a layer's point of view, and in my opinion do not yet reflect the true odds in a lot of cases. I usually find 1-2 matches each week where this is the case, and most of the prices layed are around 4. This means that you need around about a 75% success rate at this price in order to make constant profits, yet I've found this to be quite easy to achieve. In fact I once went 17 successful matches without losing on this particular selection.

The trick is to use statistics and team news information to find potential candidates for this type of bet. Firstly you should look at who the referee is, and take a look at how strict they are from a referee league table. Secondly you should look at a fair play league table and see where the two teams rate in terms of discipline. You should also look at the team line-ups when they are announced. This will tell you some important information such as whether the tough-tackling centre-backs/midfielders are playing, for example, or whether the skillful players who draw fouls are playing. Finally look at how much the match between the two sides means, for example, a match between two mid-table sides who have nothing much to play for is likely to have less bookings than a relegation dogfight or a serious title race match-up.

Armed with all this information you should find it quite easy to identify matches where it is highly unlikely, and therefore the odds are in your favour that the match in question will finish with fewer than 3 bookings.

This is just one strategy I use to make money from football betting. To get more information on this strategy plus a number of other betting strategies, please visit the site listed in my resource box.

Jim Buccini is a former full-time Betfair trader who has produced a website detailing proven profit-generating tips and strategies. For more information visit:

Betfair Betting Strategies

The Effect Bots Are Having On Betting Exchanges

2006-06-05T07:35:00.000-07:00

(my article)

Bots (short for robots) are basically automated software programs, designed by a human user, that automatically places bets on the betting exchanges based on certain criteria. Their main aim is usually to take any bets that offer value, for example when a book for a given event goes below 100% when backing, or above 100% when laying. In this case a bot would take the bets for all possible outcomes and guarantee a small profit, akin to bookmakers.

Therefore done over many times over the course of a day, these bots can be very profitable for their owners. However, it should be noted that these bots are only be as successful as the user who programmed them. There have been many instances where certain market events have caused a bot to place bets that have ultimately cost the programmer an awful lot of money, and have ultimately had to be abandoned.

Bots of some description have been around for many years in the stock market, but they are becoming increasingly common on the exchanges. The sporting press here in Britain have increasingly reported on bots taking over the exchanges, and taking all the value from markets before the human users get a chance. A lot of this is simply hype, but it is true that it has definitely become harder for human users to find value bets. I have experienced this first-hand in the FTSE markets on Betfair during the last year in particular. It has made things slightly harder for us financial traders, but I should point out that there are still plenty of profits still to be made.

Also bots do have their advantages. For example, they can provide some much needed liquidity to otherwise quiet markets. They can also go wrong sometimes which can result in some extremely incorrect and generous odds for other users. However, I think it is true that their increasing presence is upsetting some traditional human users, and it remains to be seen what effect this will have on exchanges in the future. It's unlikely that the exchanges themselves will ban automated bots simply because if they are profitable then obviously the exchanges will benefit in the way of commissions from all the profits that the bots make.

So how can human users fight back against these bots? Well simply outsmart them. Use your own knowledge to anticipate market moves before they happen. Often bots will leave bets in the system below fair value if laying or above the true value when backing. Arm yourself with all the tools you can to make successful trading decisions and beat them at their own game. For example, if you are trading the FTSE markets, use technical indicators, live data and news feeds, etc to anticipate market moves and take the bots' bets before the market has actually moved and triggered the bot to move it's prices.

To conclude I would say that ultimately bots are not good news for your average user, but like the stock markets they have become inevitable. Unless the exchanges ban them, which is very unlikely, people are simply going to have to accept their presence and let's not forget that human users are always likely to make up the vast majority of any given market, and so there will always be plenty of profitable opportunities.

Jim Buccini is a former full-time Betfair trader who has produced a website detailing proven profit-generating tips and strategies. For more information click here:

Betfair Strategies

2006-04-05T06:22:00.000-07:00

How To Trade The Football Markets On Betting Exchanges To Generate Profits (my article)

I was a full-time Betfair trader for nearly four years and although I predominantly traded the financial markets, I also made quite significant profits from the football markets. Now this wasn't achieved by placing bets on teams I thought would win, in the traditional way, but by using the betting exchanges to trade the prices.

