The Ginger Pirlo

“I reckon I will be able to pick up at least 66% of that dividend pot by holding 33% of the pool. That’s a healthy ratio.”

Welcome to a new series on thegingerpirlo.com in the shape of ‘The Pirlo Project’ which will delve into some of my ongoing strategies on the index, as well as exploring any potentially profitable new aspects that may arise on the platform.

Episodes will come in different forms whether it be potentially bargain players, picking up on market trends, analysing matrix beneficial team tactics or looking into areas on the index that may be going under the radar. Anything that may gain an edge.

Hopefully it will be informative and help provide some assistance to traders as they go about their business on the Index. Even if it is just to open up new thoughts in areas traders may not have considered. Any gains big or small are good. 😀

Almost exactly a year ago (27th Aug 2019 to be precise) I published the intro article to my ‘Can I make a living from Football Index?’ series and completed the final tenth episode last month.

I was extremely pleased with how it went and was blown away with all the positive feedback it received. Many thanks for all of your comments and I am really glad if it helped you gain a new perspective of what can be achieved on the Index. This thing can be gold!

What do you think of my portiere?

To kick this new series off I am going to start with a bang and share what I have been getting up to since the Index announced goalkeepers were getting their own category as of next season. Short answer: A lot!

Before I go into who I have bought, let’s look at the goalkeeper category itself and what monster FI have created here. Looking at the payouts we are getting 3p Gold, 2p Silver, 1p Bronze.

At first I didn’t know what to think of this or the GK category in general. That announcement was a whirlwind that took a couple of days to get your head around, at least for me.

Once it started to digest in my brain, something clicked. I asked myself the following questions:

How many GK’s are actually on the platform?

How many Gold, Silver and Bronze days do we get over a season?

How much of a guaranteed pot is this shallow pool playing for?

Who in this shallow pool are the most likely winners?

So, I got asking around the great FI community and specifically those spreadsheet/data junkies who may be able to provide some precious info on the matter. They duly delivered.

A big shout out to LuaLua, KBrown and FIDataStephen who I’ve kept in regular contact with and provided mapped out spreadsheets with all that lovely data to see how much dividends are on offer over a season and which GKs would have won the most if GK divs were in place for the 2019/20 season.

They also have provided data for the previous two seasons, however, the PB matrix changed as of the 2019/20 season so I have took that data with a pinch of salt and focussed on how keepers performed this year.

All of this, of course, is to try and decipher who could be the best goalkeepers to get on going forward and how much dividends could you be looking to gobble up for your investment.

How deep is the pool?

“Interestingly, barely any non-PB European keepers won anything”

When it comes the judging how big this pool is I’ve kept it fairly straight forward. I have also separated it somewhat between consistent and sporadic. We have five PB leagues. Four of them have 20 teams with one that has 18.

This doesn’t take a professor of economics to work out that over each typical game week there will be 98 goalkeepers playing and competing for these shiny new GK divs. Every now and then a regular no.1 with be rested or dropped, so lets call it 100. Plus it’s easier. 😀

It gets more tricky when you add into the Europa and Champions League as the likes of Porto, Ajax and Shakhtar Donetsk join the party. Plus some top teams tend to a have a cup goalkeeper who plays instead of the regular no.1 like a Sergio Romero for e.g.

Blimey, just remembered International qualifiers as well. 😀

If you would like to know how many GK are officially on the platform, I had a count up and it sneaks just over 300. But these include every random Saudi Arabian and retired Petr Cech, so it’s a nonsense number when looking at potential div winners.

If you would like to know just how many GKs actually won divs last season I can tell you. Up until mid-July, 90 different keepers would have won a PB div last season if they were active, which included the UEFA club competitions and for their country in the qualifiers.

Interestingly, barely any non-PB European keepers won anything. Non-PB GK’s won on just three occasions, all the other UCL and Europa league participating winners were from PB leagues.

The Galatasaray keeper had a stormer against Madrid, Onana grabbed a win for Ajax and the APOEL keeper played out of this skin once but that was it. The main spoils went to the PB stalwarts and a fair few big ones at that.

So, to work out a pool I am focusing on the bread and butter with a sprinkling of European & International flavour on top.

Given the likely winners are still to come from your top PB goalkeepers I would say the realistic pool is around 120. A fair few of the Europa League and International GK’s aren’t even on the platform.

If some random Romanian gets them who I may not have considered as “in the club” than fair play to him. He won’t win them every week so to add him to a pool of GKs that will play 10 times as many games as he will, just seems a bit odd. Let’s call it 120 and crack on.

How much is the pot?

So, how much of a pot does this shallow pool of GKs play for? Well if we take the season that has just gone by as an example, we are talking about a dividend payout of around £5 over the course of a season.

You must bear in mind, however, that the 2019/20 schedule was the strangest on record and is a bit of a ball ache to use as an example in isolation. Throw in the added fact that FI love of a promotion and to find a true nailed on total dividend pay out to the penny is a tough task.

Using the previous two seasons in addition to last season makes it slightly easier and the figures we come to are around that £5 mark. Going back to last season alone as of mid July we had the following total of each match day:

Gold 65, Silver 73 and Bronze 76.

This of course missed out additional games post lockdown and the August Gold UCL and Europa League rearranged fixtures, but it shows just how many games will be out there for GUARANTEED GK divs to be won per season.

Some stats

“Looking at the data, the top 20 dividend winning goalkeepers won over 50% of the total pot between them.”

If we have established we have a pool of around 120 goalkeepers fighting it out for a pot of £5 match day divs per season, the trick is to own the most likely winners. No Nobel prize will be handed out on that thought process. So who are they?

Below are some screenshots of top winning keepers in terms of divs won and scores. Note this data runs up until before the extended UCL and Europa games that were played throughout August 2020. Data provided by @FootballIndexEdge

Dividend payout (up until mid-July 2019/20 season):

Number of wins per top performing goalkeeper:

Top Dividend yield goalkeepers:

Keepers with the best top 5 scores to their name:

TOTM entries up until May:

A lot of info all in one go there but you can see the potential winnings from picking out the best performing GK’s across a season. You can repeat this for two further seasons given it’s a three year bet and the returns add up significantly.

Let’s take Manuel Neuer as an example. This guy was the top earning GK across the season and up until mid-July he would have brought in 31p worth of Match Day divs + TOTM and this doesn’t include any bonus clean sheet IPDs.

If he were to repeat this over a three year bet we are talking a £1 of returns from one goalkeeper. When you consider Trent Alexander-Arnold brought in around 46p of divs last season and is worth over £10, that brings some perspective.

Given the small pool of goalkeepers realistically available to win a pot of around £5 of match day dividend payouts, I have decided to play the numbers game and spread my money around many holds at 300 shares a player.

I could attempt to single out who I think will be the top 5 or 6 and go big but an injury, transfer, loss of form can kill any pick stone dead. What if Neuer loses 30% – 50% of his game time to Nubel from this season on for example?

Looking at the data, the top 20 dividend winning goalkeepers won over 50% of the total pot between them. If you take my pool number of 120, that’s the top 16% taking over 50%. Crazy. The top 33% of the pool took around 66% of the pot.

Who makes the cut?

So my plan is to pick out a top 35 – 45 range of goalkeepers who I think will a) bring home the most bacon and b) are a decent price. I don’t want to over stretch my budget on slightly expensive looking GKs who may not win much.

For example, I would rather have a 25p keeper who snags a random Gold day or a few Bronze days than a 75p keeper with similar or even slightly higher historical stats. I am looking to find a balance between investment and return and a line needs to be drawn at some point.

As of time of writing here is my current pool of goalkeepers that I believe can snag me a good chunk of the pot. This may change here and there with an odd addition over time. There are a couple of omissions that I haven’t snapped up for the right price yet.

There are 40 goalkeepers above. Some are at big clubs, some are in medium sized clubs in Europe, some are at smaller clubs but have the historic PB and stats to challenge for Match Day divs. I may move one or two out and one or two in over time.

