Trading software

Saturday, May 28, 2011

New strategy working well

I decided to set aside €500 today and test my new strategy again for the day. I done 23 markets and I'm very pleased with the profit of €73.95.  That's an excellent return on the €500 I was using to test and I'm getting more confident that it works. I still need to do some more testing but if it continues to do well, I can start using bigger sums than the €500 test bank.

It's funny because up until now, I was always a scalper and took a tick or two here and there when I could - but this is more of a swing trade strategy and I'm enjoying the new experience.

A few people emailed me asking how it works. As I said to them, it's under test - so I'm NOT SUGGESTING IT WILL BE PROFITABLE in the future - I could be just lucky.  But with those health warnings in place, I can briefly describe what I've been upto.

The idea is that when a horse starts steaming or drifting, people often underestimate how low or high the price can go. So you wait until there is some momentum behind a move, and then simply go with it. It aint rocket science, it's just simply the old 'trend is your friend' principle.

How do you decide when to jump on? Well, at the moment, I'm using a price move of 5 percent as a guide. I may change this in the future but that's what I've been testing.

So then, if a horse is priced 6.0 for example, I simply wait until the price either comes in, or drifts, by five percent.  If the price moves down to 5.7, that's a five percent move. Likewise, if the horse drifts out to 6.3, that's a five percent move.

So let's say it hits 5.7, I then back it and hope the trend continues. At the moment, I'm using a stop loss of the original price - in this case, the stop would be 6.0.

In case you all think I'm amazing at maths and can quickly work out the percentages of a number of horses in an instant, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed!  I've set up a spreadsheet to help me out. This is where having two screens on my computer (pictured below) can really help. Firstly, I get Betting Assistant to display the live prices in the spreadsheet. At any given time, I copy and paste a list of the 'last prices matched' into a column which works out what a 5 percent price move on each horse would equate to.

This spreadsheet is on my screen on the right, and my Betting Assistant trading window is open on my left screen. I have the spreadsheet to change colour when the price has moved on a horse by 5 percent. It goes blue to alert me to back, or pink to alert me to lay.

At the moment, I'm only trading the top two in the betting - I may try more later on.

Anyway, that's about it really - I only had one race go really bad today costing me over fifty quid but the good news is that I could have redded up in that case for €11. Instead, I didn't and let it stand but the horse won. So the results should actually be a good deal better than the 74 quid or so earned.

I've finished up for the day as I want to enjoy the evening - The Munster/Leinster match is on - then the Barca/United match - and then I'm out with the missus for a meal. What's more, she got a voucher for the meal from some friends so I won't have to spend a penny.   :-)

Don't think I'll get to trade tomorrow as I've a shit load of stuff to do in the garden - including cutting hedges. Sigh!


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