Wisdom of Mel

Unfortunately I'm not sure I'll ever be able to watch Mel's webinars, but I did take some time to read back though Mel's @scientiatrader tweets, with comments added as we go. Tweet typo's :) have not been corrected.:

June 5: -£125.96 loss today....Could feel the market was trending against me today so decided to bail out and take a small loss for today.

Markets don't conspire to trend against anyone. Does anyone ever make the claim that markets are conspiring favourably for them?

June 5; £484.78 profit for today. A late one as stayed up to trade the paraguayan division 1 match.

Denzillion's Iceland Division 2 joke wasn't a joke.

June 1: £322.38 profit..Great to be back in action sooner than anticipated so will be trading over weekend as well to start generating momentum for the new week approaching.

Momentum doesn't carry over from one independent event to the next independent event. 

Mar 30: there is nothing more frustrating than not trading and seeing opportunities go by...painful....

Except when the day starts with three losses...

May 26: Just checked matchbook and similar to Betdaq in that their game coverage is limited. For instance today the whole of the Thailand League is playing and not 1 of the games were covered by Matchbook..all covered by 365 and all but 2 covered by betfair...so 365 is my backup for now.

Benet - Mel BET365 limit your stake if you win in the long term.

Mel - Yes I would assume so but to be truthful I only use them once or twice every 2-4 weeks..and remember my win rate on a trade by trade basis is around 53% so will see.

Where did that 60% strike rate come from? Thailand League? And yes, consistently (50% to 60%) winning on 2.8 shots will soon see an account restricted or closed. 

does anyone know what are the recommended trading tools that now are fully integrated with matchbook?

Bertje - Maybe a stupid question, but what are the benefits of a trading tool?

Not a stupid question at all. I'm not seeing anything that requires anything more than a press of Enter.

May 22: -£5.00 loss...virtually breakeven day.....Tough battle but glad to escape unscathed as at one point it could have been worst.....

Terms such as 'battle' and 'fighting' aren't helpful. You're gambling, and on some pretty strange leagues it has to be said, and sometimes your gambles will win, other times they will lose. It's called probability.

May 20: wanted to trade Viborg vs braband..price too high.. instead of adjusting my position size i hesitated goal scored 86..fed up

Price too high? Hesitation? This isn't sounding like a very scientific approach.

May 15: i was just asked how long this project will continue and its likely to end by the end of july as that is sufficient time for the project..after that there will be no need for further posting of daily results.

Get those cheque books ready on August 1st. Just in time for the new domestic season. 

May 13: Trading smaller to take on more games does seem to be alot more work but thankful for another good day.

Action in fourteen markets on this day. So the quit after three losses is a new idea, and not a very good one.

May 7: -£330 Loss...How can I mistake Midtjylland for Malmo when placing my 3rd trade..school boy error cost me and I hit my daily max loss when I could have broken even with a 86th min goal in midtjylland game. feeling like crap right now .cold shower and early night...onto tomorrow.

Back to school for some science lessons. This is not scientific. 

May 6: Crazy day with price shooting all over the place so had to re-adjust some of my trades...Glad to come out unscathed..But missed banIK hradec cze D2 because betfair didnt have it..topping up 365 account as starting to see alot more on 365 which not on betfair.

Why are we needing to top up an account? 

May 2: £248.81 profit for today. Managed to recover from a poor start. Longing for some premium hand starts but just have to take whatever the market offers for now. Looking forward to releasing my first webinar this friday. Its going to be quite an eye opener.

There's no Premium Hand in football betting. It's a term from poker that has no meaning or relevance when betting on individual events / matches. As for the webinar, I found it more of an eye closer.

April 28: Someone sent me a direct message asking why I don't trade on and on..The reason I don't do this is I don't have the liberty of sitting at my computer trading for the whole day. If I lived on my own then maybe but with my lifestyle I need a strategy that works with my schedule. Ta

Doesn't make sense. If time is the issue, there would be no need for a maximum of four. Gambling would be constrained by time. Some days your window might have no matches, other days it might have 14 (or more). 

£4.96. Break even day today. The way I trade within 3-4 trades I know if the market is on side and if not will finish day with small loss or break even. I completely believe in the cyclical nature of the distribution of wins and losses and am patient to wait for premium hands.