As well the stats of who won what, I used IndexGain brilliant set of data to check peak PB scores and average PB scores to come to a list of keepers that have those spikes to win but also the consistency of performance, as there will be lots of small Bronze days that will be there for the taking.

I tried to keep costs down with Donnarumma and Alisson easily being the most expensive entry price at above £1.30. I matched Ederson for £1.03. As for the rest I picked them all up under £1 with Neuer and ter Stegen the best pick ups on the day of the GK addition announcement.

I have my eyes on a few others like Szczesny for e.g which I am timing my entry on and I am waiting to see if Asenjo starts for Villareal. I had some Mat Ryan, Kasper Schmeichel and Rafael Gikiwicz who I may get back on but will depend on performance.

Final Thoughts

40 is a good number I think in a pool of 120 actively dividend winning goalkeepers. I reckon I will be able to pick up at least 66% of that dividend pot by holding 33% of the pool. That’s a healthy ratio.

The average age of my goalkeeper “port” is 28.2 and the average price bought at was just 47p. Total outlay is around the £5k mark. Given my early entry on some and hoovering up most of them via the matching engine, I already have over 40% return in capital appreciation.

Let’s say I bring in £3.33 of the £5 match day div pot per season with an average share holding of 300 per goalkeeper, I should be looking at a return of £1k per season. This doesn’t include the dividends they have already won for me or any clean sheet IPDs I may recycle for.

The plan is to leave them in there and hoover up these dividends in the background on top of my active trading in the market and my outfield player holds that will collect div wins and cap app at the same time.

OFFICIAL: Ederson has won the 2019/20 Premier League Golden Glove award after keeping 16 clean sheets this season. pic.twitter.com/MMCRSpx1nv

— Squawka News (@SquawkaNews) July 26, 2020

Goalkeeper dividends are a brilliant addition to the market and people are still sleeping on them in my opinion. I don’t know if many out there have crunched through the numbers and thought about what they can offer.

A small pool with a healthy guaranteed pot season upon season is too good an opportunity to turn down. I shall keep updates on my progress on this and see how it works out.

Some people don’t want to buy keepers as they find them “boring” or can’t be bothered to hope for a clean sheet. I can’t agree with that thought process. These are a bonus on top of your goalscorers and trust me, it gets tense in the final 10 minutes if you’re banking for a clean sheet!

Who would have thought keepers could be so entertaining…? 😀

Reminder to check out my man @IrishFI and his podcast ‘Football Index Weekly’. The home of easy listening, funny and honest football index content whether you are an experienced trader or just starting out. Find the podcast here and on Spotify.

Find me on Twitter @GingerPirlo_FI

Ten episodes over a season leading into Order Books seems a nice way to package it up.

Welcome to the tenth and final instalment of the ‘Can I make a living from Football Index?’ series.

Given the Premier League 2019/20 season has (finally) come to its conclusion and more importantly the Index is morphing into a different product, I’ve decided to wrap up this series at this stage.

It feels a bit strange to continue with it in its current fashion, which is based around ongoing all-time profit figures etc as we move into Order Books where market price numbers are questionable in their accuracy.

I also don’t have a clear idea of how I will take on the product next season and if I will be as active in my trading, which in turn may see me less active with monthly blog updates.

It was fairly straight forward over the past year or so to trade, compound profits, write up what I did and show the results. Going forward, I am not sure that will be as straight forward or even as interesting as a format, so let’s call it a day.

Now, that isn’t to say I won’t be updating this site in some capacity and I will very likely come up with a new concept to write about. I will wait and see where the product goes and some ideas will no doubt flash up at me. 😀

Since the last episode

On the last episode, which feels like a lifetime ago, I wrote the following;

“I think next month FI need to try and do something that will genuinely get people talking and pressing the deposit and/or buy button, as I foresee a very flat month of May coming up.“

I wrote that at the end of April and sure enough FI created the Matching Engine from scratch and landed it on our doorsteps to get our heads around.

At first, it was brilliant. I even had a ‘Matching Engine special’ article almost written up with how brilliant it was and some of the bids I managed to get but things took a turn for the worse, so I basically shelved it.

This is why it has been so long since my last episode (three months) as I wasn’t really sure where the Index was heading and also, it was pretty f*cking boring as people just stopped market buying and the place was dead!

Things did start to pick up again, however, during the big build up to the new dividend structure that was being released on the 9th July. I was tempted to write something around that time but I left it to see what was actually released.

It’s safe to say the 9th July 2020 announcement will live long in the memory as one of the strangest head scratching moments in FI’s history.

The brilliant 2 part video that was created on the subject summed up the whole thing perfectly and I am going to link both below, as it does a better job than whatever I could put together to explain it. 😀

Part 2/2 #footballindex pic.twitter.com/pmEco6Lkqt

— FI Spam (@FootyIndexSpam) July 11, 2020

Strange times

You can’t always predict what will happen on the Index

As funny as those videos are we are living in strange times on the Index atm. The Matching Engine continues to be buy only so we are stuck in a moment of traders looking for bargains and not much else.

The ticker is pretty dead and people aren’t quite sure what the market will be like in the future or whether they will even like it. Others are extremely bullish about it and can’t wait but that still hasn’t prevented the tumbleweed.

FI have attempted to respond with a summer promotion. On the face of it, it looks very good. 5x IPDs, 5 place media madness, increase in media payouts with 8p being the most on media days, all Europa and UCL games are now Gold days and some cash drops.

Sun's out // Rockets out 🌴

It’s Summer Promotions SZN 🚀

• In-Play Bonanza ⚽️🅰️🧤
• Summer Media Madness 𝘙𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘥 🗞️
• Make it Gold 🥇
◦ £50k Summer Cash Drops 💰

All the info 👇https://t.co/Xd4SIrDL5Z pic.twitter.com/j3MmnYOjJ7

— Football Index (@FootballIndex) July 23, 2020

This was met with positivity from the community and rightly so. However, the most important thing right now is how smooth the implementation of sell orders is and how that effects the market.

You can’t always predict what will happen on the Index but the view is we could see some volatility with a lot of players prices and it will feel like a rollercoaster ride you’re not sure whether you are enjoying or genuinely terrified.

It may not be for the faint hearted and could see a huge divide amongst people who want to be let off the ride and those who will show you screenshots of their genius trades amongst the potential panic and want to go around over and over again.

Then again, all of this may be vastly exaggerated and that ride you thought was gonna rip out your back fillings in your teeth, was just a tame pleasure cruise with a nice view of the theme park. Who knows for sure?

Going forward

As for now, we have the Champions League and Europa League “tournaments” in August which could prove to be a lot of fun. Every single one of them is a Gold day and with the implementation of 5x IPDs, we may see some action on the ticker.

We also have the Sancho transfer situation. I myself can’t see him not going to Man Utd and it’s just a case of when it happens. Will Man Utd drag it out like they did with Bruno until the last minute or get him in asap to gel with his new teammates for the new season?

Either way, Jadon could hoover up media madness and bring home a shed load of bacon for traders as well as inject the market with market buys and stretch prices nicely.

Some say the Sancho transfer going through is essential to the Index going forward and I can’t really disagree with that statement. His price going up not only drags other high end players with him, but it can help stabilise those lower down.

I wouldn’t like to say he could be the “savior of the Index” as the product will speak for itself in the long run, but certainly in the short term, Jadon Sancho holding up the No.7 shirt at Old Trafford will bring confidence and good feeling to the platform and help the implementation of sell orders and then full integration into Nasdaq.

The final numbers!

So here we go. These are the final numbers for the series. I started this as of the 11th August 2019 and I will finish them off as of the 9th July 2020, right up until the announcement.

Reason being, who the hell knows where we are in terms of profit since that bombshell hit. I have genuinely no idea.

The market is in a very strange limbo area at the moment, somewhere in between the old way and the order book way, so I am using the 9th July at 5pm as the cut off point for this series before all hell broke loose!

Let’s go back in time for a sec.