For example, if I think a team's price on the exchanges has drifted out too far in comparison with the bookmakers' prices (Oddschecker is an excellent odds comparison site), then I will look to trade it. In this case I will be looking to back it at the current price and lay it back later at a lower price for my initial stake plus a bit extra to guarantee a profit whatever the outcome.

To demonstrate my point I will use an example taken from my site. In the recent FA Cup match between Chelsea and Colchester, Chelsea were available to back at 1.14 on Betfair a few days before the match, yet they were trading a lot lower with the bookmakers, ranging from 1.07 to 1.11. You would expect the prices on the exchanges to be slightly higher but at 1.14 this was double the price of the lowest bookmaker price.

Therefore at a generous price of 1.14 and expecting a drift inwards, this was a solid potential trading opportunity. As it turned out this price did indeed come in and a day before the match Chelsea were now available to lay at 1.12. So if you had backed Chelsea for say £100 at 1.14, you could have layed them back at 1.12 for say £102. This would have guaranteed a profit of £1.76 if Chelsea won (£100 @ 1.14 = £14) - (£102 @ 1.12 = £12.24), or £2 if the match resulted in a draw or Colchester win (£102 - £100).

Now obviously these profits sound very small, but if, like me, you trade in the thousands these profits can be quite substantial and can build up nicely over time. For example, if your initial stake in this example was £1000, then your guaranteed profits would have been £17.76 if Chelsea won, or £20 if they drew or Colchester won. Also, you wouldn't essentially be risking your £1000, because as you are using it for trading, you should always trade out, and therefore even if the price moves against you, you would only lose a small amount.

This was a good trading opportunity, but I should point out that opportunities like this do not exist in every match. Often you may only find a few good opportunities every week, but I can guarantee that there will always be potential trades out there.

For more information please click on the following link:

Betfair Trading Tips

2006-04-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

Stock Indexes: The Inside Story by Ron King

Most of us have heard of stock indexes, but have only a fuzzy idea of them at best. This article aims to clarify some of the basics of stock indexes -- what they are and how they work.

What Is A Stock Index?

A stock index is simply an average price for a large group of stocks, either those on a particular stock exchange or stocks across an entire investing sector. Indexes are formed from stocks with something in common: they are on the same exchange, from the same industry, or have the same company size or location. Stock indexes give us an overall snapshot of the economic health of a particular industry or exchange.

Many stock indexes exist; in the United States the most well known are: the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the New York Stock Exchange Composite index, and the Standard & Poor 500 Composite Stock Price Index.

How Does It Work?

There are several ways to calculate an index. An index based solely on stock prices is called a "price weighted index." This type of index ignores the importance of any particular stock or the company size.

A "market value weighted" index, on the other hand, takes into account the size of the companies involved. That way, price shifts of small companies have less influence than those of larger companies.

Another type of index is the "market share weighted" index. This type of index is based on the number of shares, rather than their total value.

Index As Investment Tool

Another huge function of indexes is that they can function as investment instruments in and of themselves. Mutual funds based on an index duplicate the holdings of the underlying index. Thus, if index A rises by 1%, the Index A Mutual Fund rises by 1%. This has the tremendous advantage of lower costs. Plus these index funds have been shown to generally outperform managed funds.

The Big Indexes

One of the best-known indexes in the world is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It is a "price-weighted average" index composed of the stocks of 30 of the most influential companies in America. Some feel that 30 companies are not enough to form an accurate assessment for so influential a measurement, but it is reported around the globe daily nevertheless.

The Standard & Poor 500 Index is based on 500 United States corporations, carefully chosen to represent a broader picture of economic activity.

Beyond the United States, the most influential index is the FTSE 100 Index, based on 100 of the largest companies on the London Stock Exchange. It is 1 of the most important indexes in Europe. 2 other important indexes are France's CAC 40 and Japan's Nikkei 225.

About the author:
Visit http://www.thestocktrade.com to learn more. Ron King is a full-time researcher, writer, and web developer at http://www.ronxking.com

Copyright 2005 Ron King. This article may be reprinted if the resource box is left intact.

Article Source: http://www.Free-Articles-Zone.com

2006-04-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

Look Beyond The English Premiership When Betting On Football (my article)

There's no doubting that the English Premiership is one of the most exciting leagues in world football, with live matches being shown every week in many countries. Bookmakers spend vast sums of money promoting football betting, and have seen the popularity of football betting grow exponentially in the last ten years or so. For this very reason, the odds compilers spend a lot of their time focusing on getting the odds right for all the premiership fixtures and markets.

