The Bigger Picture

Trading on any market is not necessarily a 'one dimensional' activity as sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture. This is why research of the implications of a particular scenario is very important.  Take the France v Mexico game a couple of days ago as a prime example. While many punters were just concentrating on this in play market, shrewder one's were keeping their eye on the Mexico v Uruguay market which was due to kick off five days later.  The clever traders were praying for Mexico to take the lead. Why?.....because if the game ended with a Mexico win then both Mexico and Uruguay would qualify if they drew their last game. So while the France market was suspended after Mexico took the lead, the Mexico v Uruguay match odds remained open allowing opportunities to gain significant profits as the price for the draw started falling. Now I am not saying for one minute that the final match will be fixed but while there is speculation the price is always going to drop.

 

You can see clearly that when it went 1-0 the price dropped from about 3.25 to 2.25. Although the drop was fairly sharp it wasn't a straight vertical drop that you always get in an in play market so there was time to get on the ride. When Mexico scored their second it dropped to 1.75 and it is currently settled at 1.85.  It is worth keeping this in mind with the remaining second round of group games.

As for me, I was not shrewed enough. My main concentration was on the horses and I only thought about looking at the future match a few minutes after the first goal had been scored.

There were a lot of evening races on Thursday. I traded many of them only to finish with a profit of just £2.60 so I am still clearly struggling but after four days of losses in a row it was a significant  green result. I didn't do much on Friday as I was downing the beers watching the unbelievably poor England but I came out with a small profit of £13.

I am out this afternoon so no horses today. Perhaps that's a good thing.