Lunch Time, Exit Trade

From the FTS Income web site comes this post titled Alli's Lay The Draw, which includes a link to a spreadsheet containing the results for 2012. After 114 matches, the result of laying every game and letting them run amounts to a loss of £637.50. However, when the operator applies subjective decisions to the process, e.g. sometimes letting the bet run after a goal, other times trading out, the result is a profit of £825.39. Incidentally, some of these decisions don't seem to be based on any logic, for example this comment (grammar error not mine):

Even though he felt, Maritimo would go on to win, he was happy to close this trade at HT, knowing that he would close up for the day

Making decisions based on how the match falls within the day is clearly very poor trading, but the thing about all this that struck me the most is that you could have made a nice profit simply backing the draw in these matches pre-game. Now this may not be quite as profitable as watching these games, and actively exiting positions, (or not, depending on the time of the day apparently) but the question is whether the extra time needed to monitor these games makes this worthwhile. A big advantage of punts is that you place your bets, and your time is your own, but for trading, let's say that of those 114 matches, you are only active for half of the game, that is still 43 hours of your life, and to my mind, for very little added benefit.

I'm not sure what the source of these matches is, but if they are e-mailed out to a number of people all ready to apply their versions of the Lay The Draw strategy, that may well explain why the prices make them value backs.

Finally, a quick mention of Fabrice Muamba who, by all accounts, appears to be a genuinely decent person, something of a rarity in the world of Premier League footballers. While the #PrayForMuamba thing on Twitter is frankly embarrassing, annoying and pointless, and I don't want this blog to go all sappy, it's hard to read stories about him, and the opinions of people who know him and stay totally detached. Here's wishing him a full recovery.