Moving from Greyhounds to Horses

[BeastofBrine]

Hi,

I've been manually trading greyhounds for the last three months or so, largely because I wanted to be able to trade a lot of markets most days, to try to develop consistancy reading order flow - I work during the week, and five days is a long time to go between sessions from the point of view of practicing. I'm at a point where I'm profitable focusing on swing trades, mostly by virtue of being very selective (I haven't had any success thus far experimenting with other strategies).

As we're heading into the summer with evening racing available, and as I'd like to be able to increase my opportunity to make money, I plan to move my focus onto horses, and wondered if there is anyone who has made the switch from manually trading one to the other, especially recently. If so, where would you recomend I concentrate my efforts initially? And what particular pitfalls an I likely to encounter?

If anyone experienced wants to chime in with observations too, I would be more than happy to hear your words of wisdom.

Thanks,

David

[Emmson]

I hate seeing these threads, someone politely asks for advice and no one can be bothered to reply.

If you're looking to swing then maybe focus on races that tend to be volatile like maidens, novice races, NH flat races, sellers and claimers and most Irish racing. Some pitfalls will be how you manage when a position quickly moves against you but you will be used to that if you have been doing the dogs. And whether to attempt to predict a move before it occurs or do you jump on a move when it has already started. I'm no expert on the nags but prefer 1 tick trading using the tick offset in competitive handicaps.

[ShaunWhite]

I hate seeing these threads, someone politely asks for advice and no one can be bothered to reply.

+1
There’s a clear distinction between those who try to help others and those who prefer to help themselves. A microcosm of society.

[BeastofBrine]

Thanks.

One of the things I'm finding difficult is the longer trading time per market. With the greyhounds there's often little to even look at more than 2 mins out. A lot of the time I'm having trouble working out if my hypotheses are still sound, because nothing happens for much longer than I'm used to.

I'll just chip away at it, I suppose. I don't feel like I'm going to burn through a lot of money (though time will tell).

[ShaunWhite]

The rate the money arrives certainly varies from sport to sport but it's something you become attuned to with enough practice. It's quite possible to trade horses from quite some way out and even after the scheduled start. The other useful thing to consider is when the previous race finishes, that often signals an increase in betting activity on the following event.

[sallygreen]

It's not a really good idea I think.
And agree with other users.

[Derek27]

I hate seeing these threads, someone politely asks for advice and no one can be bothered to reply.

I didn't reply because I have no experience of greyhound/horse racing transition.

[eightbo]

Hit some newfound success in the greyhound markets recently and was able to translate some of that success over to racing by breaking down the trades from a fundamental perspective then develop/implement strategies of a similar theme for the racing markets.

[Kai]

One of the things I'm finding difficult is the longer trading time per market. With the greyhounds there's often little to even look at more than 2 mins out. A lot of the time I'm having trouble working out if my hypotheses are still sound, because nothing happens for much longer than I'm used to.

I'll just chip away at it, I suppose. I don't feel like I'm going to burn through a lot of money (though time will tell).

If it helps you could think of a horse racing market as just a more liquid version of a greyhounds market, once it fully matures. Could definitely name a few top traders that started by trading greyhounds so it's not a bad starting place (PMed you about that). You could also think of greyhounds merely as practice for horse racing, it's a more natural environment to play around with smaller stakes and since the markets are so thin and fast in theory it should be easier to spot genuine money activity etc. Even when you outgrow the smaller greyhounds markets you could still potentially automate parts of that edge so it's not a dead end, and big parts of the skill set should translate to horse racing as well. Looking at greyhounds helped me understand horse racing markets, and trading horse racing funnily enough helped me understand prematch football markets.