4/4/2022

Betting For A Living

For traders looking to play the markets professionally (or make a living out trading), whether through financial spread betting or any other instrument or investment type, there are a number of considerations that must be taken into account. Particularly for those considering giving up their job to trade financial spread betting for a living, running through the numbers and the practicalities of the plan are an important precursor to deciding whether or not it is viable. By the time you get to making a decision about whether to trade part or full time, you should already be reasonably far into your trading journey, and be comfortable with your ability to make a trade profitable. Beyond that, there are several key issues you need to think about in deciding how best to structure your working life.

Time To Spread Bet

Well, if you have a knack for gambling, or even just a knack for numbers, this dream could actually be a reality for you. Yes, it is possible to make a living as a professional gambler. However, it’s not easy. There’s no point in beating around the bush, making a living gambling is hard work. Bet to Win for a Living will show you exactly how to join the elite 4% and make your living betting on horses. You will learn Who to Bet, How to Bet, When to Bet.

The first thing you should think about is whether you need extra trading time, and whether your strategy can be expanded to fill either part-time or full-time hours. Generally, the bulk of trading work tends to revolve around research and strategy time, in addition to monitoring open trading positions and broader account management. Knowing how much time you need, or more important how you could use your time to turn a better trading performance is important as part of making the assessment as to how much time you need.

Rate Of Return

Another key consideration that should be at the forefront of your mind is the rate of return on offer from the hours you spend in front of your trading desk. In the situation where you are deciding between part-time and full-time hours, calculating this as an hourly rate is required to determine whether you can cover your cost of living for the hours you intend to dedicate to trading. Obviously this is dependent on a number of variables, including the amount of capital at your disposal and the efficiency and frequency with which you can generate results, but is nevertheless an essential computation in deciding whether full or part time works for you.

Setting Targets

When taking the step towards becoming a spread bettor for a living, whether through switching up to part-time or full-time exposure, traders should be mindful of the need to set performance targets, to meet them and to learn from them in order to progress. Setting targets helps avoid getting too bogged down in the day-to-day, and allows traders to maintain a general oversight over how their account is performing. This allows strategic decisions to be made more effectively, but most importantly allows traders to make sure they are hitting their earnings targets to make part/full-time trading a viable option.

Spread Bet Professionally: It’s Not Fun And Games

Spread betting can be great fun, but it has to be hard work. New traders especially can tend to get easily entangled in the novelty and adrenaline of being engaged in the financial markets, and it can be a exciting and exhilarating way to pass the time. But spread betting as a financial trading tool is so much more important and valuable than that, and unlike gambling, presents viable, credible opportunities for risk to be controlled and managed with a view to generating returns over the long term. When you’re engaged in trading the markets, there are a number of factors you should bear in mind to distinguish yourself from ‘leisure traders’, and to make the most of what the markets have to offer.

Be Ruthless

Being serious about spread betting means being absolutely ruthless, in a calculated, measured way, in order to extract the most from every position. That means sometimes taking non-glamorous positions, or exposing yourself to uncomfortable markets, if that’s where the opportunities reside. Sometimes it means holding positions open for longer than you naturally feel comfortable with, or chopping well-researched but losing positions as soon as they start costing you money to keep a tight grip on your portfolio. If you want to succeed, it’s important that you treat each opportunity as a professional, with the hunger and drive for a profit whenever possible. The more ruthless you are in position management, the better the results you can expect.

Don’t Gamble

The most infuriating bad habit of new traders from the professionals’ perspective is gambling. Gambling in this context can be considered to be trading without enough research to make an informed decision. Even if the odd position comes up positively, gambling with financial spread betting is crazy. For anyone that wants to lose their investment capital, gambling is one of the quickest ways to go about it, effectively stabbing blind at the markets in the hope of a profitable position.

