My Trip Through Trading

Matt Wood

@chris-osborne Thanks Chris

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@matt-wood Congratulations to you both

Matt Wood

@james-woodroffe Cheers mate

James Woodroffe

@matt-wood Congratulations mate, on your news that’s fantastic to hear. All the best to you and the good lady.

Matt Wood

Some time ago I set myself up a filter with the idea of looking at the BTTS market with a potential set and forget strategy.

Filter:
Overall goals scored per match average >= 3.2
Home scored by FT% >=80
Away scored by FT% >=80
Overall FT BTTS% >=60
Away played >=5
Home played >=5

The following stats are from 354 games (there was a test run of 500 games before this version).
I think the BTTS idea is a bit hit and miss but seems like there is some good data here so have been tracking with more purpose. These numbers are from raw data from the software, I do have a spreadsheet that is breaking this all down by leagues but needs time to build up to significant numbers. Rough plan was to just let the numbers build up through to the end of the winter seasons and see what it looks like.

Any thoughts and or advice would be very welcome.

Matt Wood

Right I am back after a week away, missed last weekends trading but from the looks of the forum posts it seems as though some have done ok, which is always good, success breeds success and all that. Its great to see people on here doing well whatever stage they are at.

I took a HUGE gamble at the weekend and popped the big question to my good lady and although I won't ever fully understand why, she said yes (I think her dog put pressure on her to say yes, as there would have been an EPIC dog sulk if no had been uttered). So I come back to trading a very happy man

Having said that we are now hit with another god awful international break

Time to look at numbers i guess...

Ryan

great read thank you for sharing

Matt Wood

Well end of another month is here already.

Month round up: OCTOBER (month 6)
5.32pts loss

Total trades: 28

Seems like mid to high 20s might be the area this settles in. 1 trade per day roughly does not feel like too much to me so could be good, more on this later.

Winners: 12
A LOT lower than previous months.

Of the 16 that did not win, 7 were scratch trades and 9 were outright losses. 9 losses in one month is triple the max losses this filter has ever produced in one month. This may be that there are more games hitting the filter now since the winter leagues are popping up.

Mistakes: Zero (technically)

Although there were not any trading mistakes on an individual trading level (which I am pleased with since this is becoming consistent now), If you follow this blog then you will be aware of what is a LARGE overall mistake. That being jumping the gun in how many trades I take from this filter. As stated in a previous post I will now only trade if a league has 30 games recorded with a minimum of 80% strike rate. I am also adding to this the need for the HT scoreline to also have an 80% strike rate. Hopefully this will trim down the selections and cut out some of those losses.

After my spouting about how happy I am with my consistency on last months update this has now been ruined If, and the way I am feeling at the moment its a BIG if, I can get a green month in November (amount for now is not a concern) then I will be happy that I am on the right path towards being month to month consistent. I am aware that November may be a bit under used for me as we have the ever loved international break on one weekend and another weekend I will be away and unable to trade at all. But the trades that are done will be SUPER selective in accordance with the rules above.

I will still be happy to be the proverbial tortoise, as long as I understand what I am doing

Ryan

@matt-wood Sounds good, you can't go too far wrong with the split stake

Matt Wood

Well after chatting with Darri (see below) I have to admit to jumping the gun somewhat on trading this filter. Not something that is easy to admit I guess but its the truth.

Honestly it knocked my confidence somewhat and yesterday found me looking around at ideas for starting again with a different style of trading. However, this would put me back about 8mnths or so, so I shut this line of thinking down. I already have some tests going on for other things so there will come a time when those might have something and this should satisfy that particular aspect of fomo.

So going forward I will continue to trade Ryans split stake filter with minor tweaks, currently have a 95% success rate trading this. Will Also continue to follow Darri's LTD for my little side bank on Betdaq.

As for my SHG filter, I am having renewed confidence in it after looking more closely at the data gathered so far. Having removed any leagues with a SR of less than 80% the remaining leagues bring up an overall SR of 95.52%.

Some of these only have a few games collected so far. This means they are not really to be counted on for data as it could swing wildly with a few losses.

Rules going forward on this now will be strictly leagues with a minimum of 30 games recorded AND that have a minimum 80% SR.

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@Matt-Wood I am currently using the SHG any scoreline filter from the profitable users. I have 4% max staking plan. If its not in the filter I don't get on it. At half time I check the prices minimum price for me is 1.40, split my stake into 3. 1.40,1.60,1.80. If I don't get matched so be it, nothing lost.

Matt Wood

@lee-haworth Its my own filter, heavily based on one Darri used some time back but changed slightly.

