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Trading Diary – Q & A Plus How To Pick The Right Games To Trade

Members of the Goal Hunter Football Trading Community, receive regular updates from me on my own trading as part of our 12-month trading challenge.

The 12-month trading challenge uses the Goal Hunter football trading method to create a realistic trading plan to take you from zero to becoming a successful football trader within 12 months. It's free as part of a Goal Hunter membership.

• It allows you to start with even a moderate initial trading bank
• Shows you how to structure your betting bank and how much to invest with each trade
• Sets realistic and achievable daily targets for your trading – suiting even the most time poor of us
• Shows you how to grow your bank, month on month, in the most optimal way
• Gives you a clear action plan for the whole 12 months
• Helps you ensure discipline and focus as you embark on your football trading career

You can learn more about Goal Hunter here.

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Trading Diary

Every day or two, I share with Goal Hunter members my exact trades and any insights or learnings that accompany them. I'm also following the exact trade growth plan, mentioned above, that members are using so that they can follow along and compare their progress to mine (but it's not a competition! the only progress that matters is your own).

Following this, I have decided to share an abridged version of these updates here on the blog each week so others can learn more about football trading, before deciding on whether to join Goal Hunter.

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We officially started the trading challenge on the 20th of May. You can read previous editions of the trading diary here.

 

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Monday 24th –  Wednesday 30th June

During the last week of the month of June, I placed the grand sum of….drum roll….zero trades.

Why? Life and Work.

It's really that simple, things can happen that get in the way of your trading and it really is ok.

One of the most frequent gripes and frustrations I hear from members is the feeling that they are under pressure to trade every day and simply can't find the time.

That is completely normal, we all lead busy lives and are pulled in different directions.

For me the last couple of weeks have been really busy in Football Advisor HQ as we are deep into re-building the whole website with particular emphasis on the member's area – we're a few weeks away yet, but we're super excited to show you it when it's ready.

But the by-product of that has been that my time has been limited and I either didn't have the time to trade or when I actually did have a little time, I didn't have the mental energy to do so…

.. So I didn't

Nobody has a gun against your head saying you must trade every day. In fact, I'd go as far as suggesting that trading every day will lead to mistakes and eventually burn out.

You've seen Eddie this week return to Horse Racing Trading after a near six-month break from it. I don't intend to take this long a break, (in fact, I've got quite into Wimbledon over the last week, which I'll touch on next week). Even last month, when it was quite a busy trading month with 58 trades and 70% winning trades, I only traded on 19 different days in the whole month.

Remember:

• Set time aside each week for when you are going to trade
• Make sure you have the right environment to trade.
  • It doesn't always have to be the perfect trading setup like Eddies. I'll often trade from my mobile phone, IF, I've done the right research ahead of time
• Do your research and plan your trades ahead of time
  • This is why many of our Goal Hunter members like the daily trade sheets we provide. They give a 24 hour window of trading opportunities, meaning you can plan ahead and pick the right times and days to trade that suit YOU
• Allow life to take over to sometimes – it is O.K. to miss a days trading, even if you had planned it previously. We're never short of games or trading opportunities, just move on to the next one

 

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As I've not done much trading recently, I was having a think ahead of writing this article about what I could share with you this week.

I ended up chatting to a few members as part of our month 1 check-ins and reviews with new members to see how they were getting on. Through these conversations some really interesting, and recurring, comments and questions were coming up, which I thought would benefit everyone to be addressed here – Goal Hunter Members or not

So here goes…

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“I've had a couple of losing trades and I'm either a few points down, or about break-even. What am I doing wrong?”

In most of the conversations I've had, the answer would be “very little”

Trading, like anything else, requires hard-work and experience. Very few will be able to hit the ground running and make a profit in their first month, even with all the tools, strategy and trade sheets we provide with Goal Hunter.

I would go far as to say that a small 1, 2 or even 3 points loss is a pretty good effort your first months trading. Even so far as to say breaking even in your first month of trading is an exceptional result.