As a result of this, it follows on that because they take less money on lower league matches, then less of their time is spent analysing these matches when compiling their odds, and more attention is focused on the premiership matches. This means that there is often some great value prices to be had in the lower divisions for punters who maybe support their local lower league team, or simply have good information. For example, they may simply do thorough research on team news and injuries, something which the bookmakers largely ignore when pricing up matches outside the premiership.

Let me give you an example from by site. A friend of mine is a season ticket holder at Bristol City, who are two divisions below the premiership. Now he made some very nice profits earlier in the season by laying Bristol City to lose on Betfair (a leading betting exchange that allows you to lay bets as well as back), meaning he profited every time they drew or lost. He did this on a number of matches simply because he could see with his own eyes that they were struggling, and were desperately low in confidence.

However the bookmakers had them down as second favourites for promotion at the start of the season, and because of this their prices for matches were often very low, meaning the bookies expected them to turn the corner and start winning again. Because Betfair's prices are largely based on the bookmakers' prices, my friend therefore got very low prices, and therefore excellent value prices for laying Bristol City. As it turned out they continued to play poorly and drew or lost a lot of matches at that time, therefore earning him a lot of money.

In theory you could make good profits from any smaller leagues where the odds compilers research is less focused. For example, I've heard of a few people who bet solely on Divisions 2 and 3 of the Scottish league. Similarly, there are some good betting opportunities in many of the smaller European leagues such as the Austrian or Belgian leagues, where obviously people who live in these countries would have a distinct advantage in terms of information on form, team news and injuries.

To conclude, the English Premiership does provide fantastic entertainment, and you will always have numerous markets to bet on. However if you're looking for value, and are serious about making some profits from betting, then I would recommend you look outside the premiership and major leagues. There's plenty of profitable opportunities out there.

For more information, click on the following link:

Betfair Football Tips

2006-04-02T06:28:00.000-07:00

My Top 3 Betfair Trading Secrets by Sam Chim

Are you sick of losing your money on Betfair?

Over 80% Betfair Members LOSE money, are you one of them? If you are then I’ve got some good news for you. I’m going to share my top 3 Betfair Trading Secrets with you for free.

Before I share my secrets with you, I want to make sure that you are familiar with the term “Betfair Trading”. This is when we do not just back or lay bets, we trade them……to GUARANTEE a profit. All you need to do is back at a high price and lay at a lower price on the same outcome in an event. If you want to learn more about this method, I recommend you to take a look at my website (provided below).

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I’m assuming you know how to trade on Betfair now. Here are My Top 3 Betfair Trading Secrets:

Tip 1:

Study the market you are going to trade and stick with it until you completely “master” it. For example, I specialise in Horse Race Trading, I would not move onto Football Trading before I make consistent profits from the Horse Racing market. From experience, I find that if I diversify too early, I end up making more mistakes and find it harder to focus. Every market is different so I think it’s a good idea to devote all your effort into one market to master it before you jump into another.

Some of the things you should be asking yourself when studying a market are – “what variables in this market makes the price move?” and “What can I do to profit from this knowledge?”

Tip 2:

Make a plan. This is one of the most important things to do when starting your trading “career”. You must write down your trading strategy and stick to it. You must be able to justify why you backed a particular horse at a certain price and why you layed it at a certain price. I find that making a plan helps me to simplify my trading and, therefore, reduces confusion and costly mistakes. After I have a successful plan, all I have to do is stick to it and the money will come in.

Test your strategy either on paper or with small amounts of money to make sure it is successful. This testing procedure will reduce the chance of losing large amounts of money. I find that I learn best when there is a small amount of money on the line.

Tip 3:

Don’t get greedy. I find that most of the successful traders I’ve spoken to have all had experiences of becoming “too greedy” which caused them to lose large amounts of money in the early stages of their trading career. I asked them, “What piece of advice would you give to a beginner to prevent them from this experience?” They told me that the most important thing was “not to get too greedy. Stick to your plan and obey it at all times.”

They also revealed a technique that I still use today. That technique is to withdraw your winnings every week from Betfair so that you are only left with the amount you need to trade. This will give you the psychological effect of starting back at the bottom again at the start of every week. It also prevents you from losing more than what’s in your Betfair account and preserve your winnings

Article Source: http://www.ezinecrow.com

Click For More Betfair Trading Tutorials Sam Chim is an experienced Betfair Trader and runs a free Betfair Trading Tutorial website at the above address.

