How I doubled my profit Betfair trading in 2018 - Peter Webb

So, the start of the year is when we look, forward to what we can achieve this year but we also reflect on what happened last year, and I had a fantastic. 2018, on the, markets but more importantly, how, did I do that and how should that influence what you are attempting to do in the markets that's, what I'm going to talk about in, this video if you're. Interested in learning to trade on Betfair then visit the BET Angel Academy where you have detailed, structured, Betfair trading courses or, why not visit our website where you can download a free trial of BET angel professional, but, also visit the forum where, you can get detailed images, examples, and downloadable. Files and don't, forget to subscribe to our You Tube channel and click on the bell icon if you want a notification of new videos as they're, released. So. I have had a fantastic. 2018. Much bigger than, I suspected I'm. More or less doubled to the number that I did in. 2017. Which. Was a bit of a surprise sort of because there are some mitigating factors there are some things out of my control that contributed to that some things that in my control that, contributes to it and I also expect, that in 2019. I'm, gonna have a lower year but I would come on to why in. A second, but. I did also manage to get a record week during. The year as well and. You. Would have noticed that I probably I don't, think I have talked about that before but. I always feel that you, know the exceptional. Results, you know the really big weeks the really big individual, races and stuff are, outliers, for me now so, you know when they occur they occur less frequently but, they're also generally. Outsized. To what you would see on an individual, basis so I generally don't. Talk about them why because, I just think well it's not likely to occur it's not regular, and I, think that would be a little bit misleading, and, I'm not sure that there is anything to gain, by posting, an absolutely ginormous, P&L I think. It's much more relevant if you show a more ordinary P&L, although, sometimes it's, easy to get carried away but. It's funny actually in that all of you know having just had such a fantastic, year, one thing that hasn't changed over all of the years is the amount of criticism. And the amount of negative. Comments that you get and, one thing I will, say to you that's. Important, right at the front of this video is, if you have a passion if you want to do something and you're good at it just, pursue it don't, care, about what anybody else says because it should make no difference one, mistake I made back early. On in my career is. You. Know caring, about that it's it's, not something that you should necessarily. Concern, yourself, with if you're good and you're doing, a good job with what you do just. Do that ignore, everything else around you and the. Problem is it's it works even less for me because as I've said in previous videos throughout my entire life all I've had no. Barriers thrown in front of me and I've crushed each one of them and that's, what I intend to do for the rest of my life is, nothing's going to stop me I will just carry on doing what I am good at and I've learned that if you focus on that and you keep your focus and you're not distracted, by what anybody else is doing or saying, that's. The way that you go that's how you become successful, if you, over. Lis concern, yourself with other. People and. Their opinions then. You. You will fade, away it's it's not the sort of mindset that you need to. Be successful especially when you're trading when you're trading you need to be very focused on what you're doing and push, forward on that and.