I look to back my first stake (0.5pts) at or just after HT in the Over +1.5 goal market. Follow that up with another 0.5 pt stake when the odds climb to 1.05 ticks min over my entry. Cash out if a goal, at around 75-80mins I enter the lay under 0.5 goal market to win 1pt.

Total risk per trade is never more than 1.85pts

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@matt-wood What strategy and filter are you using? Are you just using the one at the moment?

Matt Wood

@lee-haworth Hi Lee, yes I have a staking plan and i 100% stick to it. As discussed with Darri here though, I need to narrow in on the value of the trades and make sure I am getting a good price.

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@Matt-Wood I to had a bad day yesterday, 3 losers out of my filter results. We can't win them all. Do you have a staking plan Matt? If so do you stick to it?

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@matt-wood said in Can I even trade...:

@darri said in Can I even trade...:

@matt-wood only thing id say is only thinking about the strike rate will present you with swings. Right now you havent got the right scorelines/leagues sorted for this. These will come in time. However, no point talking about 4-5 months worth of data predicting. So to help you right now, why dont you just focus on selecting the games on your filter that reach a good edge on the market. Im assuming (pull me up if im wrong) that youll just be trading games because it on your system and even if the odds are slightly ok to trade. Like iv been saying on my blog, these high intensive strats are lulling a lot of people right now because, its easy to get a batch of data saying 1 thing and that we are untouchable, yet when we trade it we see that variances happen and our old data was not realistic. Its a very hard strat to pull off. Its also a reason im happy to leave them. The risk/reward isnt great. Im now ultra selective, if i get in its likely because its on tv and i then have a viewing edge. Just a thought for you to think about. Yes strike rate is important but the edge has to be huge for you to avoid bad variances due to the odds people are taking. The more trades you do the more likely youll run into those cycles. Examples of this are everywhere on the forum. Id like my shg filter if entering at HT to be above 92%, if we use your 88.63% it then makes some trades weak compared to the average you are setting. That 4% is huge. Its why id say that shgs are in fact the worst strategy for people to learn first. Fine margins with terrible risk/rewards, its a recipe for disaster.

Thanks Darri. I had in my head some of your comments from around the forum about high sr strats in the last few months. Not sure how I can fix this to make sure Im getting a good edge. Something I need to figure out properly in my own head I guess, to make sure I understand it properly. It might be that after the end of this month I just go back to paper trading these until the end of the year and see what the numbers are like at that point.

Currently I don't trade every game that comes up on my filter. At ht I will check top goalscorers are on the pitch, check the fh action is good enough and watch the first 5-10 mins of the sh before entering. Also I am only trading the games on my filter which have a 90% or higher success rate on the ht scoreline.

As you say, months from now with the addition of league data I may get better results.

Just out of curiosity what 'style' of trade would you recommend for a beginner if shg is one you would not?

@Darri Excellent advice

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@matt-wood you are not back of the class bud, just on the verge of graduating you are closer than you think, sadly there isnt anything i can tell you to change, you have to do it yourself, your last sentence is the key to that

Matt Wood

@darri Yep I remember that post and its so true. When I used to teach martial arts I was super confident about doing it as I knew I could answer any question off the top of my head.

So with trading, back of the class I go into the stupid chair

Look more at why the losers are losers and why the winners are winners, find the difference.

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@matt-wood not sure if you remember a post a while back i did on the blog. It talked about i want to be in a situation where if someone asked me i could explain in great detail why exactly i traded that game. I spoke about references to how warren buffet does those agm meetings, answers then off top of his head very easily. I wanted to be like that. Know my trading and why im doing it. If your partner was to ask what are you doing and can you teach me if you cant do that at present then you need to keep learning. It all comes with time mate. Some click right away others dont. Just make sure each trade or each month is something learnt. Im sure if you look back at this blog of yours if you had actually put into practise the things you learnt from mistakes and winners youd already be very consistent. We tend to see things to change but not change them in fear it rebounds. The people that get this right are typically those who went bullish and said right im changing this and making sure i dont fall back to that.

Matt Wood

@darri I think you are probably right about it not being ready yet. Paper trading it is then Some of the leagues have built up a fairly high number or games now, high 30s and 40s so the % sr in those leagues is probably starting to have some meaning.

I need to try and get my head around making sure I have identified value from the price in a game as my next learning point really. Is it just a case of looking over the data to see what an average odds at time of entry is and then taking those prices (assuming all else fits the needed criteria) that are higher than your average?

I guess I have made it a little tougher by targeting the +1.5 goal market. Will need to have a look properly at the numbers and see what they say. Currently not been taking anything less than 2.12 for the first stake and then +1.05 ticks after that. However, I could not explain to anyone WHY I am doing that so clearly need to figure that out.

Appreciate your input Darri