Making money off the financial markets doesn’t necessarily need to be limited financial instruments and derivatives. There is money to be made on betting exchanges such as Betfair. Why betting exchanges offer you another opportunity to make money is due to the ability to hedge your positions by making and taking bets at different prices allowing you to lock in a profit. For example you could make a bet on DJ30 going up in the next 20 minutes at 1.92, and then a take a bet at 1.80. This would result in a risk free position which would make you a 12p profit per pound placed if the DJ30 did in fact go up. This how you can make profit placing financial bets and this is often referred to as Betfair trading. There is lots of information online including several books on the subject.
There is a range of different financial markets available on Betfair including the FTSE (daily, hourly) and the Dow Jones 30 (20 minutes). You can also place bets on any interest rate changes made by either the UK or Australian governments. But it is the FTSE markets that attract the most liquidity and therefore present the best opportunity to make profits. The best betfair traders out there have made thousands a month from trading on these markets. Though of course there are significant profits to made on 30 minutes movements of the Dow Jones.
Useful Resources
If your serious about making decent profits from betting on the financial markets on Betfair, your going to want an edge. So it’s important to have the best resources available to you. I’m gong to list some of the things that I feel can be helpful if you want to be successful trading bets on the financial markets on Betfair.
- A Betfair trading program giving you the most up to date prices, several are available free to use. I personally use AGT Pro also known as the Geek’s Toy. Which can be downloaded here. With updates every 200ms and price and volume graphs AGT pro represents a quality piece of software.
- Your also going to want a live source of prices in the underlying market you are trading, most of you reading this are likely to have some indicator of live price movements whether its from a Spread betting or CFD trading account. This will give you advantage over those with no live information.
- It might also be a good idea to have a Financial news station on in the background either through your TV or Online. Bloomberg is widely available on Freesat and can also be streamed online.
- A fast internet connection is always beneficial.
If you have all of these at your disposal it should give you somewhat an advantage over others, who aren’t using as sophisticated methods as you.
Trading Tips and Strategies
I personally believe that most people could be successful at trading bets on Betfair, but most traders fail due to the fact they make impulsive bets, chase losses and bet for no reason or purely because they are bored. I’m going to through some basic tips and strategies to help you determine what positions you should take.
- Many of the charting techniques used for traditional trading are relevant for those wishing to trade financial bets on Betfair. Using charting techniques such as moving averages and MACD you will be using more advanced techniques than many of the other traders betting.
- Monitor the biggest shares that make up the FTSE to see how they are moving as it will often be these shares that will have the biggest effect in moving the price of the FTSE. The same technique can be applied to the DJ30. Most of those involved in the market will just be monitoring the overall FTSE or DJ30.
- Be aware of when announcements that will move the market will be made, be ready for days when Top 10 index companies release earnings reports etc. Again can give you an extra insight into how the market will move.