Forget Everything else and it makes no difference I think this is one of the great things that I've learned since I've been doing this is, you. Know you can't argue with falls and somebody. Will say something and you'll say well no, actually this is the case and the sale what makes you say that well you bound to say that because and, it's like well no I'm saying it because it's fact and I've done it and. But. Every year this gets reinforced, to me every, year I learn. That. To. Ignore. That and to just plow on and do what you know is right and. Forget everything else I say, yeah there's my first message for you is if you're doing something you're focused on it you're going to put a lot of energy and effort into it and focus, on it and make it a success regardless of what anybody else says because. Generally. Speaking people are there to stop you and hold you and they. Won't be able to see it from your viewpoint and you won't be to argue against it so yeah same, thing happened again in. 20. 19, it's, yes. We 2018, and it worked well it's going to happen in 2019, as well I'm sure of it despite. All of the success that I had in 2018. You, know you're still going to get your critics, but, it makes no difference to me now I really. Don't. Care and have any time of the day for anybody that wants to do that if you know. Out there if you approach me and you talk to me sensibly. Then. I will try and accommodate you as best I can obviously have very limited time but, I'm. Trying to at least give you some positive, feedback and reinforcement, on things that I know are, correct true, or of value and that's hopefully what I'm going to talk about in, this video as well so. Um. Yeah I mean how did I manage, to achieve that in 2018. Well the first thing to know is the obviously it was a World Cup year so you would expect to see a big bump during. The World Cup year you have the supercycle, in sports that every four years Peaks, and, we had one of those cycles, last year so, it would be surprising if I didn't do better in 2018, than I had done in, 2017. And. In 2019, I'm probably going to do a little bit worse than I did in 2018. Now, for. Me that's probably guaranteed. Because I'm pushing the limits of what I can do all of the time but. If you're just starting out then you're still going to be on that upward curve for. Me I'm pushing, the edge in the boundaries of what is possible and, so I rise and fall with the market that's just inevitable when you get to a certain size where that's inevitable, and so, I'm thinking that I'm gonna have a much lower 2019. But, also you know it doesn't it doesn't hurt to have lower expectations, because you take you the pressure off your shoulders if, you're constantly chasing, down a target especially, when you're trading then. That can play, tricks on your mind so I prefer not to do that I would just turn up to market, turn up to a week a month just, do the best that I can and be satisfied with it and then move on so, you know if you are actively trading, that's what you should be doing you should just be saying this. Is what I'm going to do I'm going to do the best that I can and, I'll, take whatever result that comes out of the back end of it and you tends to find that as you grow anyway you fall, into the cycle of the market and there's not much you can do about it so. Yeah that's that's been a big factor it's, interesting to, look at the market if we reflect on what I saw in 2018. We've seen a lot of markets that are flat or declining slightly but. The net effect of that is that you know again we saw and I mentioned this last year when I did a summary video that, the amount of volatility that sing in the market is rising so, the markets are getting tighter they're getting more competitive and more. There's, less money being lost in them effectively and therefore less money being won if you understand where I'm coming from though they're much tighter they're much more betting, friendly. They're. More efficient, I think is probably the word. I should be using but. The average traded. Range is getting, bigger and again, it increased in 2018, so part of that is a reflection on. If. Volumes, decline, or don't grow as they should and that's, typically, the response that you would expect from the market so. The markets getting a little bit thinner and that increases, volatility, so the markets are more efficient, but, they're less efficient at the same time but that in itself produces, opportunities, so, I've.

Been Running for a fair. While a back. Strategy. Up and running a lay strategy, and I've added a few other things into the mix because. When you look at pricing. From 15 years ago the, market seemed to know what it was doing but in nowadays you see some really wild moves so for example if your role in the market was predominately a scalper you're probably finding, that a little, bit harder because their average volatility, the jumpiness within the market is quite high however. If your trend trader you've seen bigger trends now and. If you're a value seeker you're probably more likely to pick up value so that's a trend that's permeated. Throughout. The market, but. The funny thing is because most, other exchanges, sort of mimic or close to what, their fair prices are then you can deploy those strategies all those exchanges, as well I don't, know whether the. Growth in other exchanges, is diluted, the. Market, a bit or your added to it but my experience, tells me that if. You have multiples. Of one thing, it generally adds to it but it may dilute on an individual basis I hope for you and stammering coming from the market grows but, maybe you're seeing declines in individual, areas so. That was a characteristic that, came out of last year and that had a direct effect on the way that the markets operated, they're much more efficient now getting, a, back, bet into a competitive, handicapper, chairman in, 2019, you're going to be to do that at near to 100% book which. Is crazy. But, the the price of what you get. Will. Wobble around a fair bit so there are opportunities in there don't believe that all market changes are negative if, you look hard enough you'll find an opportunity I've used the analogy before, when. You get, new features within, a product when the market changes, it's not an excuse, to. Chuck. The towel in it's, like walking into a room opening. The door looking around the room seeing a door on the other side and then opening, that door as well you just one opportunity comes, after another positives. Minds finds opportunities negative.

