Pricing your Trades to Win at BetonMarkets

By Andrew Kasch

Getting the Right Price

Bet pricing is everything at this game. Pick lots of winners but get lousy odds on your plays and you can easily still come out behind. Bet on more losers than winners but get the right price on your plays and you will still make money. Playing with the pricing and insisting on only wagering when it is favorable is what successful BetonMarkets wagering is all about. Unfortunately, BetonMarkets is always changing the pricing around and so there are times when the best bet is not to play, even with a favorable trade set-up.

To come out ahead you need to win a high enough percentage of your plays to show a long-run profit based on the average return of each individual bet. For example, if you are betting 10% of your account value on plays that have an average profit of 55% of the amount bet, and your overall winning percentage is 70%, you will show an 8.5% profit for every ten plays. If you could somehow find 20 of these every month you would earn 17% per month on your money. Each bet will have a positive expectation of .85%. On the other hand, winning only 65% of your plays with an average profit of 50% of the amount bet will lose money - each bet will have a negative expectation of -.25% for a total monthly loss of -5% on 20 bets placed.

As you can see, your methods are crucial as the line between winning and losing is thin. Many otherwise playable set-ups will have to be abandoned because BOM is being stingy with the pricing that day. This can't be avoided. You may find a terrific trade, but if you can't get the right return on your wager then it is not worth making. Placing the bet anyway is what turns so many would-be decent financial bettors into steady losers.

On the other side of the fence, getting good pricing will make a bet playable regardless of what you think of the trade set-up. This is because nobody knows what any financial market will do next, not even you. Consequently, contrarian-type plays are more playable than trend-following plays in short-term "swing" time frames, such as the 5-14 day one-touch wagers.

To win at BetonMarkets the total payout of all your winning bets must exceed the total cost of all your losing bets. That may seem obvious, but most BOM players don't really think about this - at least not in the way that they need to. It doesn't matter if you are getting even money pricing (such as the doubles) and are hitting 60% of them, or you are getting 300% pricing on one-touch plays and are hitting 40% of them. As long as the end result is positive.

Of course, what most players are doing (without even realizing it) is just the opposite. They are doing something like getting 250% pricing but only hitting 30-35% winners, or are getting 85% pricing but are only hitting about half of them. These are both losing operations that will continue to lose unless the win rate vs. bet price becomes positively aligned. The specific strategies discussed in the following pages all have a positive alignment when implemented correctly. The only other element to maximizing our monthly return rate is using an optimal position sizing technique.

Andrew Kasch is the author of the popular book "Beat BetonMarkets" (2005 and 2007 editions). He stresses that anyone who has a mind to can become a successful trader by first learning to win at BetonMarkets.com with a small account. Andrew's winning strategies can be found at http://www.beatbom.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Kasch

Published at Dec, 14 '06 ; read 827 times;

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