Saturday 27 January 2007

PGA Tour Finds A New Home

Daily P/L: £12.03
Monthly P/L: £116.56

This is bad news. After looking at TV listings regarding upcoming golf tournaments I noticed that there was no mention of the PGA Tour on Sky Sports. Towards the end of last year I'd become very comfortable with trading on the sport and especially the PGA Tour. This is mainly due to all American sports having great resources of information available on the web which inevitably help any trader substantially. A quick scan over the sports pages of 'The Sun' ended up confirming my fears - PGA Tour coverage is now exclusively live on the Setanta Sports Channel.

This is detrimental for a number of reasons. Firstly, Setanta is a subscription channel that would put another £15 a month onto my overheads. As you can imagine, viewing the sport you want to trade is very important so my second concern is that liquidity in these markets will drop significantly as other Betfair users won't be prepared to shell-out for the coverage. Finally, if I'm unable to trade on what's potentially my most successful sport, then I'm going to have to work even harder to find a replacement.

So, what do I do?

I wasn't due to start my golf trading season until March so I've a little time to think things through. One option is to switch my attention to the European Tour which Sky Sports have picked up instead, but their tournaments don't supply as much free information.

To get a heads up, I may take a look at the Qatar Masters in the morning and see what happens.

Anyway, back to today. Thankfully, I stumbled across the One Day International between India and the West Indies. There was a moment when I thought I'd have to put my feet up for the weekend but fortunately a topsy turvey game gave me a chance to improve my profit & loss.

With India batting first they cruised into a very commanding position. After 36 overs they'd thumped 234 runs for 4 wickets and a score of well over 300 was on the cards. Their price was as low as 1.32 and the West Indies were struggling to peg them back but they then proceeded to throw the game away. Their middle order and tail end batsmen crumbled and they finished all out for 268. I'd already entered the market with a strong position on an Indian win as I felt any score in advance of 280 would be enough so with such a poor finish to the innings my confidence was starting to waver. However, as I anticipated a slow start from the West Indies I decided to watch the first 5 overs of their innings before making any further actions. Fortunately, Gayle lost his wicket to the first ball and the price on India came in rapidly from 2.00 to 1.50 so I bailed out for a small loss on my initial trade. I then re-entered the market at various points which eventually made up my small gain for the day.

It's obvious to me after today that I have to invest a lot of time in cricket to make 2007 a good year.

4 comments:

Brent said...

Don't forget the cricket world cup in March/April. From memory there are 51 days in a row with a match on!!!!!

Granted some of the early games against Canada etc will be lopsided, but from the super 8's on will be fantastic. I am taking almost 3 weeks off my real job to trade it. Shame its in such a crap timezone in comparision to Australia.

Would be interested in hearing your thoughts on trading golf. I'm a massive golf fan but it is one of the few sports I don't like trading. I find the TV coverage is too far behind play and unless your last name is Woods, you don't get any coverage anyway.

TraderinOz
http://www.traderinoz.blogspot.com

Mark Iverson said...

Thanks TraderinOz,

I'm really looking forward to the Cricket World Cup but as I start my new job at the beginning of February I guess I won't be able to take time off in March.

Why don't you like trading golf? I'd recommend concentrating on the favourite in the 4th round - get to know the course and the players within contention. There's some really good statistics at pgatour.com.

I've also added a link to your blog - would you be able to return the favour please?

Thanks and good luck!

Mark

Brent said...

I think the crux of my issue about trading golf is I prefer events where there only 2 or 3 possible winners like cricket, tennis etc rather then the 128 odd on the Thursday or the 64 + those on the cut mark Saturday that happens in golf.

Granted if you wait to the 4th round, there are rarely more then 3 or 4 players in contention (Except for the extremely rare low number from someone coming from well behind to sneak home). But trading the last day isn't good for me timezone wise, as for example today's PGA tournament finished at around 10am Australian time (Monday morning here) and I am work from 7am, so I miss the crux of it anyway. I must admit Tiger looked tasty @ 2.10 at the start of todays play, only 2 behind on a course he has had great success on and with a leader who has never lead a PGA tournament before, but I try to avoid taking a position if I can't manage my position.

You also get smashed due to the difference between the time when something happened and when the tv directors decide to actually show it, which makes taking short term positions susceptible. That being said, I always trade the majors but I try to avoid trading 1st, 2nd and 3rd rounds of any other events, though I am sure there are plenty of people out there making good money from doing the exact opposite.

Would be interested in your thoughts....

Also, I have added a link to your site on my blog.

Cheers
TraderinOz
http://www.traderinoz.blogspot.com

Mark Iverson said...

Trader in Oz,

I'm a fan of Tourcast - it doesn't matter what the producers are showing on TV.

Visit pgatour.com and see for yourself.

Mark

www.stanjames.com