Flash Volatility

The flash drive is (literally) on the road to recovery, I hope, but it'll be a few days before I have the spreadsheet back and the data from last Saturday and beyond updated, but so long as it comes back, I guess I can live with that. Frustrating, but nothing I can do about it other than learn from my laziness and take the time to back these things up more frequently. Someone at work told me I that should do this 'regularly', and had some trouble understanding that being 'regular' does not mean the same thing.

Just had a sneak preview at the Premium Charge for this week, and no respite with the total charges still bubbling at just under the 20% level, but the 'good' news is that the hit is less than usual which probably means the Academy Awards are yet to be included.

Although much of the recent focus has been on football, long-time readers of this blog will know that this sport is just one of many strings to my investing bow. I have a quiver full of arrows that I unleash in various amounts at any number of sports, with the amount determined by the edge I have. The Betfair Premium charge is the price I have to pay for the ability to trade in markets that other sites either do not have at all, or that lack the liquidity I desire. For outright punts I almost always use BETDAQ these days. Having paid the Premium Charge every single week so far this year, there's no benefit in taking slightly better odds on Betfair and then losing 20% in charges!

Speaking of trading, I meant to comment on this weeks ago, but forgot about it. I joined Mark Iverson a few weeks ago now on a live chat for one of the NFL Conference Championship games, and he made the comment that he tended to favour trading in the first half only since the second half is more volatile. I commented at the time that for that very reason, I often prefer to get involved in the second, rather than first half of games, since volatility is the trader's friend. Mark does OK with his style of trading though, and I'm happy with mine although Mark's style might well be less stressful and if he lives to 90 and I drop dead at 53, then I'm prepared to admit that maybe I had this one wrong.