This is because no matter how much information we can give you, it still requires an element of experience and match reading to know the optimal times to get in and out of a trade.

Choosing the right match AND when to start your trade are things that nobody can predict ahead of time.

Hitting a losing trade or landing a nil nil game or two is just a fact of life and I like to think of it as the cost of doing business.

As mentioned above, and last week, I had a little over a 70% success rate with my trades but I was still able to hit twenty points profit (double my monthly target!). But until we have been to the bear pit a couple of times, and built up that trading experience, a losing trade can feel like the worst thing in the world and it can then feed into our next trade, and the next trade – rather than being accepted and quickly moved on from.

Like anything to do with betting or trading, 90% or more will give up at the first sign of a challenge, or a losing bet / trade, it is the 2%, 5% or 10% that persevere and build their knowledge and experience that will be successful in the end.

Remember: You Do Not Need To Win Every Trade (don't believe me, read this)

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“How do I pick the right games to trade?”

Firstly, with Goal Hunter we provide you with a clear set of guidelines and rules for identifying matches which present suitable opportunities to trade. It's a great starting place for new traders to get comfortable with trading and start making some profit.

On top of this, we then provide our daily trade sheets as an optional upgrade. This takes everything from Goal Hunter and adds further layers of analysis from our internal database to provide between 5 and 15 potential games to trade each day, that meet the criteria I look for personally before entering a trade.

This does not mean though that we will never identify a game that ends up nil nil. As mentioned above, that is impossible as there may factors which can effect this in a live setting.

But that's ok, remember, nil nils are a cost of doing business and as long as we are getting 60% of higher winning trades, we should be profiting.

Let's take a look at one of our trade sheets here.

I was going to use today's trade sheet but as the markets are not fully formed at the time of writing it does not provide the best example (as you can see below)

We only have one game where we can make a proper assessment. That said, it does look a great trading opportunity in Sweden at 6pm today.

Instead, let's look at a trade sheet from last week so I can break it down more usefully:

The first thing you will notice is that it is colour schemed and I'll come on to that in a moment but first I want to explain the various columns that are important.

• Est. Odds
  • This is our best estimate at what the odds will be in the 1.5 goal market at kick off. This is a live figure, and we recommend members to update this figure closer to kick off
    • Green – we advise members if looking to trade at kick off that ideally, we would not trade a price below 1.40 – so anything 1.40 or higher is green
    • Yellow – it is between 1.2 and 1.40, meaning that it could rise between now and kick off or early into the match (say, the first 15 minutes or so)
    • Red – we're not showing any here, but it means that the estimated odds are likely to be lower than 1.20 and not attractive for trading
• % Prob
  • This is the implied probability of their being over 1.5 goals based on the live odds
• Target Odds
  • This is our estimated price based on our internal database for what we feel the True Odds are
    • Green – it is above the estimated price (meaning value) AND above our pre-match target price (1.40)
    • Yellow – it is above the estimated price (meaning value) BUT is below our pre-match target price
    • Red – Is below our target odds (not-value)
• % Prob
  • This is the implied probability of their being over 1.5 goals based on our tissue price
• Margin
  • This is the difference between the two sets of Implied Odds (Live vs Database) so we can easily see if we are getting value and how much our value margin is

 

Observations and Take-Aways

 