2006-04-01T05:06:00.000-08:00

Betting Exchanges or Traditional Bookmakers? (my article)

Since 1961, when legal betting shops opened for the first time in Britain, bookmakers have had a fairly easy ride with plenty of profit opportunities for both small and large betting companies. That was until 2000 when the new concept of a betting exchange was conceived and developed by a company called Betfair.

Betfair came up with the revolutionary idea of person-to-person betting where people can basically place bets anonymously with each other on any number of markets. Whereas traditional bookmakers only offer users the opportunity to back a selection that they think will win, Betfair, and subsequent betting exchanges that have entered the market, offer it's users the opportunity to back and lay bets, so you can profit from finding losing selections if you so wish. You can also choose the price you want. For example, if the current price available for your selection doesn't represent value, you could enter your own price into the system and hope the price moves to this level and your bet gets matched by another user.

There are many advantages to using betting exchanges over conventional bookmakers:

Backers using exchanges can benefit from upto 20% better odds than traditional bookmakers. This is because layers are more prepared to offer higher prices than other competing users in order to get their bet matched. The exchanges make their money by taking a small commission, usually between 2% and 5%, from all profits it's users make from a particular market (and nothing if you lose), but even taking this into consideration you're still getting much higher odds even after deducting any commissions.

There are greater opportunities to make money from in-play sporting events. For example, most bookmakers suspend betting in a football match with about 10 minutes to go, whereas betting exchanges generally allow betting right upto the final whistle.

With betting exchanges, there are vast profits to be made from trading in-running markets. This is essentially where you back at a higher price and lay it all back at a lower price to guarantee a profit. Alternatively laying at a lower price and backing it back at a higher one is equally as profitable. For example, let's say you back Man Utd at 2.2 to beat Liverpool for £100. If they win you will get £220 back with £120 of that being your profit (minus commission). After 80 minutes Man Utd take the lead 1-0, and their price has dropped significantly and is now available to lay at 1.1. You decide not to hold on to the bet in case Liverpool score in the last 10 minutes, and trade out for a guaranteed profit. You could do this by laying this price for £200. This would guarantee yourself a profit of £100 (minus commission) whatever the outcome of the match: Man Utd win: Profit = (£100 @ 2.2 = £120) - (£200 @ 1.1 = £20) = £100. Liverpool win/Draw Profit = (-£100) + (£200) = £100.

Betting exchanges offer a far wider choice of markets to bet on than traditional bookmakers. They cover a number of sports that aren't usually available to bet on. These include such diverse sports as handball and trotting, as well as various miscellaneous events such as polical betting and TV talent shows like American Idol.

Finally because betting exchanges make their money, in the form of commissions, from winning punters, winners are always welcomed. This isn't always the case with bookmakers, who are more than happy to take your money when you lose, but if you're successful they soon limit your bets or even ban you completely.

To conclude, it's not surprising that traditional bookmakers have become increasingly concerned with the growth of betting exchanges. They have even tried unsuccessfully to force the government to place restrictions on the users of betting exchanges, and even to shut them down. However they continue to grow and in my opinion will continue to eat into it's more conventional rivals' market share in the future.

For more information click on the following link:

Betfair Guide

2006-03-31T05:22:00.000-08:00

Is Day Trading Right For You? by Jacob Jelling

Do you have the tolerance for the risk involved with day trading? Day trading is not a get rich quick business. It is not technically even investing. This competitive game of day trading is speculation at its core and the odds are against you in favor of failure. But for those who crave this type of environment it can be a very exciting and profitable venture. A study in 1999 found that 70% of day traders lost money and of those that made money the profits were made from just one trade.

Day trading involves taking advantage of price movements in stocks within one trading day. Day traders typically hold stocks anywhere from only a few seconds to several hours but they never keep stocks overnight.

It is vital that day traders have access to real time market quotes and activity because fluctuations in price can make or break a day trader if an order is delayed only seconds. In addition to real time quotes (stock quotes and ticker), day trading requires a high speed computer connection and a reliable online order execution service. There are a variety of online trading services. One problem with internet discount brokers is there can be a delay in the length of time it takes them to execute a trade order. The preference of day traders is an Electronic Direct Access Trading service which links the trader directly to the exchange through a modem. This can result in a much faster order.

