After last week were I felt I couldn't put a foot wrong I returned to more mortal performance levels. In fact it was a little frustrating from time to time. Given the available racing, it wasn't a terrible performance. With the evening racing reverting to some all weather tracks I have got a bit of my life back. It's great to be able to go out in the evening again and the weathers looking up as well.As we exit the flat season and go into the jumps I am expecting future weeks to bounce around this level subject to what it is on and my general performance.I am still pondering over the fact that from next week I would owe Betfair at least an additional £227 on this total. Sorry Betfair but your business proposition is just shot to bits, I thought you were an exchange?!?!?!? A lot of the time I ask for prices on the 'exchange' therefore I am adding liquidty to your model. I don't manipulate prices or take advantage of fast pictures or anything, I make a geniune contribition. You are telling me and plenty others to stick it and also adopting a model that is unlike any exchange I have ever seen. Does the new york stock exchange ask day traders to contribute if they make a profit? Such a thing would be totally absurd. If it really, truely, only affected 0.5% of your customers how come you didn't contact them individually. All I received was a bulk email into my inbox. 0.5% of customers, I don't think so!
While we await new tools we will have to stick with Betfair but I am starting to familiarise myself with Betdaq already. It looks like the odds increments are smaller there, that will impact how I trade. As soon as the tools start appearing then I will be spending at least some of my time on Betdaq while the whole site gets used to this mercurial shift in the market. Eventually I hope to be full time on Betdaq. As for next week I am quite tempted to not trade at all on Betfair, I sort of hope others will do the same.
14 comments:
Actually I just posted on another forum I am taking a week off and I would really like it if everyone had monday off and gave the betunfair managment some food for thought!
Mate good post as usual. I dont see the big shift happening for some time for a few reasons as I outlined on my blog.
You will have about a months 'grace' from the charges so it wont be until October you start paying. Likewise Betdaq seem to be saying it may not be until November until the 3rd Party software providers have their programs in place but should have their own in place by the end of this month.
I too would like to not trade on Betfair next week in protest, but unfortunately the bills still need paying so can't afford to take the week off. As soon as the software comes though I will be off!
I will not trade this week either - the more of us that dont trade and move to betdaq (if possible) that week the bigger the impact it will have against betfair.
Adam
I for one will boycott Betfair too! Even though I really need the money at the moment and I will not be effected by the new charge, next week I will not be using it. I still put thousands through the market each race. If all the smaller traders like me stopped for a week it could/should send a message?
I believe the software companies are already making the Betdaq software so we will soon be able to use their API! Could be interesting,
I hope all this doesn’t make too much of a problem because I’m only just getting on top of trading.
I like your idea about not trading at all for a week. If all traders took that approach for one week, perhaps Betfair will realize their mistake - in their bottom line at least.
I sent an email to betfair to protest against the premium charges, even tho I am nowhere near being liable for them. I got a response saying this
"Our most sophisticated customers are winning increasing amounts as a group, and a small proportion of them (less than 2% of customers who were in profit, after commission, in the last 12 months) win at such a frequency that when they win, we make less in revenue than we spent bringing that money in. This is the reason for the charge."
notice its gone up from less than 0.5% to less than 2%. And somehow, you are lowering their revenue by winning? surely if a market trades x pounds, then it doesnt matter if theres only 1 winner, or 100000, the overall amount of commision paid will be the same, so sounds like BS to me.
Guys, I've changed the header to reflect our change in sentiment.
Shame I can't change the blog URL, unless anybody knows how to do that?
The more I think about it the more I think I will take next week off. I think for reasons others have stated on the comments it may be difficult for everybody to do that but so I think the impact may be limited but I'd like to make an effort even if it is a token one.
Perhaps an idea to ditch the 'Joim Betfair Now' ad and replace it with 'Join Betdaq Now' :-)
At least we should be able to dent their profits significantly until we can make the switch to another exchange.
Unfortunately, like every other walk of life, will the protagonists suffer? I don't think so, they've got their slice and will just lay staff off. It's a shame but that's how business works.
Hi,
It's good to see more of you Betfair traders coming over to the Daq. The forum will soon be up and running so see you there.
The Sports Trader
http://www.betdaqtrader.com/
How heartening to read the comments re: taking the week off. I would dearly love to be in a financial position to join in (or not as it were!) for the whole week. I will have my feet up on Monday at the very least, plenty of paperwork to catch up with.
gl for the week ahead chaps. We will fight them on the beaches etc etc.... :)
Good stuff as usual. We have converted all our published bets at bet72.com to Betdaq, vive la 2% revolution!
This post is directed to fellow traders out there who will be hit by the premium charge. As a full time trader myself I thought I might add my views on the debate. While I am hardly happy about this, and while I do fully understand (and agree) with many of the thoughts of people who say the charge is unfair and is being handled badly, I feel a degree of perspective is needed here.
With the extra charge or not, I consider myself very fortunate to be able to do this for a living. Not fortunate in terms of how easy it is etc (as anyone who does this or has tried knows this can be a hard, unforgiving business and it takes an enormous amount of effort, resilience and knowledge to pull off) but simply in terms of the lifestyle this has allowed me. I work less than 4 hours per day and can do this from anywhere in the world. I am 27 and make more in one day (or rather afternoon) than my father makes all week and he has been slogging his guts out at the rat races for 40 years.
I feel that before people get too worked up about this and threaten mass campaigns / boycotts against betfair etc they may be wise to consider that what they are actually doing is gambling with their futures. The purple site wont suddenly transform into a new betfair without the charge, and in the highly unlikely event that it did, you would still have a very difficult changeover period. Any successful trader on here has had to learn the markets and how they function - and any changes in the markets that you will be trading will only mean that you will have to relearn and readjust to new markets which, I suggest, may not be as simple (and certainly wont be as profitable) as you may believe.
Betfair have taken years to build up such a large customer base. We will not see any kind of mass migration (and certainly not from punters) overnight. Traders rely on ‘real’ money from punters, those that move next week will simply find too much competition from other traders for too little overall market liquidity.
Furthermore, could the purple site currently handle the extra capacity? Are there any guarantees that API products will work the same over there and in such a stable manor as, say, bet angel does over here (consider the problems racing traders’ software often have.) The purple site uses smaller tick sizes…. A successful trade between 2 and 3 would earn you half on purple what it does on betfair
Who is to say that in the future the purple site will not introduce such a charge? I have heard that they have guaranteed not to increase commission until December 2008.
My own feeling is that, while this new charge is ……… all I can do is to take it on the chin and get on with it. Moaning about betfair / principles etc. will only help to damage betfair’s reputation and drive punters away, which will only hurt traders. I will simply be looking at ways to improve my trading to make up for the extra 15% that I will be charged but if I can’t, then I suppose I will have to make do with only making an average of £1,100 per week rather than £1,300, only working afternoons. I am not saying this to show off, I couldn’t care less what anyone reading this thinks of me (and NO, I certainly DON’T work for betfair!), I am merely pointing out what is to me the elusive obvious. At the end of the day we are extremely lucky to be able to do something like this for a living - hopefully you will remember this. I’m not a fan of betfair’s attitude towards traders any more than anyone else is, and I do wonder what will be the next threat from them to my livelihood …… but things will most likely go on as before, as they did when they decided to introduce the SP and people thought it would take all the exchange liquidity. In my opinion, certainly in the short term, the ones who will lose out the most will be those traders who jump ship in protest - the other site doesn’t have the liquidity to accommodate new traders which will merely leave more for those traders who stay.
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