Advice on the unpredictable

[crowdog]

Before I start I just want to say that I find this site very informative and most of the people seem to know what there on about which is great for someone starting out.
Anyway, just as I seem to getting somewhere with my trading betfair goes all unpredictable and I'm backing when I should be laying (or doing nothing). When betfairs so unpredictable I can find that I have way too many losses
which results in a bad day.
If I can say what I am doing and maybe one of you could give me any advice on improving?
I don't trade before the last race is finished then take a look and which way the price seems to be going by looking at price movement graphs and waiting untill there seems to be money gathering on one side, if it's on the side I thought the price would go I get in and hopefully the price starts to move.
If it's on the other side I would wait for the price to stop then usually it will begin to come back in, if it now sets off again I would trade. (e.g. if I think it's going down but it goes up I leave it to see if it comes back down, if it does but then starts to go back up I will lay).
I don't trade just with movement, there has to be money being matched and enough money already matched.
I try to stop my losses at a previous resistance point but find the price moves too quickly sometimes and I end up taking worse losses. Day before yesterday almost every trade was great, yesterday it was awfull and I don't think I did much differant.
I also have a question if I can?
Even when races are 10 or 15 mins apart the real big money does not start to appear until maybe under 5 mins, why is this?

[Win2Win]

Before I start I just want to say that I find this site very informative....[/qoute]
You haven't been here long then :laugh

[quote]Even when races are 10 or 15 mins apart the real big money does not start to appear until maybe under 5 mins, why is this?

First off, click on the BIG BetTrader banner and watch all the videos.

As for the money, the bookies come in with around 1-3 minutes to go, and most traders are only active in the last 5 minutes. If you visit the track you'll see that the real bookies only start getting good business with about 5 minutes to go.

Trading is all a sense of timing and patience, I can watch a market for 10 minutes and have no trade. It is not the most exciting way of making money.

[crowdog]

As for the money, the bookies come in with around 1-3 minutes to go

In what sense do the bookies get involved with trading?

[mathare]

In what sense do the bookies get involved with trading?Laying off some of their liabilities on a certain horse, for example

[Win2Win]

In what sense do the bookies get involved with trading?
They aren't trading on the exchanges, if they are on track and lay a 3.5 Fav for £10,000 they'd be a bit silly not to take some of the 4.2 on the exchanges to lower the liabilities. All bookmakers do this now including the Big 3.

[crowdog]

Can this be used to trading advantage then, if bookies need to lay a particular horse because they've taken a lot of money on it they will push the price out wouldn't they?
Confusing thing for me here is that during the last 2 mins there is usually thousands on both sides. Suppose that depends on what bookie needs to do what and then throw in traders and you get an unpredictable market.

[Street cry]

Well if bookies take a lot on a horse they will be backing it on the exchanges not laying it , secondly there is nothing particularly correlative between shortening horses with bookies and betfair.

[Win2Win]

Confusing thing for me here is that during the last 2 mins there is usually thousands on both sides.
Most of that is traders money.

[crowdog]

so would you say from experience, the price is as likely to move in the last 1 to 2 mins as it was 3 mins before?
I do find that the price can become static when there is a lot of money about.

[Win2Win]

The price can move at any time!

Are you using the Ladders, as that is essential.

If the market is static, scalp a point.