I started this series with £6,700 in the index and practically a clean slate of a port with only a couple of players in there. Nothing major though, it was practically empty.

The PL season was a week in and I spent up most of that £6.7k on mainly Bundesliga players and kept around a grand in the cash balance to use if and when.

As of 9th July, that £6.7k has become £68,819.77.

(My net withdrawals is £8,740 so I have just over £60k actively in the market.)

That’s a total profit of £62,119.77 which is 927.16%.

If it weren’t for Covid coming I may have been able to reach that (ridiculous) 1000% return for the season but I won’t complain too much.

The above has all been using the original budget and the only deposit I have made during this time was a couple of grand a few days before the 9th July announcement which was sat in my cash balance to use if needed.

Safe to say this season has blown my mind with the returns. All the way back when I started this thing I was looking to make a couple of grand a month to keep this thing ticking along very nicely.

For most of the season I was averaging £1400 a week which blew that out of the water!

How did I do it?

There are two golden rules for these methods to work…

If you look at my intro blog here there is a section around my strategies on the Index. All of these pretty much applied throughout my season.

How I was able to take that reasonably sized budget (for your average Joe) and take it into an almost 1000% rise is summed up in the following ways:

Compounding instant profits.

You may have seen big accounts on Twitter use the term compounding dividends? This is basically a player they own wins divs, they then reinvest those winnings to buy more shares in that player and wait for him to win more divs and repeat the process. Pretty cool.

And you’re telling me I can win these dividends for 3 years…… And then I can sell the player for a (potential) profit at the end of 3 years? 🚀

The Game. Changed.

Compound the dividends!#FootballIndex https://t.co/HbjiDHPndi pic.twitter.com/yVT1GCSLSa

— Panda (@Sporting_Panda) November 3, 2019

I take that concept on a more general and active scale. I compound the capital appreciation profit I make on a trade and stick that back into the market on the next riser over and over again.

Straight forward example from any given matchday:

Player A scores >> Buy as quickly as possible >> Player rises say 20p >> Sell to the market.

Player B bagged a brace >> Buy as quickly as possible >> Player rises 25p >> Sell half to the market >> keep half for IPDs and/or if you feel he may go on to bag a hat trick and/or he could continue to slowly rise in the near future.

Player C has a PB score of 70 after just 15 mins in a pre-deadline game >> Buy as many as I feel comfortable to have >> Market realises he is on for a potential div winning score and player rises >> Sell, keep for the potential divs or do both by selling half (bank the profit) and keep half (roll the dice to win even more profit).

Now imagine this kind of activity with instant profits repeating itself over an entire season! Plus this is just three examples, there are other methods in making (quick) profits which I mention in the intro blog and they all add up over time.

Reading the market

There are two golden rules for these methods to work and that’s always have a decent sized cash balance and read the market. Keep an eye on Twitter and the chat in IndexGain to see which players are being talked about. Which players people seem to like.

If a few people are openly talking about a player, think about how many other people like him too who are silent in the background. Here is an example of when I trusted this process completely without having any feelings on the player myself:

I happened to catch someone on Twitter bigging up some Brazilian who was back from injury for Hertha Berlin and he couldn’t wait to see him. I then saw someone else mentioning the same player not long after in a completely seperate conversation.

Now, I had never came across this player before so I checked him out on Sofascore, he was a young player which is always a plus, so I made a mental note. He started the game and had a small rise. Great sign.

During the matchday action a notification comes up of a goal at Hertha, so I bring up the stream and I watch this lad take on three defenders and dink it over the keeper. My word, I am in immediately. Buy as many as I feel comforable with and wait.

Sure enough he starts to rise not long after I bought and I am a happy man. An hour earlier I had never heard of him but now I will tell the world about this lad called Dilrosun who just scored a worldy. He went on to grab an assist as well in the game and I made some decent coin.

Reading the market also comes down to who you think are good players for FI on top of what others seem to think. You can guage this in many different ways to simply seeing a player perform, crunching over data or whichever way suits you the best.

Interestingly, sometimes you need to go against what you feel about a player, if you think the sentiment on him is strong as there is still money to be made. Again, you can judge sentiment in many ways.

Engage with people, read premium and chat trading on IndexGain, get on Twitter and sieve out the crap to find the nuggets of information. It’s all useful and can help you predict which players will rise and who are dead duds.

Study the match day rankings

On a match day there a few essential things I have in front of me either on my phone, laptop and TV. One of which is the match day rankings. I must refresh that thing a thousand times if it’s on a Sunday gold day. I won’t leave them for around 10 hours or so. It’s a full days work. 😀

Well, I say I don’t leave them, it isn’t like I don’t eat and have gone as far as just wearing man-sized nappies to save me popping off to the bog but the matchday rankings are what it’s all about, and I obsess over them. They are my fundamental ‘research’ above anything else.

Not only to help you make decisions on your trading but they are the funnest part of the whole Index. I can’t imagine having a portfolio and only checking now and then on a Tuesday afternoon or something and seeing where it’s at.

There is nothing quite like seeing the race to the top commence as a player you either want to win, or don’t in some cases, continues to plough on those PB points as he is chasing down that top spot and oh my god he has just scored!

That goal may make all your dreams come true (you own) or kill your dreams stone dead (you don’t own. Well you used to but you sold him last week didn’t you d*ckhead?). Nothing beats it.

Of course you don’t even need to own a player to feel something positive as if you are like me you are waiting, prowling like a Tiger, biding your time for this player to score and then you strike!

Buy max, buy max, buy max, leave………………………………list, sell, bank the profit. Thank you, come again.

IPOs

Some people hate them. Me? I love em. What’s not to like? Wild instant rises and shed loads of money to be potentially made. Sign me up. Are they dangerous? Yes, but some are an open goal to instant cash.

Jude Bellingham, Harvey Elliott, Eduardo Camavinga, I could go on. These players are guaranteed to fly on release so it’s just a case of being there and how many you want to try and buy.

Sometimes the tech even crashes and people are given a complete gift by being able to buy as many Rayan Cherki, Adil Aouchiche or Japhet Tanganga as they like without the price moving an inch. Amazing.

Sometimes FI release them at 2am when most people are asleep and I wake up to a sight that makes me want to cry and rage at the same time. Can’t believe they did that, I called it as a joke half an hour before they released as well.

Sometimes they have a 5 day, 24/7 marathon of IPO releases that has you on your screen for 95% of this time. They did this during responsible gambling week! 😀

Have I lost money on IPOs? Hell yes. I have been burned more times than a bored kid playing with matches. Have I made shed loads of easy money? Hell yes, bucket fulls.

I am sad we are losing these events, and they are events. Heart pumping, endorphin releasing, bat crazy events for a more sophisticated bidding model but they were never gonna last for ever. Not in this format. As too many people moaned about them.

What’s crazy is when Nasdaq takes over, the system should be able to take a lot more traffic at a single point in time, yet this is when they are getting rid of fastest finger IPO’s. A little bit strange, especially as FI themselves make shed loads from them but there we are.

Hopefully we will have a big one or two before they are gone for ever and if the system wishes to crash leaving us all able to buy as many Giovanni Reyna as we want it will be a fitting and welcome farewell!

Surfs up!

This season has been an overriding success. I didn’t have the size of numbers I have made remotely in my sights when I started this blog. You can tell just by having a look over my first couple of episodes.

Each month I tended to think “ok, next month will definitely be flat and not as profitable” but sure enough it kept on chugging along. Even when the first couple of weeks into a month I had made jack, a couple of weeks later something would have came up that brought home the bacon.

Even when Covid struck, I was convinced that this is it. Finally, I am going to have to take a hit now. But after some initial hurt with Instant sell going crazy and eventually turned off, I invested into Jadon Sancho and he saved the day.

Yet I always say to people that even with my profits going up and up it was never perfect. I have sold so many players too early it’s untrue, I have misjudged a players appeal in the market many times resulting in lost profits, blatant losses or money stuck in a dead hole.