Tips for beginners of day trading

1. Study the profession in depth before getting started.
2. Practice using a simulated trading system before using real money.
3. Don’t trade with money that you can not afford to lose.
4. Keep in mind, that it takes approximately $100,000 to day trade successfully and see profits.
5. Decide each day how much you are willing to risk and stick to it.
6. Keep detailed records of your trading results to analyze your track records.

Day trading is not something to jump into without considerable thought. Take the time to learn the business, practice without using real money in a stimulated scenarioScience Articles, study as much as you can about it before you begin and most importantly do not risk money you can not afford to lose. Have fun!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.cashbazar.com. Visit his website for the latest on personal finance, debt elimination, budgeting, credit cards and real estate.

Source: http://www.articlesfactory.com

2006-03-30T04:13:00.000-08:00

This is another article that I've written and describes an alternative method of trading horse racing prices rather than conventional betting:

Did You Make Any Profits From Cheltenham This Year?

If you're like the vast majority of punters who bet on this year's Cheltenham festival, then the answer is likely to be no. This is largely because this year there were many long-priced winners, which obviously attract significantly less money from the punters. For example, on Wednesday the winning horses were priced between 17/2 and 33/1, so it's no surprise that a lot of people were left out of pocket from backing the more fancied horses.

However, there is a way that you can profit from trading the prices of horses during the morning of the race meetings using betting exchanges. (Betting exchanges offer upto 20% better odds than conventional bookmakers, and allow you to place bets with other punters, allowing you to lay bets if you want, therefore eliminating the need for a bookmaker).

This is an excellent way of generating relatively low-risk profits, and you don't need to worry about whether the horse, whose price you are trading, actually wins the race or not. Because prices quoted on betting exchanges are constantly changing, and bookmakers prices largely remain quite static, you often get significant price discrepancies between the two. Using a service like Oddschecker, the leading odds comparison site, it's very easy to identify potential trading opportunities.

Let me take a few examples from Day 2 of this year's festival to demonstrate this point. Firstly, Denman, a red-hot favourite, was priced at between 2 and 2.1 with the bookmakers, but at one point during the morning of the race, it drifted right out to 2.4 on Betfair (the leading betting exchange). Now you can see that this price is significantly higher than the highest bookmaker price so you would therefore predict that this price would drift inwards, closer to it's true price.

As it turned out, it's price did indeed drift inwards to around the 2.25-2.3 level, and stayed there for most of the morning. Therefore, let's say you backed Denman at 2.4 for £100. This would return £240, with £140 being your profit (not taking into account the small commission charged by the betting exchange). If you layed it back at 2.3, for example, for £100, this would give you a profit of £140 - £130 = £10 if Denman won, and £0 (£100 - £100) if it lost. Now you could guarantee yourself a profit whatever the outcome by laying a further £4.35 at 2.3. This would give you a guaranteed profit of £4.35 regardless of which horse won the race, so to sum up:

Back Denman £100 @ 2.4
Lay Denman £104.35 @ 2.3

Profit if Denman wins = (£100 @ 2.4 = £140) - (£104.35 @ 2.3 = £135.65) = £4.35
Profit if Denman loses = (-£100) + (£104.35) = £4.35

Onto my second horse, that presented a good trading opportunity. Again it was another strong favourite, Kauto Star. According to Oddschecker it's price ranged between 2.63 and 3, yet it's price on Betfair at one point was a massively overpriced 3.4. Shortly afterwards a lot of people must have backed this horse as it came in to 3.1, despite the bookmakers' prices remaining at the same levels.

Therefore you could again have backed this horse at 3.4 for, let's say £100 again, and layed it all back, plus a little bit of profit, at 3.1. This would have given you a guaranteed profit of about £109.68;

Back Kauto Star £100 @ 3.4
Lay Kauto Star £109.68 @ 3.1

Profit if Kauto Star wins = (£100 @ 3.4 = £240) - (£109.68 @ 3.1 = £230.33) = £9.67
Profit if Kauto Star loses = (-£100) + (£109.68) = £9.68

Both of these horses lost incidentally, but the beauty of trading is it really doesn't matter, as long as you leave yourself an equal profit whatever the outcome of the race. I used relatively low stakes for demonstration purposes, but hopefully you can see how, by using a completely different way of betting on horses, you can generate profits. You don't need to know anything about horse racing either, as it's essentially just a numbers game.

