Trade the Exchanges

By Heath Pope

I would kill to be able to make a living from sports betting and horse racing and I expect so would you.  When you attempt to do this, you obviously experience good and bad times as you ride out the bankroll fluctuations.

One way of bringing in slow but steady profits is through trading on a betting exchange.  A betting exchange trader is very similar to a stock exchange trader.  The aim is to back and lay or lay then back (similar to buy and sell on the stock market) for profit, before the event has even started.

Edges & Odds contributor Stuart Allan is not only an exceptional stock trader he is also an accomplished betting exchange trader.  There are many parallels between trading on a betting exchange and trading on a stock market and they require similar skills.

You can back an outcome then lay the same outcome back at a lower price to guarantee a profit or you can do the opposite by laying first then backing the outcome back at a higher price.  It sounds confusing, but once you start it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it.

Generally (depending on how you structure the trade), it won’t matter which horse/team/player wins, you will make a profit; a great position to be in.  It is said that most of the money bet on the exchanges comes from traders.

The aim of a trader is to form what is known as a ‘green screen’.  On Betfair, the result of an outcome winning is displayed as either red (for a losing position), or green (for a winning position).  When the amount displayed under all of the outcomes in an event is green, you cannot lose and have locked in your profit.  An example of a green screen is below . . .

The above bet is biased slightly towards Tiger winning the tour championship.  If you look closely, you will see that we stand to gain $137.29 if Tiger wins the tournament.  If he doesn’t, you can see what will be made if any of the other players win.  In this screenshot you can see that this amount is $75.63.

There are punters making very solid incomes from trading the price of the outcome rather than betting in the traditional sense relying on particular horses winning a race.

Trading can provide a low risk way of making some nice dollars.

A while back I discovered some trading programs that are exceptional tools for punters interested in trading.  (Note that you don’t have to currently be a trader to use them).  Sure you can still lose, nothing is a sure thing, but with the advancements in these trading programs they virtually tell you which way the market is going and as long as you don’t get too greedy then KA CHING, you have a virtual money machine right in front of you.

A guaranteed profit, despite the result, is very satisfying and it’s not hard to do.

Even if you are only averaging $10 profit per race, with a race run nearly every 10 minutes this amounts to $60 /hour and of course that is tax-free.  This is an excellent hourly rate for the majority of us. Yes, you might be trading big amounts at a time (not a necessity), but as long as you square everything up before the race or match starts then you aren’t gambling. You won’t win all the time, but your chances are greatly enhanced with these one-click programs.

Those I have tried are very good.  ‘Bet-IE’ and ‘Racing Traders’ are two I recommend, but I have now stumbled across the ‘Rolls Royce’ in trading programs.  The program is ‘Bet Angel’ and I have been trialling it for a couple of weeks now.  It has absolutely everything you could think of to assist anyone in trading the markets, from a novice to a pro.

‘Bet Angel Professional’ is an application produced by serious betting exchange traders for serious betting exchange traders.  It contains many critical features that have been missing from the market place.

The features of Bet Angel Professional include - one click betting, automatic stop loss, off set betting, fill or kill orders, delayed fill or kill orders, market momentum indicator, maximum liability safeguard, confirm bet option, high speed market refresh, intelligent stop loss, trailing stop loss orders, audio confirmation of bet, total available bet value per runner per side of book, total matched bet market volume, matched bets volume per refresh and moving average, greening up button, manual bet, manual greening up (for multiple green positions), matched bet records, auto logging of all activity, internet browser built in, auto staking function, book over and under round indicators, one click make market facility, auto refreshed charting shown by price and implied chance, in play and suspended indicators, change colour scheme, stake all, price predictor, moving averages, user defined instant stake, clickable auto fill manual betting, split or consolidated odds market data and triggered betting.

These features may seem overwhelming at first, but it is good to have them at your disposal should you wish to use them.  You can choose to use only the basic features or you may like to use the more advanced.

Designed for use on Betfair, Bet Angel has been developed to be a cutting edge platform for trading on betting exchanges.  It helps you to carefully manage your position in and out of the market.  New features, never seen before on standard exchange software, allow you to maximise the potential of these exciting new markets.

Features such as fill or kill offsetting make sure that false or partially filled orders can automatically be filled or not filled, instantly maximising your profit potential.

Automatic, intelligent and trailing stop losses allow you to trade effortlessly in the market so that if your position goes against you; it will be closed in a flash and in a manner that will not place dumb or false orders in the market. You could even open a position in the market and walk away from your screen.

The super trader screen brings remarkable trading tools to your desktop. Using the unique charting facilities you can now view advanced trading information and then take positions in the market using the readily available trading tools. Watch the charts and then use one click betting to take a position using Bet Angel’s highly developed trading tools.

With highly liquid and volatile markets like horse racing, you can use the charts to monitor price moving averages as they sweep across the screen, surrounded by the unique price predicting envelope. The price envelope maps out the expected price movement in the market you are monitoring. Watch as the momentum indicator tells you where the odds are about to move to and use the price envelope to frame that movement. Two unique volume indicators plot the amount of money entering the market per second (or other time period) and the average volume over time.

The volume data allows you to see unusual orders entering the market and shows 'volume spikes' and other activity so you can time your trading to perfection.

I’m sure trading the exchanges is going to be huge in Australia as it is already in the UK.

Sure it’s not the most exciting thing in the world scalping the markets but with slow steady profits, who cares?  The result of a sporting event no longer matters, as long you are prepared to put in the time and effort you will make money.

For more information on the Bet Angel software, click here