1. None of the games shown meet are 1.40 pre-match criteria and have a positive margin
   1. Although, some are very close and may well reach that price by kick off or a few minutes into the game E.g.
      1. Avispa Fukuoka vs Gifu (Finished 1-3, goal after 10 minutes)
      2. Kalmar vs AIK (Finished 0-1, goal after 56 minutes. Based on the in-play stats and the Goal Hunter model we would have likely profited and at very worst, broke even)
2. We have several games which are showing positive margin (Green, last column), but their current odds are not attractive
   1. I suspect, many members are currently ignoring these games and only focusing on the ones above. That would be a mistake
   2. These games still very much present value – but we may need to wait for 10, 15, or even 30 minutes before we get the price we want
      1. Even then, don't enter the trade simply because the price has increased. Check the in-play stats and if both agree, then we may have ourselves a trade
3. Just because a game is offering margin (green) and has the right price at kick off, you do not always have to enter the trade at that point. You could wait, monitor the in-play stats and enter your trade later. I do this a lot more these days, I'll identify games and then only sit at the computer after 30 minutes. If there was an early goal, no problem I move on. If not, then I could be getting an even bigger price on our trade
4. I personally focus a lot on those that have the yellow in the estimated odds column. We know the implied goals odds are higher (more likely to get goals), so being patient here and waiting for the price to rise and the in-play stats to support a trade can lead to much bigger returns (50-100%+)

From the list above, these are the games I would have shortlisted and then considered trading

Tokyo vs  Verdy Yokohama (Finished 2-3)
Avispa vs  Fukuoka Gifu (Finished 1-3)
Ryukyu vs  Tochigi (Finished 3-0)
Daegu vs Gyeongnam (Finished 1-1)
IA vs Fylkir (Finished 2-0)
Kalmar vs AIK (Finished 0-1)

So just by following the line of thinking outlined above, we easily picked out six trades that would have been comfortable winning trades based on our Goal Hunter models. Even if we'd hit a nil nil in here, I'm confident I'd have secured a profit if I'd traded all six games.

 

A piece of advice I gave a member this week how felt he was struggling was to ignore ALL pre-match trades for a couple of weeks or a month. Only trade games in-play which the pre-match analysis and then the in-play supported entering the trade (think yellow or green in Est. Odds and Green in Margin). I said I didn't want him to start a single trade until the 20th minute of any match.

This will help improve his match reading skills while also selecting games with the greater margin return potential. It will hopefully be good (and profitable) practice for him. If you've been having similar challenges, I'd highly suggest you consider doing the same for a while.

 

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“I don't have time to monitor and trade the games live. Is there a way to automate this”

There is actually two answers to this question.

1. Yes, YOU DO have time to trade the games and monitor them in-play.

It comes down to priorities – making the time for yourself to trade. Even if it is only one hour a week

Do your research ahead of time – you could even identify all your potential trades on Monday and then just pick them up throughout the week

You do not need to be sat a computer for hours a time (read this) – use apps like Sofa Score and monitor the games stats from your phone. Hear an alert, it will take you a couple of minutes to open the laptop, place your trade or adjust your position and then you are back to watching Eastenders

 

2. The second answer to this is – possibly

Automation is a huge topic here at FA HQ at the moment. We've recently finished building an integration platform with BF Bot Manager that will allow all of our members to have our selections pushed directly into their Bot, with a strategy file we have created and it will then place all the bets for you.

100% automated betting has arrived!

We're super, super excited about this as it's taken months of development and testing to build and we're finally mere days from rolling this out.

The one area we didn't feel it was possible to do this with, was on the trading front. Firstly, because there are a lot of factors that need to be reacted to and we didn't feel the Bot could do what we wanted it to do all the way through – but that may well change in future.

The second is whether we would actually want a Bot to do this for us – I'm still on the fence with this.

All that said, we have spoken to one member who has adapted some of the Goal Hunter rules and is using it on another provider. We have also spoken to our contact at BF Bot Manager and we now have some of our requests in their development queue. He's also shown me a way that may allow this to work, at least in part, already, which I'm due to start testing this week.

So watch this space really. We're going to both investigate the other potential solution while testing and working with BF Bot Manager platform to see if we can get things working the way we want.

 

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We hope this Q&A has been useful and will help you with your trading. Got more questions, hit us up in the comments section and we'll get back to you. For the best questions ,we'll also look to do another deep-dive like this again soon.

 

 

 

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Goal Hunter Invitation

 

 

All the best,

Jon and the Football Advisor team

 

TAGS > 12 month challenge 12 month challenge, football trading, goal hunter, trading, trading diary