“I should have bought more” is a constant phrase that comes out of my mouth without fail. “Why did I sell him?” is another. “Why didn’t I buy him?” is never far away.

But over time you learn to deal with it and attempt to learn for next time. It’s a constant battle with yourself when you go about your business as much as I do on the Index. It’s unavoidable.

“Scalping” or “flipping” is a ruthless game so you’re gonna get hurt here and there. The term I prefer however to sum up what I do, or at least have done thus far, is “surfing”. Because I basically ride waves.

When I am watching the market or watching a game I am basically a surfer on the beach looking out to sea for the next wave to rise. The idea is to get on that wave as quickly as possible and ride it out for as long as you dare before you think it will stop and die.

Sometimes you jump off (sell) too early and miss out on more, sometimes you stay on too long and you are trying to sell as the price is going down, not good.

Worse yet you are stuck on him and end up making a loss either right there and then or at some point in the future. I guess you could call that a wipe out.

Every now and then you make a huge mistake and take a big loss which feels like you have just been attacked by a Great White Shark and you have lost a huge chunk of your leg. Now those really f*cking hurt.

Son Hueng-Min in last seasons Champions League springs to mind, those in game spread changes really p*ssed me off. Lost my head on that one.

Thanks for reading

So, I have declared this as the last episode in the ‘Can I make a living from Football Index?’ series. It’s been a fun one to update, as I had no idea what the hell I was going to write about from one episode to the next.

I was waiting for that embarrassing month where I had a total nightmare and pissed away thousands trying to be a clever c*nt but it never came. I hold this at the phenomenal products door as much as my own, as the whole point of this series was to show the potential of Football Index.

Plus, could I answer that question I asked when I first joined in September 2018? Can I make a living out of Football Index? Answer: Yes, yes you can. Or should that be yes you could, as I really don’t know what the future will hold as we go into an Order Book system?

I supposed there is no reason yet to suggest you can’t, but it will certainly be a different platform to the one I have indulged myself in which had the instant sell function as a “safety net”. Remember that thing?

The past two years has been amazing. Mind blowing really. I sincerely hope the product will continue to grow and blow more minds for many years to come.

I am certainly not going anywhere yet but I will be looking for the most effective ways to make money as best I can. Sancho to Man Utd seems a good one in the short term 😀

Borussia Dortmund have rejected a €98m offer from Man Utd for Jadon Sancho, according to Bild. #BVB #MUFC

— Ronan Murphy (@swearimnotpaul) July 27, 2020

I am not planning on giving up writing either, it’s just this series I am closing out. Ten episodes over a season leading into Order Books seems a nice way to package it up.

What I will come up with next season I am not sure yet, I will see how the product goes and what ideas spring out to me. I am sure something will. Before I bow out I am gonna give my buddy @IrishFI shout out.

If you love the Index or are just starting out than make sure to check out the ‘Football Index Weekly’ podcast’ with big John Nellis. It’s honest, funny and easy listening and you can have a listen here and on Spotify 😎👍

So that’s it. Ten episodes are up. 927% profit achieved. £62k added to the pot to split between the Index and my back pocket. All from a £6.7k start (that’s f*cking mad).

Thanks for reading and for all the comments I have had and continue to get, appreciate them all and let’s hope this product reaches it’s potential!

Find me on Twitter @GingerPirlo_FI

Peace out!

“Football will come back. We just don’t know when. So, hang tight and carry on”

Welcome to the ninth instalment of the ‘Can I make a living from Football Index?’ series.

This month the net spend bonus came to an end, FI made an announcement (literally their favourite thing in the world) and 2019/20 football seasons have been cancelled in some big leagues around Europe. So, another quiet one…

The Dutch league was the first decent-sized league to say ‘that’s it’ as they ended the 2019/20 season and they also null and voided the whole thing. So, no title for Ajax who were top and no relegation for Alan Pardew and ADO Den Haag, the lucky bast*rd. Although he still got sacked. 😀

This week France declared that there will be no sporting events until September and the media are reporting this means the French 2019/20 season has been cancelled, although I don’t think that decision has actually been officially made. More details may come out soon.

What is does mean though is that the finest players from everyone’s favourite ‘farmer’s league’ will be out of action for a significant amount of time. Plus it gives the impression other nations could be taking the same route soon despite some leagues allowing players to start training.

Bundesliga even came out with a statement saying football will be back in May played behind closed doors and the Premier League have rumours of football potentially being back soon under the same restrictions.

All we can do is sit and wait and see how this plays out. One of the things that is vastly undersold around the Index chat is how out of control we are regarding the players we invest our money into.

It is something I personally have a very strong recognition for, if that is the right word to use, and do mention it here and there. I am very conscious of the fact we have zero say on the players we bet on and take a leap of faith, on a varied scale of risk, with each buy we make. You barely see anyone mention this when they offer you their words of wisdom.

Whether it be an injury, being dropped, a sudden change in position, tactics or manager. We expose our money to all kinds of situations that may occur for which we can do nothing about. Never mind a pandemic which halts football matches in its tracks indefinitely.

We have absolutely no control over this situation and all we can do is work within the product and act sensibly and make sure it’s as solid as it can be for when football comes back. And Football will come back. We just don’t know when. So, hang tight and carry on 😀

Striking Oil!

“I think next month FI need to try and do something that will genuinely get people talking”

Amazingly, many traders have experienced the best month/time they have ever had profit wise on the Index. You see people posting their returns everywhere and their utter joy. It says a lot about the platform that it can still thrive in times this like this.

Someone said, “Index historically proven to do better with no football on…” and you can’t say that isn’t true. It does depend on your strategy, however, and what kind of players you have money invested in. There will be some traders that have had a stinker.

High profile players have seen some big rises over the past few weeks and those traders with lots of shares in them have really felt like they have struck oil. If that is even worth anything these days… 😀

The Sanchos, Rashfords, Haalands, Mbappes of this world have all had their fair share of investment as people put their money into what they know. Young, famous, quality players. PB ability, or perceived lack of, doesn’t seem to really matter in times like this.

Media is still playing its part on a daily basis but it doesn’t quite have the same bait as those double dividends did. 5 places are nice but given its only a 1p payout for 3rd, 4th and 5th this isn’t something traders will specifically invest heavily for. You would think people already have their money set going forward for media takings.

The announcement was tagged as “huge” but I didn’t expect anything special. They extended the 5 places and late deadline as well as bringing back the lowering of matches needed for Gold and Silver days but no one got excited over it.

I think next month FI need to try and do something that will genuinely get people talking and pressing the deposit and/or buy button, as I foresee a very flat month of May coming up.

Since the net spend bonus ending we have already seen the Index flat line. My all-time profit has took a hit over the past week, although this usually happens immediately after one of these offers to be fair.

So, how did I do?

“These numbers are not what I was expecting when I started out on this thing several months ago.”

I finished off the last episode by looking into what I was going to do going forward. I said the following, “In the short term, my focus will be on those media dividend rankings and seeing which players are looking like dominating at any given moment in time.”

I was true to my word and kept most of the players I had bought for the media rankings and added one or two that I felt could also bring in some media dividends, even if for that day or two.

Last month I went through the players I had money in for the foreseeable which were;

Sancho, Pogba*, Gnabry, Coutinho, Bellingham, Havertz, Foden, Depay, Alphonso & Bruno.

I still have all of these players apart from Pogba. I had him on the sale queue as I wasn’t sure what to do with him as his price was going down and down but he could still pick up media divs to cover it.

To my surprise, he sold quite quickly so the deed was done. Pogba was gone. I thought my place in the queue would have been way down the list but never mind. Decision made.

I topped up my total shares in Sancho and Alphonso to 1000 as well as doubling my shares in Depay. I cud sense a bit of a boom happening near the end of last month and at the start of this so took the opportunity.

Some other players I put my money into were;

Rashford, Mbappe, Ferran Torres, Alan Saint-Maximin, Leroy Sane, Ziyech, Azmoun, Onana, van de Beek, Rooney and Dries Mertens. All of these sit at a profit, some more than others.

