Trade The Markets That Suit Your Style Of Trading

Play the betting exchange trading game according to its volatility and play the volatility which suits you.

Dave Walton Author of ‘The Pro Exchange Trading manual’ and ‘Trading Post’ a twice weekly recommendation service of the best betting exchange trading opportunities explains why it is necessary to trade the correct market on the betting exchange. Correct for your personality and psyche that is.

I am often asked which betting exchange market is the best market to trade. This question is often hiding a second unspoken question and that is ‘How can I make as much money as possible in as little time as possible on the markets?’ An admirable question but it misses the point.

A trader who is starting out should be thinking about which markets interest him. An ardent and hardened football fan may find the glories of the 18th green at Wentworth simply a bore – golf might switch him off as opposed to an and therefore his ability to trade a game of golf will from the outset be diminished. Alternatively he may be perfectly happy switching between the two contrasting sports and will have the initial interest to be able to trade either of them.

The next question to be considered concerns the overall speed of the price action on the contest concerned. Readers of my Trading Post will know that I frequently recommend trading some of the midweek or weekend football matches; I also less frequently recommend some of the top racing action. Before I tell you why I do this let me digress and I will tell you a short story. Can we all remember the original space invader video games? Nothing to do with horse racing or football trading of course – they are actually but I will come to that – but many of us as youngsters spent hours on the things in what we would now consider as  those rather seedy looking arcades. My friend was about the best space invader player I have ever seen, he was so good that a 50p bit had him playing the entire afternoon on the same machine until level I don’t know what. The luckless owner of the arcade used to get so mad that after a couple of hours he ejected the pair of us for ‘hogging the machine’. Relevant to this story is also the fact as I have recently read that the world’s surgeons had – who knows they might still have – a preference for playing Play Station and were very highly skilled at it. Seemingly the dexterity learnt on the  Play station module helped them in their later career.

The above is as I said a digression, but a useful one. A trader starting out needs to start thinking about what sort of person he is. If you prefer measured decisions then a slower sport is going to be your best trading arena. If on the other hand you excelled at play station or the earlier space invaders, can spend hours doing a highly intensive activity then you will probably find trading 8 races at a horse race meeting like falling off a log.

I have been analyzing the comments and emails received from traders and it seems to me that the majority of traders probably fall into the category where an ideal sport to trade is football. Fortunately football in general and football trading has a huge following; the quality of the game itself is superb and not only can you see a great match but you can make money.

Of course there are many many ways to trade a football match, you could scalp in and out scores of times during the ninety minutes or you could take a position at the beginning of the match and trade out when a desired result is achieved. I trade the afternoon’s horse racing in a very aggressive way, and by the end of the day I am many times ‘blitzed’. High speed, high volume and high intensity trading like this takes it out of you. This is why I am very happy when the midweek Trading Post matches come round and I get into the Trading room and we leisurely trade a couple of matches simultaneously and trade out when our desired result is achieved. Trading football, after the racing feels almost like a stroll in the park.

So the message of this article is, trade the sports which suit your interest and choose a volatility which suits your personality. For those that can – the surgeons amongst us – trade aggressively and intensely, but don’t go beyond your limits, for the rest of us, the money is there what ever the sport and what ever your speed and aggressiveness, so there is no need to be greedy.