For more information on trading strategies for horse racing and other markets please click the link below:

Betfair Trading Strategies

2006-03-29T01:11:00.000-08:00

My First Article...

I have been writing on average two articles per week related to my site. This is the first one that I wrote a few weeks ago, and discusses whether it is possible to make a living from online betting:

Can You Make A Living From Online Betting?

For many years I was sceptical of people who claimed to be professional gamblers. To me it just seemed almost incomprehensible that people could make consistent profits day after day, week after week, even with the added convenience of online bookmakers. That was until 2002, when I discovered this relatively new betting company called Betfair, which introduced the completely innovative concept of person to person betting, cutting out the bookmaker completely.

Betfair allows people to place bets anonymously with each other on a whole range of markets., giving you the option to back or lay bets. Therefore you can still back a selection as you would in the normal way with a bookmaker, but you can also lay a selection to lose, effectively playing the role of a bookmaker.

At the time I was struggling financially after losing lots of money from the infamous dot com crash, so almost in desperation I opened an account and deposited £100. Anyway having a keen interest in the financial markets, I started trading the FTSE markets on Betfair and quickly discovered that with a half-decent data feed it was remarkably easy to build up this initial stake. I even started dabbling in some of the other markets such as football and horse racing and after much experimentation and analysis discovered profitable methods of trading these markets as well.

After 6 months, I had managed to build my betting bank upto £5000 from an initial stake of just £100. Furthermore these profits have steadily continued, up until the recent day in 2006, with Betfair trading being my full-time job until recently. Betfair has literally transformed my life and the profits earned have allowed me to buy stakes in two businesses and leave me with no financial worries whatsoever. Ironically these two businesses, that were financed solely by profits from Betfair, now take up most of my time, and therefore I no longer have the time to trade on a daily basis.

How did I achieve these profits? Well I hadn't simply placed bets and hoped they won like the old school professional gamblers claim to. I'd achieved these profits predominantly from trading. This is simply placing a bet at a certain price, and laying it all back, plus a bit extra, at a lower price later on to guarantee a profit whatever the outcome. For example, staking £100 on the daily FTSE finishing up at 1.5 (Betfair uses decimal odds which after you get used to them are a lot easier to use) would return £50 profit if the selection won. Let's say the FTSE moved up slightly and is now 1.39 to back and 1.4 to lay. You could now lay the FTSE up at 1.4 for £107. This would guarantee a profit of around £7 whatever the outcome:

FTSE finishes up: profit = (£100@1.5 = £50) - (£107@1.4 = £42.80) = £7.20.

FTSE finished down: profit = (£107) - (£100) = £7.00.

Now if you do trades like these many times these profits soon add up. I traded the FTSE markets almost exclusively for nearly 4 years and generated vast profits.

Note you don't have to just back and lay. Laying a low price and backing it back later at a higher price would have the same result. This opens up many opportunities. You could do this in any sport you like.

Let's take an example from the horse racing section of my website to demonstrate this point. When I trade horse racing my sole aim is to find horses whose prices on Betfair are either too high or too low in comparison to the traditional bookmakers prices. I don't care whether they win or not, that's completely irrelevant.

Now the Betfair prices will be more generous than all the bookmakers' prices, but you want to find prices that are significantly higher than these prices, that will come in other time so you can trade out. An example of one such instance on my site is a horse called Ameeq. It was trading at 5.0 on Betfair yet it was trading at between 3.5 and 4.0 at the bookmakers (most were either 3.5 or 3.75). I staked £100 on Ameeq on Betfair at 5.0 which would return £500, £400 of that being profit. About an hour later the price had indeed come in and was now closer to the bookmakers' prices at 4.6 to lay. I therefore layed it back at this price for £108.70 (after doing a quick calculation using the Betfair interface) to guarantee a profit of around £8.70 whether the horse won or lost.

I've been doing trades like this, mainly on the FTSE markets, for nearly 4 years using clearly defined strategies, and although admittedly there have been some occasional losses, over time the profits have been consistent and have far outweighed any losses.

So to answer the original question of whether you can make a living from betting, my answer would most defintiely be yes. I'm living proof of this, and I know many other Betfair traders who are equally adept at generating regular profits from trading. It's not for everyone, you do need a lot of discipline, but it is definitely possible.

For more information click here:

Betfair Guide