Other more short term buys were;

Maguire, Ozil, Wan Bissaka, Fred, Partey. Koulibaly, Saul, Telles and Ajer.

All bought, and now sold, for reasons that they were either doing well in the media rankings early doors, so I jumped on for seemingly guaranteed divs, or they had some decent transfer rumours that looked a goer. None of the above short-termers lost money, some made a nice little profit.

All purchases over this past month have been made with the net spend bonus in mind, as mine was reset on the 25th March. I wasn’t planning on actually doing it but I had a decent amount in my account so, in the end, I spent the lot!

Numbers

Speaking of money, I may as well get into how I did over the past month since the last episode. The below is taken from the period between 27th March and 29th April. We haven’t received our all-time profit emails yet but not to worry.

This month profit is up £6,017 from last time out going up to £65,829 in total from £59,812. This is an increase of just over 10%.

This was aided by the net deposit bonus which I took home £1,150. I didn’t max it out but I shall take it. My ATP was actually £66,500 on the day the bonus ended so it has seen a drop during this time.

Being specific to this blog, my ROI from starting out with £6,700 back in August is now at 810%. I have taken out £8,740 over the course of this period and have £52,389 left in the Index.

These numbers are not what I was expecting when I started out on this thing several months ago. 😀

However, I shall make a very strong prediction that next month’s May episode 10 will easily be my least fruitful. I can not see how I will continue these returns given what this past week has been like.

So, what’s next?

I’ve got to be honest, I think it’s gonna be quiet. The German league said it was going to recommence in May but that may now be scrapped. The PL are whispering that they may look to play games behind closed doors but this may come to nothing.

Who knows what is gonna come in the next four months, never mind four weeks. If there are no games to speak of I can’t see me investing much money from my account into players. All I will be doing is holding the ones I want and waiting to strike at the right time.

Listing players is inevitable on the platform but whether they sell or not is another story. FI love an announcement so they may make one in a few weeks to attempt to get things moving if it becomes a tumbleweed town.

One thing I will say is don’t panic and can we refrain from going a bit mental on FI Twitter. I only pop on now and again, as I have the Newcastle potential takeover at the forefront of my attention (please God let this go through) but I have seen a bit of nonsense.

Let’s not lower the tone because you’re bored with lectures or scaremongering. No need. Play the game. Football will be back before you know it…maybe.

(If you somehow haven’t signed up to Football Index yet, you can do so by clicking this link you won’t regret it!)

Follow me on Twitter @GingerPirlo_FI

“Weeks are dragging already and this thing has only just started.”

Welcome to the eighth instalment of the ‘Can I make a living from Football Index?’ series.

First off, I hope you and your families are all well and are coping with what the world is going through at the minute. Football doesn’t seem that important atm but naturally, we will all miss it and hope it comes back as soon as it’s deemed safe to do so.

Index wise, talk about drama. I had a quick look at last months episode and it feels like it was written months ago. I was talking about heading into the business end of the season and having a little moment to talk about the irrational instant selling we were seeing.

Now, the business end has been put on ice and maybe even cancelled off completely at some point. I don’t think that will happen if you asked me now, however, seeing the FA cancel the non-league spectrum there is a chance this drastic action could creep its way up the footballing pyramid.

The Premier League hold the cards over the FA of course so like I say, I don’t personally think they will cancel the league and start fresh with unfinished business to attend to as it won’t sit well with millions of people and will never ever be forgotten. Do we really want an asterisk against season 2019-20*?

Even if it means sandwiching in next season to a tight schedule or moving consecutive seasons slowly until it reaches the normal schedule again, leagues around the world must look at every option to get this one done. Football will be a lot better for it.

March-ing on

March 2019 was the time of the share-split which changed the Index and was huge news for us all to get used to and to work with going forward. March 2020 will also live long in the memory as the time of the Coronavirus, or Covid-19 to be more specific which put football on hold.

Seeing football just stop with games to play is bizarre. Seeing the world around you go into lockdown can also be scary. Uncertainty occurs and people start to panic. The stock market crashed and given our platform, some traders reacted in a similar fashion and we witnessed an instant sell fest.

FI reacted by sticking on monumental spreads and having rolling blackouts for the IS button to try and stem the tide. Some can argue this was the right thing to do, others will say it was sh*thousery.

I personally can’t see how they should have just left spreads as they were given the panic. Not just to protect FI but traders as well by basically putting people well and truly off even thinking of dumping players at that massive cost and forcing them to take time to settle down and think.

That being said, I can also see the argument of sticking them up as much as 40% may have been a step too far for those that were hell-bent that they needed their money out immediately. As we don’t know everyone’s individual circumstances. So I am somewhere in the middle on that issue.

What is truly amazing about March 2020 is literally days previous to this mass panic and football being postponed until further notice, is that Football Index announced a huge offer of double dividends and a £1500 trading bonus.

This offer resulted in huge amounts of money being ploughed into the platform, particularly in Bruno, and seeing people’s all-time profits sore (if you owned the right players). It must be said that this offer was created amongst the early days of the coronavirus so FI did have this Footie boost in mind when offering it.

Looking back at my February update just four weeks ago, the header of that episode said this, “I have to say the end of February has been a testing few days…”. I seriously feel like I was writing that episode in a different time zone. 😀

Weeks are dragging already and this thing has only just started. I wrote a tweet saying “I wish I had tracked my media wins since the last game of football was played”. It’s only been over a week! If someone told me it was a few weeks ago I would have believed them.

So…how we gonna make money now?

“I have repeated a phrase consistently in my time on the Index which is “when a door closes, it opens a window”

A short answer is media dividends. No football matches remove one element of Football Index in the shape of Match Days divs along with IPDs as a side dish but it leaves Media as the forefront of the platform.

In a time long long ago, before I had even heard of the Index, the platform used to only be only about media anyway. Winning Match Day dividends and trading around performance was just an idea that hadn’t come into practice yet and the platform grew from there.

So, as painful as it is to have PB taken away, the beauty of the Index is that it is still open for business. I saw a tweet the other day of William Hill promoting offers on a game in Belarus or something on Twitter which is hilarious to look at compared to FI.

When the season ends normally in May what do we do as traders and what happens to the platform? It focusses on media days and traders work around that. This moment in time isn’t quite the same as that as it’s unprecedented and completely unique, however, one thing that is the same is Treble media days.

No football matches equal Treble media days on the Index and that will never change. Whether its an International Break, summer transfer window or the postponement of football matches around Europes top 5 leagues. Journalists will still write about players and the most written about will win Media Dividends.

We have had a lovely bonus at the moment of Double Dividends which has turned the winning player payout 10p of divs for gathering the most article points which have been brilliant. I myself have picked up winners in the top two almost every day as well the odd full house.

One of the themes I have around the winners since the pandemic is certain players have seen lots of attention for a couple of days and then that wave moves onto another player and then moves on again.

For e.g. Bruno was still in the medias mind last week, then Pogba got his fill and most recently Jadon Sancho’s potential transfer (as well as how good he is) articles have taken over. For holders of those players, in particular, it has been a solid period of picking up some money in spite of the huge drops overall on the market most of us have suffered from.

The other way of making money atm is good old fashioned capital appreciation. I mentioned the suffering overall in the market after the mass sell-offs and listing of players, but some players have been strong amongst this period of uncertainty and that’s players who could potentially feature heavily in the media.

So, as well as picking up your 10p per share of media dividends on Sancho lately, if you have held throughout the past week or so, or even if you have only just bought in recently, you have seen your shares rocket in price and seen you all-time profit figure go up.

I have repeated a phrase consistently in my time on the Index which is “when a door closes, it opens a window”. If performance-based players look to be out of action for Lord knows how long for, don’t ignore the potential of players that may feature heavily in the media.

The Index has a remarkable ability to show traders both sides of the story and it’s just a case of seeing it. For e.g. if a player goes down with an ACL he will get sold off/listed, however, his replacement(s) may get bought up so if you are quick to recognise this you can make money from it.

