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Market Watch: US Presidential Election 2020

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Everyone is sick of reading and thinking about this but I'm just dropping a brain dump here as a reference for future.  In particular as a warning not to get involved next time.   NB: I dont think I am qualified to speak about these things, I am not any smarter than any of the other participants. These are simply my notes as I attempt to grow my own understanding. The market usually comes to a fair price by way of market forces - diverse and independant opinions aggregated together in the exchange.  One thought is that on politics that the market can be lead by an often biased media.   There was a growing opinion that this was a once in a lifetime betting opportunity similar to the McGregor/Mayweather event, the market was wrong/biased, the smart money had run out. The matched amount kept growing and growing presumably people with more money than sense having a flutter.  I thought that I could beat this sort of person. £500,000,000 was traded on betfair before election day. Where h

Market Watch: SPOTY and Rashford

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The Headlines.   On 23rd of October the world woke up to headlines such as: 'He does not give up': how Marcus Rashford became a hero to school kids  and  Despite Tories rejection, Marcus Rashford Twitter timeline shows mammoth success in bid to feed children But also headlines like this: SPOTY 2020 odds: Marcus Rashford favourite to win BBC Sports Personality of the Year after free school meals campaign The Reaction. The price for SPOTY as the previous headline suggests was slashed.  There is a problem with the bookie odds though.  They wont be taking huge bets on a market like this, also they welcome action only from recreational punters.  These restrictions means that they are restricting the amount of information they are taking and need to generate the most accurate odds. So lets turn to the exchanges - and we also see a similar contraction in his price.  All the way down to 1.6 (highlighed below). But this seems at odds with the previously stated criteria published by the

Is there any Sense in the Messi Mess?

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Is there any Sense in the Messi Mess? I'll try to keep this short - just to keep it as a record of what has happened and how the betfair exchange markets have followed. I have followed the market "Specials - Messi Next Club - Transder Window Ending 5th Oct", alongside the "English Premier League Winner 2020/21" market.  The idea was to inspect:   1. How the market reacted to certain news,    2. How much signing Messi would increase the chance of Man City to win the Premier League. Chart: Trend of prices and significant events marked (click to enlarge) So what I noticed was: Was the "Messi Next Club" market ever very accurate? There was a spell between Aug 26 and Sep 3 where it didn't appear to matter whether signing would add value to the City squad or not. The price of winning the Premier League remained more or less constant at about 1.74 (a 57% chance) when it looked like they were probably going to sign Messi (for example as short as 1.68

Towards Condensing the Season

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So I had an idea to complete the Premier League season in fewer matches. There is a fixture list of remaining fixtures, but not all fixtures are created equally. For example Liverpool vs Aston Villa would put a bit more shape to both the title race and the relegation battle, or Man Utd vs Sheff Utd would add significant information to the race for Champions League spots. One process to consider would be to rank the remaining fixtures by relevance based on title/relegation/Champions/Europa League "battle", based on which "battle" is most open and which teams are most involved in those battles. 1. Rank the remaining fixtures. 2. Play the most relevant next. 3. Check the table if all "battles" are mathematically decided then stop, else repeat from 1. It may even increase the fairness as the most relevant matches are prioritised.  It is more likely that you get a fair run in where Villa and Brighton both play Liverpool full strength and less lik