As an alternative, trade on measured logic and reasoned research. It might not sound instantly as fun, but it is a whole lot more satisfying to research, identify and profit from your own hard work, rather than hitting and hoping for the best. Indeed, gamblers also expose themselves to significant downside risks, which are far better controlled through a managed approach to the markets.

Research Every Position

Along a similar vein, you need to research every single position and market you think you might trade before risking a penny of your capital. Spread betting may be enjoyable, but that isn’t its primary focus – you need to put work and effort into every position you trade in order to make sure you’re making the best of every pound risked. Read current affairs, research the markets and look at the graphical pricing data to establish trend directions and whether there are any obvious opportunities in waiting, before taking your exposure to any market. This will help ensure that the trades you do place will be the best thought-out, and the most likely to succeed with all other things being equal.

Guard Your Capital With Your Life

Unlike gambling in an online casino, where you may be happy to lose substantial amounts of your capital in the hope you’ll eventually recover it, the approach to capital management for successful spread bettors has to be different. It has to be much more guarded, and traders should try to guarantee the integrity and safety of their capital as far as possible on an ongoing basis. Lost capital is not just a few pounds down in your account – it’s lost opportunities for making more money. As the core and probably one of the only assets traders can leverage, capital integrity is a key theme amongst experienced spread bettors who appreciate the professional demands put on .

Betting On Horses For A Living

Trading spread betting on a more professional basis is a risky, difficult way to make money, but one that remains viable for traders who take the necessary steps to ensure good results.

The age-old question pondered on many message boards and in the comments sections of many articles is whether someone can make a living by gambling. The dictionary defines gambling as “the act of playing for stakes in hope of winning.”

The key word here is “hope.” As my late Uncle Dutch would say, no matter how much homework and sound handicapping anyone does, horses are people too.

Andy Beyer penned an entertaining book entitled “My $50,000 Year at the Races.” This book discussed his profitable summer of 1977, which if you use the Consumer Price Index (CPI), this would escalate to his $198,214.52 year at the races. But don’t forget, he did this while having a paying gig with the Washington Post. Regardless, that is pretty impressive feat, but can anyone sustain this year after year and make a living gambling full time?

Probably not.

Even the most successful handicappers and bettors I know all have a day job that pays the bills and allows them to fund a bankroll to play the races. When you look at celebrity horseplayers, such as the cast of the short lived series “Horseplayers” on the Esquire network — John Conte sells selections; Matt Bernier was a real estate agent and landed at the Daily Racing Form after the series; Mike Beychok is a political consultant; Peter Rotondo Jr. works for the Breeders’ Cup; Kevin Cox has a nice NYPD pension, was a former jockey agent, and sells his selections; both Lee Davis and Peter Rotondo Sr. are retired traders; and Christian Hellmers has his hands in many pots with some start-up companies. I am not saying that it can’t be done, but like your 401K, most people need to diversify their income, which includes some sort of steady employment.

So what would it take to make a living from playing the races?

Bankroll
The biggest factor that keeps anyone from gambling for a living is their bankroll. Most of us are playing with a bankroll that is within our current means of living from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. Many professional gamblers don’t turn out a profit of greater than 10%, so to make $150,000 profit that would equate to passing $1.5M through the windows! This is assuming that if you played $500 per play, every day during the year, you would need over eight strong plays per day. This would be difficult for the niche horseplayer who perhaps only plays turf sprints or is very particular with their plays. Rebate shops can help to soften the blow, but expenses have to be factored into the equation as well. Do you spend time at the track watching workouts or races? How much does your data cost? If you are trying to do this for a living, how much are your rent/mortgage, car, computer, and other living expenses worth?

Solid Handicapping
Whether it is your own handicapping or a service you use, if it isn’t picking the right horses you aren’t going to win. Last week, I discussed how tracking your bets and handicapping can help you hone in on what may be sabotaging your bankroll. Without picking the right horses and knowing how to play them, you are not going to turn a profit, regardless of the size of your bankroll.