Now, the money you make may only be enough to cover the losses you are receiving from the “bad news” but that’s a lot better than only taking the loss. There are moments where if your all-time profit is still at a similar figure you have done well.

What about me?

“…I expect them all to have their fair share of battles for those media spots and could be a nice regular income via media wins.”

For myself across the past month, I have had a mixture of instant selling, listing and buying before, during and after this ‘crisis’ as it were. When the announcement of Double Divs happened, for example, I ploughed into Bruno and grabbed some Kimmich and Neymar.

Since then I have reduced my Bruno holding, sold Neymar on without any damage but have Kimmich on the sell queue at a loss. I actually had Kimmich at a 30p profit for a few days, as I was one of the first people to recognise buying him with Double Divs on offer and Bayern having a couple of easy looking matches.

Typically he has now changed to a Midfielder so I may have him on the queue for a long time,  I don’t have any plans to take him off and keep him. I feel my money is better off elsewhere, even if it’s just sat in my account ready to go or even to be withdrawn.

My all-time profit has been a bit of see-saw. I made a couple of grand from the big announcement. That went down a grand on ‘Black Thursday’ where people seemed to be listing or instant selling on mass. It went up and down a bit consistently since but I am now, thanks to some of my buys, sat at an all-time high.

Trading

When the coronavirus situation was building my initial reaction was to not really do anything. I wanted to take stock and think about the situation and what might happen. Once I had a think, I did instant sell some players but only those of smaller spreads who I couldn’t see being bought anytime soon.

I felt the money was best out of those and in my control and didn’t mind the smallish hit given I was up a couple of grand from the big announcement. I also listed a lot of players who did have a larger spread who I was not prepared to take the larger hit.

Some of those in hindsight may have been worth just dumping before the HUGE spread came on but some of those players have sold at a loss (some big losses) and some are still in the queue.

You could argue that I should have just kept the players for when/if the market fully recovers but tbh we may be facing 6 months of no football and I don’t like such large amounts of money being tied up like that. My own choice. That’s if they even sell anyway.

Another reason I am willing to take the losses on those is I can use the money elsewhere if needed. Some buys I have made over the past couple of weeks are Sancho, Pogba, Coutinho, Bellingham and Gnabry.

Most of those are because I expect them all to have their fair share of battles for those media spots and could be a nice regular income via media wins. I also could smell the market looking to buy into them at different times and got in early.

The exception to a media buy is Gnabry who had a positional change to a forward which makes him a lot more worthwhile in holding a slightly more ‘valuable’ to hold. I can see the market placing him as a £5 player (or near enough) once football comes back so I took the opportunity to buy in now for fear of missing a big rise.

This means that as far as ‘holds’ are concerned, these are the following players I consider to be ‘in my portfolio’ although I don’t actually believe in such behaviour but that issue is for another time:

Bruno Fernandes – the all-rounder. His price will go up and down but I can’t be bothered trying to time exits and re-entries. I have kept a certain amount through the odd buy and sell and that will stick now.

Alphonso Davies – held for a while and defender change will defo help his appeal. I love this kid.

Memphis Depay – I may top him up at some point as the Euro delay helps him a lot.

Phil Foden – I sold half my stake to the market but he has recovered a bit lately. Could have a huge year next season.

Kai Havertz – He was my rock-solid hold before the corona stuff which proves anything can happen that we have zero control over. I can’t see any huge return coming up in the short term and he may be blunt in the long term given the crisis but I don’t wanna get rid of him completely. Currently have half my stake on the market but I may unlist if he starts getting real media attention.

Jude Bellingham – I could smell the market wanting to get on him so did so myself. He is getting some media without actually winning any. He has been rising slowly though, so see how this transfer pans out.

Philippe Coutinho – Very similar to Jude I could sense he was going to get some action as he was hanging around the media spots without really smashing them and times my entry pretty well as he was 23p the next time I opened the app. A move back to the Prem would be sweet. My tip has always been Leicester given he worked with Brendan Rodgers but see what happens.

Serge Gnabry – Positional change is key. He is a peak performance player rather than high averages but peaks win you divs. If he can win as a midfielder he has lots of potential as a forward. Happy to pick up at around £4 in the current market.

Paul Pogba* – I have had my moments with PP, hence the asterisk. I had bought very well for under £7 with a decent top up later on with a decent sale of some shares (price-wise) at one stage. However, I also got over-excited and bought in further near his peak which he may never reach again.

I’m not sure what I want to do with my remaining shares at the moment and given his up and down price, I can see I am not the only one. Double divs for media are nice but they are ending soon and he has to maintain his relevance to prevent further listing. Given I bought the ones I have at near his peak price it’s a tricky one.

Jadon Sancho – If I have had my slight moments with Pogba over the past couple of weeks, that’s nothing compared to my history with Sancho. If ever there was a player I royally screwed up on a consistent basis he is the one. The Golden Boy of the index is my dark stain.

I have owned Sancho before but through a loss of belief, misguided opportunity cost or just sheer stupidity I have sold them way too early and not got back on the horse anywhere near quickly enough. Looking back at his graph and my lack of ownership for the majority of that time is just embarrassing tbh 😀

Even now I bought a decent chunk of him but then watched him drop to below £10. Part of me was cursing my actions once again and almost declared ‘you know what, he and I are just never gonna work’ but I avoided the temptation to market sell.

Reason being there was no way I was a) taking a loss but more importantly b) selling him at this moment in time. Use your brain Pirlo and forget the past. He could take over the summer media-wise all being well and I can see him pushing £13+ if not reaching £15 if all the dots line up.

I must admit to the following, even though I didn’t make another total f*ck up on the boy I still made a mistake. I didn’t buy more when he dipped under £10 which is fine. But I also didn’t buy more when he was around £10.60ish whilst winning media with my finger hovering over the buy button.

I managed to sleep through (physically and mentally) a good 80p rise before finally going bigger on him which can be added to the highlight reel of Sancho moments of brain farts but at least I did it eventually eh?

Now, even saying that we still don’t know what will happen in the future but fingers crossed he gets all the media he deserves and this transfer stuff drags on for months on end.

Numbers

“The aim of this blog was to show the potential of the Index…”

Strange month ongoing profits wise but only going to get tougher to maintain given my trading style is mainly around matches and matchdays. In fact, I can’t see how they will stay at a similar level for the foreseeable in the current climate.

However, I have already made steps towards potential media solid players and as quickly as you can’t see something one week on the Index, something else happens the week after to guide you in another direction. Who knows where we will be in a months time.

As I speak we are already seeing a bit of money being put into the Index again which is really positive but I am cautious that this could be just temporary, given the current net spend trading bonus being reset for those with negative spends, we shall have to wait and see.

I am going to take this month’s profits up to the all-time profit email we received on the 27th March:

For this season specifically, when I started this blog, the total profit now sits at £49,480. The blog had a start date of 11th Aug with £6,700 in the Index with no further investment during this process.

So, over the course of those seven and a half months or 33 weeks, if you prefer, the rate of return is now at 738.51%. For some perspective. without any withdrawals, the amount I would have in the Index today would be £56,180.

The aim of this blog was to show the potential of the Index and I hope the above goes some way of showing that. I started with a moderate amount, no further investments, just compounding the profits made over and over again to keep the rate going up. Profits making profits. 😀

As you can see. the all-time profit is now just shy of £60k at £59,812 which means this month’s ongoing profits have gone up £5,845. That is an increase of 9.23%.

It was a day shy of 4 weeks since the last episode so taking in £1,461.25 a week in the month we have just had, I shall take that. That figure was pretty close to my average weekly “income” for this season.

My all-time dividends have gone up over a thousand pounds and beats last months haul. This was helped by the media based players I invested in for when the football matches came to a stop winning regularly.

Interestingly (as far as I am aware) the double dividend “extra” payments don’t actually count towards the dividends figure on the app so my dividend based payouts have been a bit more than what that is showing me. Not that I am complaining.