Repeating myself, but markets don't take sides. As for believing in the cyclical nature of the distribution of wins and losses, I'm struggling to square that with:

You can only learn if you embrace the good the bad and the ugly of how trading results are distributed because for years I tried to fight probability and this hindered my progress. It was only by accepting uncertainty that I found peace with my trading.

Understanding probability and variance is the key, and again, Premium Hands don't exist in this context. 

April 21: the randomness of late goals is just bizarre..of the 5, bundesliga division 1, games today, 4 of them had goals after 88 minutes....there is simply no way any strategy would have predicted that....

Exactly. So why claim to have a 'scientific' strategy that overcomes the randomness? 

Apr 19: -£125 loss for today. Some resistance to breaking the 5K barrier. Happy to lose the battle today as the casualty is minimized

There is no 5k barrier or resistance. These are terms taken from financial markets where a price or an index is at a certain level, and traders are reacting to it. Unless there's a derivative market where the underlying security is Mel's Betting Bank, I'm afraid this is complete and absolute bollocks. 

Apr 17: £121 profit for today. Will take this as it wasnt the greatest day for late goals for my targets. Hoping to see a reversal with the market tomorrow.

Hope isn't going to cut it. It is not a SINGLE market. It is multiple INDEPENDENT markets. 

Apr 15: -£144.27 loss for today. It would have to be a loss considering i slightly raised my positon sizing due to the growth in equity.

The definition of 'equity' is "the value of the shares issued by a company". What shares are we talking about here? Why not just say you're raising your stake in line with a growing bank? 

Apr 13: I could sense that today was possibly going to be a big day.

No comment, but it sounds very scientific.

Emotion is still there because I am human...Only Artificial intelligence or high trading frequency systems have the ability to trade with no emotion. The key is managing your emotions hence I decided not to take any more trades that evening because I was mentally done.

Later...

I was fast approaching my daily maximum loss and so took a 5:1 risk to reward ratio on my final trade of the day and it saved the day. Felt good after what happened with the Real vs Juventus where I curled up into bed and cried myself to sleep.

Yep, there's that 'trading with no emotion'. 

Apr 9: Scientific way behind how I trade which eliminates the wild variance seen in other punter/gambling mindset approaches. Trading trumps gambling.

Apr 7: Heart was in my mouth because the exchange was all over the place with 2 suspensions in the 91st minute before goal came.

Hang on a minute. Didn't we hear that Mel gets tired from watching a match while "trying to develop a justification to place a bet?" Apparently the games aren't always even watched, so that's more bollocks. 

At this point I was almost back to the start. There was more talk of markets being cyclical, and inappropriate use of 'equity' from which we can deduce Mel isn't experienced in the world of finance, and the claim that of 2076 matches studied "this year, 40% had 1 or more goals after 80min".

40% would mean that the price after 80 minutes on the Over x goals market would be about 2.5. Where the 60% strike rate came from I've no idea. Where the 2.8 price came from I've no idea. Wishful thinking? Or some data mining 'revealed' an edge in Paraguay and Thailand? 

In summary, and to put it politely, this so-called project is a lot of nonsense. 

It is not scientific in any way. 

There's a complete failure to understand that markets are independent, that markets don't have mood swings and neither do they conspire against anyone. 

There's confusion over variance and how it presents itself. 

Equity is not the same as cash. Mel's bank reaching 5k is just an arbitrary figure. There's no market barrier or resistance. Suggesting other-worldly forces are conspiring is just nonsense.

There are other inconsistencies. First games are watched, and then they are not watched - just the Betfair screen is watched.    

And sports investing is not a battle or a war. It's about finding an edge long-term over other players in each market. If there are goals after 80 minutes in 40% of matches, others will know this. If Paraguay and Thailand have a 60% strike rate, it's unlikely the market which will also know this, will price the probability at 37.5% (2.8). 

A fancy website and painfully loooong webinars might look good to the uneducated reader, possibly with a generous offer in August to invest in this project and share the riches, but just a cursory glance behind the curtain reveals several red flags that this is not all it seems.

The edge claimed is simply unbelievable, and were it anywhere like that claimed, Mel should be applying fractional Kelly to it, making as much money as possible from it while it lasts, and not giving his edge away.