How would you like to trade a market where you get large regular price swings every 10 minutes in the afternoon, seven days a week. A
market where all prices are set purely by supply and demand, few transaction costs, no middle men and you only pay commission if you win? Where you can freely act as a market maker and where you have direct market access and where you can create a spread for others to take?

Betfair has revolutionised the betting market and created an open platform for exchanging risk on sports events. This market is now viewed much more like a traditional financial risk market than an old fashioned betting market. Smart users have realised that there are huge opportunities on Betfair because they can buy and sell risk in much the same way they would in a normal financial market but without the burden of cost or the restricted access that is usually associated with traditional financial markets.

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IMO if you are into options then you will have a much better understanding of the Betfair financials because basically they are the same thing.

I worked out the way that IG price their binaries and they use an option model to do it. My model is right on the money and thats how I figured unless I was faster than them it was going to be difficult to beat over the long term and thats what I am in it for.

All winners today - up 32% :-) Not rushing out to the merc showroom yet though as pot is only just over 300! Patience is a virtue etc.

Just been studying binary bets again, the weekly stock ones up or down on the week , waste of time,unless youve got it right early on in the week, spreads on those still with a chance of going either way are a joke, 10 points on some, on those that look like they are beyond coming back into the range , they are marked right down to 0-3,or 97-100, looks like theyve got this well sown up binary bets, still great for the intraday stuff though, or if you place a weekly stock bet and its gone very right before Friday,lost on my aal up bet, but already closed my azn one for +64, could have waited till close and got +69 if it finished up, but im happy to take 5 points less now and not worry about it coming back off throughout the day.

Well I'm still on a conspiracy theory on the FTSE intradays. Haven't looked at binary bets but certainly Betfair @ 11am - FTSE leapt north in 2 mins to finish up - by 0.6. 50:1 or more had been available earlier in the hour and I was on it but greened up in the last 30 secs through fear. Still a useful few quid won with no drama. Interesting that the CMC ftse doesn't leap about - calculated differently I believe.

100:1 was available. You could have laid the 'down' bet at 1.01 between 10 and 6 minutes before the close of the hour.

I was so sure that 'down' was a dead cert that I didn't even bother to extinguish my risk by laying off at 1.01, never mind adding a bit for luck. There's a word for that - oh yes, discipline!!

I see no one's taking a chance this hour - with 2.5 minutes to go 1.01 is still not available!

edit - laid off at 1.01 with 2 mins to go.

Well I had layed 1000 at 1.01 and thought myself very clever when I had closed (not greened up) at 1.16. Sadly the very last tick took it over. Grrrr!

I'll post up a chart later on.

kernow, I've been watching betfair FTSE intraday for a week and also notice the betfair FTSE levels seems to be different from other sources which sometimes do not always agree between themselvs. Might be worth a call to betfair.

If there is any conspiracies, then, IMHO, it is likely to be an insider job
(profiting the insider directly or their mates/relatives who bet on a good odd
sure to come true).

If not a conspiracy, it is worthwhile for betfair to make available historical
data (say, one years data) for subsequent checking. Thus removing any suspicisions.

p.s. comments based on sampling from less than 5-days of observations.

The Betfair FTSE levels are correct. The conspiracy being talked about is whether the FTSE itself is manipulated as each hour nears (probably) and whether that is done in order to win money on Betfair (possibly). Who knows.

Kayak, OK, that's reassuring :-)
To which other sources should the FTSE lelvel be compared?
I need to check my sources to make sure I was comparing like-with-like.

axdpc - quote from Betfair's rules for this hour: "This market will be settled on the first 13:00 price stamp taken from Bloomberg."

It seems to me that it would be fairer for the settlement to be the last price of the hour, not the first of the new one. Many news reports come out on the hour, and could influence the next ftse update.

Piptrader; I think they use the 1 minute price, the price is used to close out the previous hour and to open the next one

Piptrader, thanks.
Wonder whether the Bloomberg has the same timestamp as the LSE for the same trade?

In our house, no two clocks and watches show the same hour, minutes and seconds.
Often they don't even show the same minute!

Mike !!!! You should be drinking, making merry and enjoying the turkey now ??

p.s. what do your mean by '1 minute prices'? Examples? Thanks.

Bullshare - thanks, that's a relief.

edit - that's what I thought too, axdpc. Such devotion to duty :-)

Betfair ping Bloomberg for the 13:00 price which is delivered to them at 13:01, hence it takes about 3 mins for the new hourly 13:00 to 14:00 intraday to be opened.

Bullshare - very useful info. - thanks. Do you know how close is the correlation between Bloomers and the Moneyam streaming graph tag?

Should be the same, in theory. Remember who might benefit from a late swing in price at close of event, its not just Betfair clisnts(- IGBinary bets, Binexx. BlueSq etc). I always try and green up on hourlies but weight the profit against the FTSE price 10 mins before expiry if the FTSE is within 5 points of the expiry price. So a FTSE 10am -11am at say 4699 expiry, 10 mins to go(so 10:50am) and the FTSE is at 4696 I would weight it to expiry positive(above 4699) but greened up.

Bullshare - thanks. Third day at betfair but pleased I'm in exhalted company with my tactics as the contrarian in me seems suited to this game. Watching the racing on C4 and having very small punts. 2 x 1 so far. Another 25k races for the merc :-)

I was looking at some of the betting information facilities available at

http://www.betbrain.com/

kernow/axdpc, the tick that Betfair use to close the hour and begin the new one is as Bullshare says the minute tick on the hour from Reuters. It is the tick that appears on MoneyAM's streaming chart less than a second after the hour. On some pedestrian sites it appears 2-3 seconds after the hour :-)

If you're going to trade on Betfair, particularly the FTSE, it is essential that your PC clock is synchronised with the correct time. I use Atomic Timesync but there are plenty of other programs that do the same. I also use AttachClock which displays a moveable clockface superimposed on whatever window you place it on.