Confidence / Discipline
Stick with the plan. Do your homework. You can’t let emotions get the better of you when looking for action. If it isn’t a race that you have an edge in, don’t get lured into playing with your prime bankroll. We all hit slumps regardless of how sound our handicapping is. The more money you have on the line, the more confident you need to be in your handicapping and decisions.

Money Management
If there was a perfect system for money management, you would think someone may have found the Holy Grail! There are several prevailing methods of money management that have been kicked around by the writers in the handicapping community. Which one is right for you? That depends on how you play.

Some basic popular methods include:

Kelly Criterion
This is one of the most popular and oft-discussed strategies. You are optimizing your wager size on the perceived edge you have on the race based on the fair odds that you have assigned your pick versus the track odds. Tom Ainslie discusses a modern version of the Kelly Criterion in his classic “Ainslie’s Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing,” but doubts that many would do it and those that did would do it right. In this situation, your wager size will vary even if two horses meet the same angle that you know has a 50% strike rate based on what their current odds are.

Percentage of Bankroll
This theory is based on the concept that you will play a certain percentage of your bankroll on a horse. Maybe a certain angle provides more of an edge or a higher win percentage than other angles? In that case you can vary the percentage of bankroll you wager based on your confidence in the play. For example, if you have an angle that hits 50% of the time, you may want to play a higher percentage of your bankroll, such as 4% or 5%. On an angle that hits less often, you may elect to use a percentage that is lowered based on the strike rate.

Fixed Wager Size
This follows the idea of the “Percentage Bankroll.” Based on your confidence in a particular angle or type of play, you wager a set amount on that type of play. Some wager types may vary in size from others based on either historical return on investment or strike rate. For example, if you have an angle that you know hits about 50% of the time, you may want to use a fixed bet value of $20 whereas an angle you know hits roughly 25% of the time may be worth a $10 bet or a longshot angle that hits with less frequency may be a $5 wager.

Prime vs. Action Bets
In “Picking Winners,” Andy Beyer talks about allocating a percentage of your bankroll to both prime and action bets. Prime bets are the wagers that you feel most confident in and meet handicapping criteria that leads you to make the wager. Action bets are the bets that you would place based on current odds or conditions that are not part of what your handicapping says are solid bets, but may be worth the risk given the potential payoff. Dave Liftin suggests splitting your bankroll in his book “Expert Handicapping” into 40% overlay win bets and 60% in exotics. Since the greater potential for a larger payout resides in exotic wagers, you must consider what percentage split you would want to make.

Horse Racing Betting For A Living

Hedging
Bill Heller, in “Overlay, Overlay, How to Bet Horses Like a Pro,” suggests playing enough on a win bet to cover exotic wagers. If you do well with exactas and trifectas then hedging your bets with a win bet can make sure that you break even if the underneath in your exotics doesn’t work out as planned. For example, let’s say that you are planning to play a $5 exacta with your top horse over three others for a total wager of $15. If your top horse has odds of 3-1, which would pay $8 for a $2 win bet, you should at minimum play your top choice at $5 to win. In this scenario, you would spend $15 on the exacta and $5 on the win bet for a total of $20. If the exacta comes in, you win on both the win bet and the exacta. If you miss the exacta, the 5 win bet on a 3-1 horse would return $20 and you would break even on the race.

Varying Exotic Wagers
In “The Winning Horseplayer,” Andy Beyer discusses varying the amount wagered in exotics based on expected payoffs. This is a way of hedging wagers should the favorites come in and allow for lower, yet profitable, wagers on longer shots. In the case of exactas, you can see the probable payouts for each exacta combination either on your computer or on the monitors at the track. You can adjust the amount wagered on each exacta to make sure that you don’t lose money if you win.

Live Betting Online

Betting

Spread Betting For A Living

For every horseplayer and handicapper in the world, there is another way to play the races. Every player is different and needs to find what works best for them. If you have sound handicapping, can show discipline, and you are smart with your money, you can make some money in this game… but don’t quit your day job just yet!