The road to full time
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I know iv already done a xmas sign off earlier, but i get a bit excited and hyper still with the festive period, even at the age of 29
Have a merry xmas you lot, ill be back on here for the start of 2022 and we can kick on and resume the bank progress. I have really enjoyed being on this forum this past year and helping others get towards profitability. Being able to show a transparent trading journey documenting and sharing all my trades has been something iv been very proud of. I like that my blog is quite different to others out there and on other sites. Hopefully it gives for decent value and thought. But more importantly thanks for all the people that reached out and started a convo going. Trading can be a lonely profession. Once you reach the stage of profitability you dont always need forums to learn, but more to interact with like minded people, who dont mind discussing football data, spreadsheet geeks.
Heres to a merry xmas and hopefully we can continue to build my bank aswell as yours in the coming year. Have a good one
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@Darri Solid good advice. Thanks
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@dave-hayes no problem mate, as you can see from your post you talk about 3 strats and are judging how successful they are since october, 2 months. You just dont have enough data/games under your belt to actually know the long term success of them because your bouncing about and not building enough data on either to judge fully. Its not a criticism, trust me we all do this at start. I dont have any better advice right now for you other than to just stop what you are doing, track one of the strats you mention and see how it does for the next 3 months. Then start using money and slowly over time build up your stakes to a safe amount around 1-3% of bank liability. If you build a solid spreadsheet tracking this and you build that up to say +200 games id be happy to take a look and make any suggestions for tweaks going forward. But it all boils down to you selecting one thing to track and fully understand. Think of trading at first like you would any other job. You start with one simple task, you get good at that and becomes second nature. Your boss then adds responsibilities as you progress. If you get lumped with everything at once your fighting your way to survive and hope you come out other side, in trading we can control what we tackle and when. Start small and simple. Learn a strategy. Even if long term it becomes a strategy you dont like, the info youll gain from it can be used in the next strat. Youll only ever need one good strat to make bank long term. So the sooner you focus on one the more likely youll get there quicker.
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@Darri Thanks for the post and for pointing something out to me, which I hadn't thought about. With the unders strategy yes your right you have to hope a goal isn't scored, whereas I was looking at it from the point of getting in and out of the trade as quick as I can, which isn't good and like you say you are hoping a goal isn't scored, plus you also if a goal is score in the 1st Minute for example and it goes against you, then you have to re think your entire plan
When I first started using BF back in October, I was laying the weaker team to not win. Now that strategy did work very well for me, games were carefully selected and I built up my bank, from £11.81, to over £100 and using just over minimal stakes.
After all goals win footy matches and LTD is a good one to do, yes it seems as if I am all over the place, but the reality is not really.
Thanks for the advice, which is helpful and it is right to focus on just 1
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@dave-hayes heres the thing mate, you are new to trading your stakes shouldnt be above the min allowed. Id be paper trading infact for the next few months instead. Just from your answer you can tell you have bounced about with strats, we all do at first. Last time we spoke it was set on LTD now its unders. Just pick one. The sooner you set on that and follow through the quicker youll start progressing. Like we have discussed the benefits of mastering one thing at a time is hard when you open the door to trading but essential to understanding the key parts to trading long term.
I hate unders trading, i dont have the mindset for it. Iv rarely seen anyone do well with it. I dont like the thought of hoping no goals come. There are also questions on almost every trade as to what to do next. For me its a hard strategy to recommend and one i wont be able to help with down the line, in fact not many on here will because most strats have failed. There is just way less variables and simplicity in predicting single outcomes, does a goal come if so you profit and no questions needed. If you crack the unders and i mean months of proof not just initial success youll be one of few. Good luck tho.
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@Darri Cheers buddy, I'm finding it really helpful and useful. As far as the leagues you shared, I have turkey on my list as well and up til now have found them good for LTD's, but am going to try the goals strats in their now, because looking at my own Paper Stats, I notice that when I have done Under Goals, my returns are good.Stakes have been higher, but that might now come down a bit and I'm looking for a minimum of 10% ROI from my stake, depending on what the Pre Game Research Suggests, combined with In Play.
Having had my bedding in period and an analysed everything I have either tried, taken everything on board and looked at what seems to work, I have now settled on 1 strategy and will stick to it, because to my mind, in terms of logic, its the 1 strategy that I should be doing, so I minimise the risk in the market place.
All in all though, thanks to your help and Other stuff I have seen and read, I'm getting there.
