This morning I was thinking about how little chatter there has been of any kind of end of season sell off.
That’s actually great for the platform.
Being able to sustain over the Summer even without a major tournament is fairly unique in football betting. And it will settle a lot of nerves in future with such examples to look back on.
FI did a pretty good job of distracting traders at the end of the season with the Share Split and a raft of bonuses. And provided incentives to keep trading during the Summer.
Without that, the market might have be a very different place right now.
As it is, positivity reigns again and we are seeing some very nice rises in general.
We are heading into the thick of transfer season though and it is a wild time. Indulging in too many late transfer punts is going to deliver a very mixed bag of results at best because they are just unpredictable no matter how diligent in research or how much news monitoring we might do.
Particularly if you are a fairly passive trader or at work all day without much access to news, too much involvement in transfer trading may not be the best thing however tempting it can be.
The other factor is some of the relatively minor one off events like the playoff final we have seen, the U20 World Cup and the now upcoming U21 Euros.
These tend to create very big peaks of hype but end of delivering very little. I’ll discuss how to trade around those with examples in the player analysis below.
P.S
Regular readers will note the change of title. I am doing away with the “Daily” title because as weekly round ups that doesn’t quite fit anymore. Instead, I’ll name them uniquely with whatever topic appears on the day.
Risers
Giovani Lo Celso
Despite superb performances this season, decent dividend returns and strong underlying stats, the market has been fairly cool on Lo Celso this season.
Given he signed for Betis this is understandable. However, buying to sell on is a thing and to me at least, Lo Celso always felt too good for Betis.
It doesn’t surprise me therefore that he is still attracting interest from some very desirable clubs including both Manchester clubs, Spurs, and apparently Real Madrid.
He has had a very nice value spike on the back of that and the thing about a player like this is that because the price is suppressed, if the facts change because he gets a move, traders will be quick to snap him up at the value price.
Trades like this have a lot of room to grow because if a big move happens more people will look into him and see his underlying quality.
And, if a deal doesn’t happen, we know he doesn’t do badly even at Betis so he will always hold some value.
Big upsides and moderate downsides always make it a trade I like.
Dominic Solanke
You can see key players for the U21 Euro’s creeping up now with the squad having been announced.
It’s not rocket science who the targets are going to be and attacking players from big nations led by England are going to be the order of the day.
If you are going to buy for these one off events, as discussed further below in the fallers, just buy as soon as you can. You don’t even need to wait for the squad announcement, we know who a lot of the players are going to be.
The last thing you want to do is be buying in the week before at an inflated price that is very likely to come back down. There isn’t actually much to do with these players during the tournament itself.
A good tournament for players will have a longer term beneficial effect though provided the player is expected to do well next season.
Solanke may carry a bit of optimism even at Bournemouth, it’s certainly a step up from the bench and at his 70p price IPDs are attractive at minimum.
These players are always punts but when punting you need a value purchase price. This makes Solanke a far better option than players like Abraham who carry price tags far beyond their ability.
Fallers
Tammy Abraham, Jack Grealish, Harry Wilson, Mason Mount
The issue with these very specific holds for a one off event like the Play-Off final is that lots of holders are trying to do a very obvious thing and trying to be clever in the exact same way.
Most people are well aware these players are way overpriced, particularly if they get an obvious value spike before the match. So the winners tend to be the traders who get out first.
Other trades may well be holding for long term reasons, Mount and Grealish in particular have potential. But they still need the short term flippers to co-operate to hold their price.
These are near enough unwinnable bets if hoping for a good result from the play off final. Once the hype is over lots of people are going to be exiting either way.
There are some good outcomes but they are very much gambles. Someone like Grealish can “win” and get promoted and likely gets a season at Aston Villa for their trouble. Many traders will not have much hope for any real returns from that. A better result would have been for him to lose and get increased transfer speculation.
Even then though, a Grealish or Mount may still struggle for regular pitch time for a bigger club. But at least they actually have some substance to back them up. Abraham for example is far more questionable because behind the Championship goal numbers the stats are ropey and he often gets pumped by the shady “tipster” accounts.
It comes down to the price being so far ahead of the reality that it becomes near impossible to win.
The best way to profit is to take advantage of traders over optimism and willingness to pay too much for young players right now. That means getting in early before anyone is really talking about it. There is no need to wait for the actual event to take profits and roll the dice.
I think people will realise this more over time and this sort of thing will get harder to do.
But there will be definitely opportunities in this area with the U21 Euros on the horizon.