Official Charity - Save the Children

I'm a big supporter of Save the Children and the work they do, any money I can make from this BetfairLays Fund will go to them. Any money I lose will come out of my own pocket. Simple as that really.

I aim to get the fund up and running by the end of Jan and will hopefully be giving a donation by the end of May.

Dripping the market

Like any good fund manager I'll drip some money in the market within the next couple of weeks. It's taken me so long to get into this, I've not had a full grip on the statistics and forms of all of the leagues which is quite important. I still think some of my perceptions are out-dated, so I won't be dumping all my money into this straight away. Over about a month I expect to be fully in the market and investing about 60-80% every week.

New Season, New Approach

After years of successful struggling, I've realised that the house always wins and if you can’t beat them you should join them. Or at least that's what I'd like to find out.

There are several things I want to see over the next year:

1. Does the house always win over long term?

2. If so, what is the maximum yield plausible while minimising risk?

3. Can it out-perform alternative investments such as the global stock markets?


The Geeky stuff:

My general view is that the house will win over the long term, that is to say the returns will be positive after a season long series of 'laying' the team I believe will lose. ('Laying' is effectively playing the bookmaker in the betting scenario. I will offer another gambler odds on a sporting event. For example - Manchester United vs West Brom I would in most circumstances believe Man Utd to win, therefore I would place a Lay bet on West Brom. In this scenario I minimise risk by effectively betting on 2 of the 3 possible outcomes – Man Utd win and a Draw - accepting a lower return on my money than if it were a straight Back bet, and I will see a positive return unless West Brom win - which is the third possible outcome and what I'm betting against.)

The basic strategy for the 'fund' I will run, will follow a basis of approximately 5 lays per week. I may increase this number but will rarely go under that figure to minimise risk by diversifying my bets.

The starting fund will be £100 which will be an easy figure to gauge Year To Date (YTD) performance on and is a large enough sum to split the fund into 5 units of £20 for an individual Lay.

I will be measuring the returns over the next year against the MSCI World Index which will be the most accurate way of measuring performance of world equity markets (N.B. This will be interesting in the second part of the next year as many forecast world equity to drastically out-perform most other investments). The fund will be absolute return and will not include capital gains tax which currently sits at 18% in the UK. I will produce two results at the end of the year to see if the fund can outperform the MSCI World Index (TRN) with or without capital gains tax as a factor.

I believe the universe of possibility to be vast as, if successful, this could be expanded to a purely Large Cap (Premier League), Mid Cap (Championship) and Small Cap (League One below) universe. It could be split by region to include European Football fund or individual countries (although local knowledge would be too much of a factor). It could also have novelty funds whereby you could pick 5 teams over the course of a whole season and Lay every opponent over the course of the season.