Arbitage Betting

having spent a few hours today and yesterday reading up a bit more about spred betting this seems to keep popping up a lot.

basically i understand how it works, with the difference in the spreads set by different brokers but was curious about the regularity such events occur as, obviously, it appears an easy method to make good gains.

is it a once in an hour, day month or yearly event in general? which markets do they occur most regularly on? is there any tricks to spotting them? is there any good methods to spot these gains and capitalise on them, such as a 'broker of brokers' where you can view the spreads, if you understand what i mean?

any help much appreciated

The only way to view the various spreads (I imagine) is to look at each of the bookies' websites and see how their prices differ at a particular time, but as far as I'm aware there isnt any way of knowing when there will be a difference between bookie A's price and bookie B's price.

I presume you are referring to arb'ing the differences between different bookies odds ? There are plenty of expensive alert services available, mainly for sports events arbs, but I'd bet that there will be some financial alert services too. In sports there can be as many as 30 arb opportunities per day, if you have all the necessary accounts. Some of them are only open for 30 seconds, particularly the good opps, which may seem like a long time, but if its an email alert, maybe it's not long enough. However, some are open for many hours.

You will need to spread your cash around multiple accounts to make it work & then of course there will be the little issue of ongoing maintenance of all the account balances and making sure that they all stay adequately funded via inter-account transfers etc, with possible cost consequences. With sports you are often limited to a certain size account too, but I dont know for financial. Personally I don't like the sound of it, for the reasons stated above.

GL

rog1111

thanks for that rog.

it seems to me to be a very good way to make money if you have high-speed information and lots of time available.

it appeals to me because it is essentially risk free because if you keep your eyes open it can obviously be very profitable, however i would be inclined to agree that it can be a pain in the a*se to maintain all the accounts in order to take advantage of this!

its definately something i will be looking into anyway, even if it means sports betting

Matt

I agree that it is virtually a dead cert to make money on each bet if you do it right. What worries me is the large size of the bet that has to be made each time in order to make a small %. If you're opening 10 accounts then you'll be betting a large % of your equity in a couple of the accounts each time to make it work. Therefore accounts on the losing side will very quickly get depleted and require shuffling of funds. No problem if the bookie is prepared to act quickly on a request to transfer funds, but I hear that they often twiddle their thumbs for a day or 3 thinking about it, at least the sports bookies do. Maybe it's one of those ideas that you just have to try for yourself and see what happens. There are loads of e-books and quick calculators available on the topic.

rog1111

It's one of those subjects that seems a great idea at the time but.....

It's been discussed on here a few times before with the general conclusion that yes the possibilities do exist but it's very high maintenence and certainly not risk free due to the following:-

- small % profit = large bet size required.
- large bet size = SB co may hold you to manual quotes
- regular manual quotes= attention drawn to your activities
- attention drawn = sb co likely to suss you as an arb trader
- sussed = quotes delayed/ poor quotes given
- bad quotes = bad fills/ no fills at all which means profit opportunity reduced or negated or worse still only one side of a sizeable position opened= v high risk.

I've never tried it myself to be honest so can't speak from personal experience. The reasoning above and lack of time was more than enough to put me off.

I don't want to put you off having a go, by all means explore it further but I thought I would summarise the previous conclusions that were drawn so you have the full picture before venturing further.

Matt

If you're new to spread betting then forget about this kind of trading. It's just not possible for so many different reasons.

Theory and real-time trading are often completely different in that the best plans can and often do fall apart on day 1.

Your time is far better spent on trying to decipher where the market is going and making your money there.

Good luck anyway in whatever you do.

Posted this on another BB tonight, but applies here to.

What you boys need to understand is that the bookmakers are not interested in a level playing field. Even when you are forced to move onto spread betting, both sports and financials, like I was, it is the same story.

Bookmakers are bookmakers and they have had their own way for so long, they will not tolerate regular winners. Written large on most of their office walls is "Thou Shalt Not Win!" and one way or another they will prevent you from long term profits. The only outlet winning punters have is the exchanges. That is why the bookmakers will stop at nothing to undermine them!

You might be able to arb or hedge against the bookies, spread and fixed, for a while but eventually they will close you down. The way forward for the shrewder player, is with the exchanges.

The days of the smoke filled betting shop will disappear with this generation and be replaced with air conditioned casino type operations, to cater for mug punters.

Best of luck with your arbing. See you on the exchanges.

boycee aka dbt
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