BETFAIR GUIDE

FTSE Betting Tips and Resources

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Introduction to the financial markets on Betfair

During the four years of being a full-time Betfair trader, approximately 95% of my profits came from the FTSE markets, and this is where I and a few other Betfairians have made their fortune. I know of one long-standing member of the financial forum who made a five-figure profit last month (January '06) from the financials alone.

There are other markets besides the FTSE that you can trade, such as the Dow Jones, but it's the FTSE markets that attract the most liquidity. The most popular of these are the intraday markets, ie betting on whether the FTSE 100 will rise or fall in any given hour, eg 8-9, 10-11 etc. These are very volatile and not really recommended for the beginner. The other main markets are the midday and daily up/down markets, ie betting on whether the FTSE 100 index will be up or down at 12.00 and 4.30 respectively. Note the daily market is settled using the closing price which is determined after a 5 minute-auction between 4.30 and 4.35. These markets are a lot easier for beginners to trade because they're obviously spread over a greater time frame and therefore prices move slower, allowing users more time to think about and analyse their positions.

Useful resources

If you're serious about becoming a profitable trader, then the first thing you need is a reliable live feed. This is absolutely crucial. There are some free tools that you can test out such as the Yahoo ticker, and free basic services from sites like ADVFN and moneyAM, but in my opinion to be successful you need a paid service offering unlimited live prices of both stocks and indices, and ADVFN's customised service of live share prices plus live FTSE 100 ticker (not sure of the price) should suffice. I used their £50/month service which offers Level 2 data as well but only because I dabbled with spread betting sometimes as a supplementary income. This basically paid for itself many times over.

On ADVFN I customised a monitor, which had on it a live FTSE 100 ticker, obviously, as well as the biggest 20 companies in terms of market capitalisation in the FTSE 100. (To do this yourself, in ADVFN, select "toplists" then "market capitalisation"). Because the FTSE 100 index is a weighted index the bigger companies (ie BP, Vodafone, Glaxo, HSBC etc) affect the index far more than the smaller companies. This screen will effectively be your main data screen.

As well as having an ADVFN and a Betfair window open, I also had an igindex (spread prices) and a binarybet (decimal odds) window open. These provide free streaming live prices of the FTSE 100, as well as the Dow (which is very important) and a few other variables like the current oil price, which in recent months has had more and more of an impact on the major world indices.

Another site I use is Bloomberg (online or through satellite tv) for live breaking news and to make a note of the economic data (link) that's due to be released during a given day (also available from the ADVFN forum). For a live streaming Dow Jones chart, I used quote which is an excellent free site, with superb charting facilities. These sites are especially important between 2.30 and 4.30 UK time when the Dow opens. Think of the FTSE as the Dow's lapdog, like Tony Blair and George Bush, in that whatever direction the Dow moves, the FTSE will generally follow.

As well as these sites, if you live in the UK, there's a few other useful resources you may like to use. David Schwartz's FTSE trends on page 239 of BBC2 teletext is a good read at the start of every trading day. I also enjoy listening to Henk Potts at about 7.30 and 8.30 on TalkSport every morning for his news and analysis, and his witty banter with Alan Brazil and co.

That's it, I've told you all the sites that I used on a daily basis to turn an initial £100 into many many thousands over the course of my four years as a betfair trader. If you haven't already done so, you can sign up to Betfair by clicking here (Betfair doesn't accept US customers). Otherwise, click on "tips and strategies" below to go to the next page and learn about the betting strategies I used to make such profits.

  tips and strategies..