Going forward

In the short term, my focus will be on those media dividend rankings and seeing which players are looking like dominating at any given moment in time. I have had regular winners over the double dividend period which obviously has been satisfying.

All we can do overall is keep monitoring the situation of when football may be back. My own view it will be several months so I will be relying on those media players for the foreseeable. With an eye on adding some to my ‘port’ if they look to be a potential consistent presence.

Some traders are already looking into buying players for when football does come back, basically “PB players”, so monitoring the market is also worth keeping an eye on, even if its just a casual one.

Personally, I am not looking that far ahead yet as we have no idea how long this virus will keep football players off the pitch. It could be three months, six months or even a year. Just imagine that scenario. It may seem way off the mark but we just don’t know.

I heard Mike Bohan dropping a hint that we may see some old fashioned IPOs drop soon so I shall be keeping an eye out for those…as always!

Happy trading and take care.

You can find me on Twitter @GingerPirlo_FI

(If you somehow haven’t signed up to Football Index yet, you can do so by clicking this link you won’t regret it!)

“I have to say the end of February has been a testing few days…”

Welcome to the seventh instalment of the ‘Can I make a living from Football Index’ series.

We are moving into the business end of the season now as the UEFA Champions League and Europa League knockout stages begin and we start to take stock of which players can go all the way and maximise their playing time as well as bring in healthy returns.

First off I am pleased to announce I have teamed up with FreeSuperTips.com to spread the good word of the Index to create a weekly journal type feature of some buys and sales I have made as well as a few potential tips.

This is in addition to the good lads at FootballCritic.com who I have been creating content for several weeks now. Check out their sites and my latest articles on the above links and keep an eye out for more on your Twitter timeline and spread the good word.

February has been a tricky period for traders from what I am picking up on around chat channels and Twitter. Some may not have felt the pinch that much but others may be feeling like Deontay Wilder after going a few rounds of getting beat to **** by Tyson Fury. It all depends on who you hold and what strategy you have.

The Footie itself is up over 4,500 I have been informed since the end of January so the market as a whole hasn’t had any official dip. What we are seeing is more volatility as players are, at times, brutally sold off for small reasons like short suspensions, slight injuries or even for just being substituted.

Short-termism is an expression that gets banded around and you could say this is a solid way of describing it. As a fella who is well known to be short-term with players in my time, I wouldn’t fully describe it as just this, although it is a factor. I would be more inclined to call it irrational.

Emotional or Merciless?

“In-play trading takes a certain level of skill. It took a lot of hard work and experience from myself to make it viable…”

When I have been on a player for a short amount of time there was a method behind it and risk evaluated. Always. I don’t like to part with my money easily.

Not including in-play flips, the only time I buy a player and instant sell them off within several days or hours is a cheeky low share amount, low cost, low-risk punt on a cheap player with a small spread. My general trading on the Index is always to market sell.

Yet we are seeing this type of “dumping” behaviour with more expensive players with wide spreads and it’s a bit frightening tbh. The cost of these trades must be a killer. We have all been there feeling we need to IS off a player for whatever reason and it’s painful, yet these lot are seemingly doing it at will.

The instinct is to call it emotional and irrational behaviour. Some of what we are seeing in terms of dismissing a player so willfully and quickly is beyond any logic. But that is with the thought process of a trader. Maybe this behaviour isn’t completely irrational, maybe it’s just blatant high-risk gambling.

We have seen people out there put a £20k bet on Arsenal to win a one-off game. High risk, high reward. So maybe the Index has attracted these types of gamblers who think they can make decent money with a similar attitude here?

If that is true, it would be interesting to see how well (or poorly) they are doing. Maybe one of these high-risk gamblers will share their profit and losses from this type of behaviour one day. That is assuming they actually exist, I am still just speculating at this stage in an attempt to explain what we are seeing.

There is nothing wrong with short-term trading. It has been around before I joined the platform. I was inspired by certain parts of it like fixture trading by experienced traders and I still do this today.

In-play trading takes a certain level of skill. It took a lot of hard work and experience from myself to make it viable and isn’t for the faint-hearted based on testimonies from those who tried and will never try again.

It can be a bit bizarre to see players rise 10-15p in a short space of time and then crash back down again if they didn’t actually do a lot wrong. Small rises and/or falls around game days are natural but these seem to be getting bigger. This may purely be down to more traders equals more volatility and just something we all need to get used to.

Or like I have gone into, it could be due to your typically instant high risk, high reward gamblers who may get bored after a while and go back to regular bookmakers or exchanges if they decide it isn’t working on the Index. Who knows really? Let’s see how this behaviour pans out.

How’s the 200 club?

If you have read earlier episodes you will know that early in the season I started a ‘200 club’ which was made up of quality PB performers who should be fighting it out for those star man divs on any given day.

I made this club as the new dividend structure that was announced was generous and I felt I had enough money in the Index to add some high-end players into my port, as well as carry out my active trading.

As of today, I can say that this has pretty much been disbanded. Reason being the drop in the value of these PB monsters we all know and love was just too annoying to bear. I didn’t mind at first but after a while my thoughts of the opportunity cost got the better of me.

I loved holding Messi and seeing him bend one in the top corner to take star man, it was a brilliant feeling but the financials just weren’t stacking up. I held him throughout his massive drop and it was sad to see him leave.

I have no idea if he will continue to drop or will stay around the price he is now for another season or two but I decided I just don’t need the hassle of it. It was the same with Toni Kroos. I love Toni, many do, but his price has gone from over £5 to less than £4 in a short period of time.

I sold him to the market for £4.70 even though I didn’t really want to but I could see his drop coming. He is now £3.82 and if I had held on, then all of the divs he has won me would have been wiped out, as well as the cap app. It’s sad but I felt it was necessary.

Neymar was one I should have sold when he had that big rise lately to £8.83 but with his star-man power, I held onto him. I sold him recently for £8.20ish and he is now dipped back under £8. Brutal.

I only held 200 shares of these players but there are others with thousands who are feeling the dip right now. Financially that is. They may still very much enjoy holding them and believe they will rise again so don’t stress about it, but for me, I have sold them and will only get back on if the Index presents another opportunity I think is worth it.

Only one man has remained and that is Trent Alexander-Arnold. Reason being he is a lot younger than the others and with his powers getting stronger rather than weaker, I see no real reason to get rid of him just yet.

Hits and misses

“…I had too much faith in them to repeat their impressive performances”

I haven’t done a Hits and Misses segment for a while so let’s do one, shall we? The following were some trades that went well and some not so well for one reason or another. Enjoy.

Hits

Alphonso Davies (Bayern Munich)

I love this kid. I have owned him for a while (in my world) and I am not planning on letting him go anytime soon. His performance against Chelsea in the Champions League was of no surprise to me. I am surprised, however, in how well he is turning himself into a left-back, as I only really judged him on going forward. This kid is a real talent.

I first saw him when he was 16 playing for Vancouver Whitecaps when I was given one of their games to randomly analyse in my football performance role I used to have and he stood out to me. He was head and shoulders above the rest.

It was only after I did the game and looked him up that I saw his age. It blew my mind. I knew right there and then he would be at a big club soon. Bayern were the smart ones and took him. I have heard Man Utd had the chance and turned it down, what has been going on over there?!

He is up almost 90p per share for the month and my only gripe is I didn’t top up even more on him!

Bukayo Saka (Arsenal)

Forward players slotting in at left-back is a bit of a theme it seems, as another young player I have liked for a while is doing a similar job at Arsenal, albeit more temporary. Saka came to my attention in the Europa League last season and stood out to me as the best of the Arsenal youngsters.

He has been tasked with slotting in at left-back this season and he has took advantage to show off his attacking skills and grabbed plenty of assists. His defensive skills are obviously in need of improvement but he has done a cracking job and the market has noticed.

I got on a bit late in terms of this month’s whopping 50% rise but when a player rises over a £1 per share in value, you have some room to still make a decent amount whenever you got on. Let’s hope he keeps on smashing it.

