Well, had an interesting couple of hours training, using Bet-Trader Pro to trade the Australian Horsies on Betfair.

 

This program is not without it's fault, being in it's beta testing stage. The first fault, I'm already aware of, is that problems will occur when you don't move on to the next horse race, once the market has been suspended and you have unmatched bets still on screen. These bets will remain on screen and the program needs to be restarted in order to clear them.

 

Also, BTP is not capturing the Australian horse racing markets after 7.00pm. I will need to send an email through to tech support to ask why and will also check out the Racing Traders forum on Yahoo. This will be particularly annoying, especially if I want to learn how to use the program on the Australian market, in more sociable time periods.

 

The liquidity of the Australian horse racing market, is PALTRY compared to the UK Market. But, none the less, in my view it's relative to the amount I am prepared to trade at the moment, which is a maximum stake of AUD$6.00 per back and lay trade.

 

Also registered as a member of the Betfair API Developers forum, which put me on to an interesting blog site, named 'The Degenerate Gambler'. I will be studying this site, as this person has trodden a path I've set myself (http://blog.rai.com.au), although, that being said, I would like to make the following statement;

 

As opposed the Degenerate Gambler, I consider myself to be a trader, risk averse for 90 percent of the time. I have realised that the spread between trading and gambling can converge into outright gambling.

 

For example, whilst trading (training) last night, I compared the price of a favourite on the NSW online TAB, 30 minutes prior to the start of the race. I assumed that prices on Betfair are 20 percent more favourable than the TOTE, I decided to speculate back and lay odds, and thought I might place my bets prior to the race. Big mistake. This is speculation at its worst, especially for a trader not familiar with horse or other runners in the race.

 

My style of trading that I would like to become extremely proficient in, is scalping each race for incremental gains on each available race. To do this, one should monitor the pressure of money available for both backing and laying, and trade as more money comes into the market. Assuming the concept of supply / demand is at work, the price will shorten or drift accordingly, allowing traders to take advantage of price discrepancies. To gain an extra edge, it might be worthwhile monitoring how much money is available above and below the markets current position as well as the POM indicator.

 

I suspect that there are market makers trading manipulating prices, and keeping prices within a certain trading range, picking off unsuspecting mugs (like myself) as they consider and re-consider swapping their day jobs for this line of work.