Trading “Long Term” In The Short Term

We are getting to that time of the season when every match matters and last night’s match at the Etihad between Man City & Chelsea had a huge impact on the title race.

I had a feeling we would see a few twists and turns throughout the evening, so I took the liberty of grabbing screen-shots of the Winners market as the night developed. I did this to highlight the potentially low risk opportunities you can find by trading these long term markets “in-play”.

Before Kick Off

Here you can see how the market looked before kick off at around 7.45pm last night.

@ 0-1 to Chelsea

Then when Chelsea took the lead against Man City in the 60th minute you can see the United price steamed and City drifted. This is pretty obvious but do remember that there was still 30 minutes left to play. It looks like the markets are assuming that Man City are going to lose this match even before its finished. By laying Man Utd at this point you are probably risking about 5ticks as the lowest they can really hit is 1.30 at full time but, as you can see below, there is a huge upside to this trade.

@ Full Time Man City 2-1 Chelsea

Then here is the market at full time once its confirmed that City have won and pulled the gap back to 1 point.

By taking on Man Utd once City fell a goal behind you could have gained about 30 ticks by the end of the match. Not bad when you consider that you might have only lost about 5 ticks if it didn’t go your way.

Weighing up risk and reward

I know there will be some reading this thinking “Well this is all well and good Einstein, but if you thought City would win why not just back them in Match Odds?”.

The best part about trading this type of market is that even if City didn’t come back in that particular match then your trade would still be alive. You still have at least another 9 rounds of matches for the price to trade higher and for you to have a chance to get a profit or a scratch trade which just shows how low risk this type of trading can be.

So if City had lost last night then you might see Man utd trading @ 1.30 this morning but there is still plenty of time for another slip up between now and early May.

The best thing about this market is that it doesn’t suspend. You could lay Man United when Aguero was putting the ball on the spot to take the penalty if you wished!

It just goes to show that thinking outside of the box can be the way towards profits and, in this case, thinking outside of the market can be a good way to trade  a live football match! 😉