Minds Find, problems. So. When you look at. How. It was achieved you know part of it was out of my control the. World-cup generated, a lot of activity, England had a good World Cup all. Of those things sort. Of would lift the number overall, but, also, one. Of the things in the philosophies, that we've brought to the market is the constant, development of Bettinger Bettinger was created, before. There was an API and. We. Didn't turn up as the market was mature and think well his let's create a product we can float to the market it was created, before the market even existed, and. Part. Of the philosophy that we have is that we're going to constantly reinvest. Money, into. The product as much as we possibly can and, the. Reason for that philosophy. Is many. Fold it you know many-faceted is the word I was looking for but. One of the key aspects of it as. I wanted to maintain my edge and I wanted to grow my edge and look for new opportunities so. One of the benefits that you have if. You're a customer of met angel is that. The. One of the big benefits is, that you can sort of leverage off of that as you see the product develop and mature and, take, different directions then. You can piggyback on the back of that now, we have a lot of customers, that give very valuable feedback to, us in terms of ideas, feature suggestions. Or things. That we should do with the product which we will take on board and integrate in there but, also when we see opportunities that are Kara within the market then we will push, the products in that direction as well so. That you can benefit from those. Advances. That we see within the market and there have been a lot of advances because when you go back to and vet angel, was a non API product, when there was no API Betfair. The. The, problem that we had back then is you, know Betfair took a dim view of products. That hampered. Their servers and. Refreshed, at very high speed and, did complex, betting. Patterns and, it, almost brought down the exchange before it had actually matured, so there was an article I see if I can dig it out and stick it up on the screen that was talking, about. How. This, was a problem for better fare and how they were thinking of banning anything other than website, traffic and. That's why the API was created but the first iteration, of the Betfair, api was, quite limited it, wouldn't do a great deal and they had caps. They had data usage, caps on products. That were using the API so you were really restricted, in terms of what you could do you couldn't call and get prices that often, you couldn't place that many bets there, were all sorts of issues surrounding, it, so, you know we. Went from a non API product, to an API product, and. Then we had to sort. Of like, get the product to work with the API but, there have been subsequent iterations. Of the API where. We've upgraded, the entire code base but since you wouldn't have really noticed that because you generally see it from a feature perspective, but, we've really upgraded, the, code base of API over the of API of bet angel every time there's been an API change.

But. With every, API change comes new opportunities, so this is why you see new features, and enhancements to, the product and why you've seen the growth of the, way that Guardian was originally Guardian was just a way of listing markets, then, we added watch lists automation. There. Are multiple Excel sheets and all sorts of other stuff to it but, we couldn't have done that without the progression of the API so when you see us releasing, new products we're. Taking another step up that ladder excuse. The pun, were. Pushing the product forward into new areas and allowing it to do new things but part of that is reliant, upon their. Fare upgrading, the infrastructure, and releasing, new, api's, that, allow us to do that so you know that's why you see the product getting upgraded constantly. We're, not going to get stuck on technology, that's 5-10, years old we, want it to be right on the cutting edge of everything that's possible so. In a rather long-winded way that's. Brought me back to where, that other growth. Has been in. 2018. So. If you look back at the videos from q4. 2017. You would have seen me talking. About stuff that I wanted to do in 2018. And features. That we'd introduced that would allow me to do that and of, course you know you would have seen the growth of automation, on betangel, significantly. Over the last few years we've really begun to push the boat out in terms of what I can do, especially, with streaming prices, and the latest API technology, that vastly, increased the scope of what the software can do so. A big chunk of my growth in 2018, has come from automation, so. I've always been able to trade very effectively, manually, but. Throwing in automation, into the mix has allowed me to increase the scope of what I do so, I can. Trade markets completely automatically, in the background while. I'm manually, trading and then. What we did in q4 2017. Is to introduce servants, which plug the gap between the two sometimes, I know what I want to do and on, what Runner but, actually automation, would do it better so that's where the servants come in you can create the little automatic, routine to get you in and out of a trade or to highlight a trade opportunity, to you and display that on the ladder or to execute it for you. And then you can use the servant to say well this, is the market I want to do it in and I want to do it on this particular runner as well so. That. Fills the gap between being, a fully manual trader and being a fully automated trailer.