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@dave-hayes no problem mate, i like sharing and helping when i can, trading is boring otherwise
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@Darri Very useful and helpful. Thanks for taking the time to share.
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@dave-hayes Spain can be a wealth of value for goals. However what iv found with my own data is it kind of needs its own approach. The prices will inflate but so too does the actual s/r. Its like its own strategy altogether. Because its wildly different to my main strategy and would require micro management i dismiss it. I hate micro management, as a trader i just want to know simple reasons for why a trade is good and why i like the price. I dont like variables to my trades. Spain being a different animal while still a good league affects my own mindset and therefore i leave alone. You can go down the route of a strategy for every scenario but that just becomes a micro management nightmare and not sustainable long term. Just like to keep it simple and stick to my main data as one big general outlook on what to trade.
Finland is ridiculously good for my LTD data but ridiculously poor for liquidity in the goals markets for a set and forget trader. So because i can trade in the match odds market with LTD and have a safe matched amount i will trade it. But its not on my goals strategy list.
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@darri thanks for sharing. By and large they are the leagues I have narrowed my selection down to.
I'm curious as to why not goals strats in spain and why LTD in Finland -
@dave-hayes i trade the top summer and winter leagues:
Winter:
England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain (not goals strats), Holland, Turkey, BelgiumSummer:
Argentina, Finland (LTD only), Norway, Sweden, USAThere are of course other leagues you can add here for example aus or japan/korea but the timings for those leagues are not ideal for UK timezoned traders. Im also not wanting to be setting alarms just to get up and trade. But yes these leagues are good value leagues and would be worth the time and effort but as i said i make enough not to worry about pushing the profits too much.
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@Darri Cheers for that.Its a great help
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@dave-hayes there isnt any need for you to follow the market. Sometimes you gotta take on what the market predicts. Focus only on what your strategy is and take the best price possible. Thats where you get your own edge and make bank.
I used to trade "late goals" actually many who read this blog from start will know me for that. I did that for a few years and is what made me build a full time bank. I would sit down on a busy weekend and watch the games from my list. I loved it at first, who doesnt want to watch football and make money. The novelty wears off and fast. I became consumed by trading. I would spend hours at weekends making money. Yes good money, but i was trading in time zones when my friends and family were free but i was "working". So if im to recommend an approach yes inplay trading and watching the games is the optimal approach, but if you can find a strategy that you can rely on to make green without taking up your time, even if its a smaller amount, just do that. In the long run itll be easier for you and more manageable. Set and forget was the best decision i made, even tho its not as much money. The art of compounding is that ill still reach my bank goals and ill still make a great living from it.
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@Darri, which leagues do you trade please.
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@matt-wood because i trade the biggest leagues i dont have to worry too much about the ability to get matched. I also know my minimum entry price so even if a game is outside my range i can still set the trade up for it to be matched before KO. If it doesnt get matched pre match then i just accept and move on.
The SHG strat is my pick up and play strat. If im free at the time or have no plans that day/night then ill trade it. I have a min price for that too, if its not met that price i move on regardless of how sure i am of the games chances of a goal, nothing is ever certain. But you can get a pretty good guide to what the SHG price will be based on pre match prices. Will normally come close to the 1.5 price from start of game at HT if the game goes as planned to market expectations.
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@Darri Cheers Darri. Thats a bit similar to what I have just started doing my end.
I have a question for you. When you trade in play on BF, do you watch the live action, or as live as it is with the small time delay, or do you follow the BF graphic which shows teams attacking, then dangerous attack.
I ask because I was trading, using the BF graphic, but then stopped as I prefer the live action and if that is not available in the Premiership, then I watch when its showing the posssion graph with arrows
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@darri Sorry to butt in gents, just wondering how far out from KO do you take those prices? If it was say around 7ish am and the game KO was 5pm, would you take that price and leave it or come back and check the price again nearer to KO?
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@dave-hayes I get a list of all the games that qualify from my own filters, i then head over to the betfair site and check the prices for my markets and then decide if ill trade it or not based on those prices. I dont use anything else. You could go super granular with this, check team news, trade inplay for a better timed trade etc, but i dont need to as i make enough from a simple entry doing just the stats software and the betfair site.
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@Darri Thanks for sharing that its very helpful, I have started compiling my own data, now I have figured out hot to use and interpret the software.
Do you use any other software likfe BetAngel?
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@dave-hayes these selections all come from the stats software mate. Over the last year or so iv been collecting data from my filters and as games accrued found small tweaks to narrow down the good selections