That. Sits right in the middle so even. My manual trading now is taking on a new dimension because. Of the ability to do that whether it's additional information, that it displays whether, it's the trade execution. Or. Spotting opportunities that. Has helped me pretty, tremendously, so. Using. A combination of those three things has. Turned my trading from being predominantly, a manual trader ten years ago, and. I feel like in the last year what's happened is I have become a conductor, of an orchestra I'll. Turn up at the beginning of the day I'll be looking at all of the things and the opportunities, that are out there assigning. Values. To those bits of automation. Then. Also you, know working on markets, directly, myself, but. All of that is going on all of the time and I'm just keeping a watching brief on it as all, of that unfolds, in front of me and making a decision on what I do and don't want to do when I didn't, get involved and all of that sort of stuff see. I feel that my trading has evolved, it's gone up a huge, level in the, last year simply, because of all of the feature enhancements. And additional, capabilities, that we've got within the product if, you're not using those, then. I realize that you know you may be here and you're on that upward curve but, I suggest that that's where, you sort of start heading and try to think about where you, want to go with that because say you. Know take a simple example say there's a stretch Jia that he wants to use that is well publicize, that you've seen other people using your. Roll really should be looking at our stretching and thinking how can I beat that person using that strategy that's effectively, what. You're trying to do if. You, if the stretch do semi, effective. Then, why can't you make it just that little bit more effective, using all of those tools in front of you and. Being able to execute faster cleaner, more efficiently without, emotion, or something, or. Spotting, the opportunity, will, allow you to do all of those sort of things so, I think you have to be pragmatic and, realise that it is a competitive market if you, stand still in this market, you die and I've. Seen it many times before they've already been many iterations of people who've come in made a bit of money. We've. Become, quite well-known and then they just vanish out of view and you see it repeatedly all of the time so one of the things that I've been, keen to do is to continually, push forward in terms of my understanding of the market I know, the market really well I know the way that the market works and why, it works that way I know the participants, in the market I look, at all of those things to keep trying. To understand how I can keep pushing forward and improve. My knowledge within, the market and what I do within the market, so yeah my that's. That had been a big change for me in the last year is. That I've expanded the scale and scope of my trading fairly. Significantly, and that's been down to using, automation, servants, and all of those functions within Bettinger that we've improved and enhanced over, recent years but that's only been possible because. It changes to the Betfair API without, those we'd still be stuck on a. Version of better angel that was five ten years old when in fact if you haven't looked at Pet Angel recently you. Know it's changed fairly significantly, over, the last few years and the great thing is we're going to keep on pushing that forward we already know what we're going to be doing for the first six months of 2019. We have an idea of what we're going to do in the last half of 2019, but our view may, shift and change depending, upon what. Users want and what we can sensibly. Achieve. But. Yeah we will continue to push forward so.

That's. What what was behind my, growth in 2018, part. Of it was down to the markets in the World Cup that's inevitable a part. Of it was an evolution in terms of the way that I work I'm. Using, you. Know I still trade manually, but I'm using, semi, automation, with in there a lot more but. Also I'm fully automating, stuff as well and, there are some trading. Situations, that just require manual trading but obviously then, you're missing out on these two other big chunks as well so, I realized it's quite a curve to go up if you've never done this before but it's a path that I suggest you sort of start setting, off on so, you know if you've got your little niche that you're working on think about how you can improve and, nudge, that forward because, not only will you probably produce better results but you'll push your set itself ahead of the crowd that's, somewhere behind you and they may not be using anything that. Is as clever as as what you're able to do, so. Yeah I'm expecting 2019. To, be a another year of progress will, I match 2018, I don't think I will I'd rather set expectations, lower knowing, that I can't do it and, that may help me drive other, scenarios. And new things that I could discover over the course of 2019. But. I'm, not, expecting. It to be as big because there's not, gonna be a wild cup and. I may not get a cheetah to achieve some of those wonderful, runs that I had in 2018, and some, of those records that I hit as well maybe I'll get a negative record, in 2019. I hope I don't but. You never know you can't rule these things out so, I'm, going to go into 2019. There's so much she does have in previous years but maybe slightly, lower, expectations. But the great thing is there's. Plenty of things for me to do is plain things for you to do we're, going to keep on pushing the product forward and that, will allow you to do even more cleverer, things in 2019. You.

2019-01-18 18:59

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