Bruno Fernandes (Man Utd)

We all saw it right? A Gold day Star Man win and then boom! So I couldn’t do this episode without mentioning him. I grabbed a cheeky 300 when he slotted in his penalty vs Watford, as it was pre-deadline and he had a shout at some divs if he held onto GWG, and it worked out well.

Plus, I had a very strong feeling he would win media for the day no matter what else went on, so was a pretty safe bet. With some luck from other games, he managed to hold onto his Golden Shower of maximum divs for the day and the next day the market reacted.

From when I bought him, he is up well over a £1 per share in price and I actually missed the initial FOMO buying of him the day after the night before. I shall keep my 300 for a while though and see how it goes.

*Update – he got another GWG pen last night and rocketed again! I just sat and watched without topping up, d’oh!

Misses

Erling Braut Haaland (Dortmund)

Here is one I have missed out on a lot. When he scored that hat trick on his debut I was working so didn’t make a single penny from a monumental rise. Since then he has had an up and down month.

His graph for February is some rollercoaster. It’s perfect symmetry. £5.50 to £6.24 back down to £5.50 and now he is up to £6.13. Throughout all of this, I have pretty much been on the sidelines. I attempted some in-play action in THAT Champions League brace vs PSG but I only made a small amount after commission.

Jude Bellingham (Birmingham City)

The most anticipated IPO went without a hitch (unbelievably) and I made some money on him. I ironically had my own technical issues that went tits up, so I didn’t make a killing like I hoped. I sold him near £3 and moved on.

So, when he had his near 90p per share rise recently I was nowhere to be seen. I actually saw some buys going into him the night before this epic pump but I left it. You can imagine my reaction to seeing him jacked up to his eyeballs the next morning. Such joy when this happens without you! Grrr

Hits then misses

There were a few players I did well to get on early and with a decent amount of shares invested, but I didn’t take full advantage of it by selling near their peak.

I nailed Musa Barrow & Adam Ounas early into a big PB performance that got attention from the market and I went relatively big. I sold some shares at a decent amount but with minor injuries, suspensions or poor follow up PB scores, they were sold off by traders for fun.

I had too much faith in them to repeat their impressive performances with the favourable fixtures they had to come and should have hedged my bets more by taking the profit and keeping a smaller amount.

I touched on it early in this episode, but I underestimated how much of a tanking they could get so quickly with the extreme trading we are seeing…or gambling. They aren’t the only ones who have received this treatment this month.

These two are good players and I don’t see the need to be sold off so badly in mass and they may have their day in the sun again soon. But being on players that receive this kind of up and down extremes isn’t really for me.

Some numbers

“I certainly didn’t maximise potential profits this month…”

After the madness of January, this month has been a bit flat for most traders and I was no different. However, as long as the all-time profit keeps ticking up at a reasonable rate I am relatively satisfied.

My all-time profit currently sits at £53,967 which is up £8,711 from last months figure of £45,256. This is an increase of 19.25% over the course of 30 days.

The average taking of over £2k a week this time around is above the average for the season so far, which is now up to £1,464 a week since August.

As for this season specifically since starting the blog, the original £6.7k I started with is now up to £49,167 which is an ROI of 633% over the course of almost 29 weeks (six and a half months or so).

My all-time dividends total has gone above the £7k mark which was helped by over £1k gathered this month. For someone who wasn’t even that bothered about dividends for most of my time on the Index, that isn’t bad. They count for around 13% of my all-time profit.

I will give a shout out to the Super Match Day points as well, however, in order for me to get the final figure of the below, I will need to make my net shares bought or net buys a positive figure. I have more chance of doing so via the positive net shares angle so I will try and sort this out come the deadline.

In summary, I certainly didn’t maximise potential profits this month. Some players I did get on early before a solid rise, saw a sharp drop afterwards before I had sold. Plus add in those players I completely missed out on (as per usual) it’s another example of what can really be done on this platform.

This month could have been an absolute stonker with a few minor moments going differently.

Testing few days

“I want the platfrom to grow from strength to strength, we all do”

I have to say the end of February has been a testing few days for the platform.

Firstly, a few players positions changed which caused some to be sold off and some to get pumped. It was quickly speculated that these changes were a glitch in the Opta feed, which caused a dip on those players that had a rise.

A couple of days have past now and they have all reverted back to their original positions! This is beyond annoying. If you IS’d the players who’s positionnal changes didn’t seem to favour them and jumped on the players that were seemingly beneficial, you needed have bothered.

Worse yet, you are very likely to be out of pocket now and may own players you don’t want. Not to mention getting rid of players you do actually like. Shambles. This isn’t the first time it’s happened and it can’t go on like this.

FI need to take ownership of the positions of players within their own platform. It has a major impact on prices and can’t be left in third party hands who may suffer glitches. I don’t know the ins and outs of how this can be achieved but this has to be sorted out.

The issues didn’t stop there.

Thursday night saw an unprecedented event that I didn’t think was even possible, market sell wasn’t working. No, they didn’t turn off Instant sell, traders with shares on the market were not being sold to traders that were buying! Crazy.

I can speak first hand and say this kicked me square in the bollocks. In-play trading is a key part of my life on the Index and for my shares to not sell, only to later go down in value and be less appealing in the market, is unacceptable.

I mean, what the hell?? Being unable to sell shares on a stock market platform, despite them being bought? Ridiculous. Talk about amateur hour but this is arguably the worst thing I have ever seen.

I have no idea how it happened and I have no idea if it can happen again. I can’t lie and say my confidence in the platform isn’t at the same levels as it was before this. Even if it’s down only 1% lower, it’s still a gremlin I could really do without. All of us could, including FI.

I want the platfrom to grow from strength to strength, we all do, so I hope they learn the lessons needed very quickly.

That’ll do for this month. I hope February was decent for you and that March is even better. You can find me on Twitter @GingerPirlo_FI

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“Weighing up risk can go against you on the Index when sometimes its best to just not think and keep it simple.”

Welcome to the sixth instalment of the ‘Can I make a living from Football Index’ series.

The last episode was a bit of a reflection from when I started back in September 2018 but we are now in 2020 (already!) so let’s look to plough on as much as possible and get the most out of this Football Index we all know and love.

Onwards and upwards as some bald bloke who sends out rockets on Twitter now and then once said. 😀

This January has seen not one offer come about, but two. They do love to give do FI, you can’t really knock it, can you? The first was a ‘£500 risk-free’ offer for all traders which is basically what they offer to all new customers for a week. The difference in this one is it is open for the whole of January.

When this first came out it seemed great. Risk-free trading? I’m in. But when you look through the T&C’s it shouldn’t really apply to traders of any experience, as it’s a payback of any losses over the month. I mean, if I am down come the end of January, this month’s episode will be diabolical reading!

What this did offer though was giving newer customers the freedom to go big. Ploughing everything into a potential transfer for e.g could be a nice way to go. With this in mind, when this offer came from nowhere my instincts were on one man and one man only. Bruno Fernandes.

The Bruno saga

“…those who have sat on him this whole time have seen a great return.”

If you could trade on someone this month “risk-free” who would it be? This was the question I asked as a trader and that very morning there were very early whispers that Man Utd were looking into Bruno Fernandes again.

So, without really reading the new offer T&Cs I bought some. My average was £2.85 and just left it. Then others did the same. Then the rumours started to build and the lad took off.

In hindsight, I should have really ploughed him, like empty the bank stuff, but was a bit late and he was up to £3.50 before I could blink. I wasn’t complaining but you always want more in this game. 😀

Seeing as there wasn’t that much meat on the bone I sold a few off. But then he took off again. I bought and sold a few more during these waves but I kept 300 the whole time. Not a huge return as it stands but nothing to moan over.

This January offer came out on the 10th Jan, so this Bruno saga has been going on for three weeks now and looks to go on until the end of Jan as he flies in for his medical as I write, which has brought media dividends on almost a daily basis.

The only time he hasn’t won any media is when Rashford fractured his back and won two media divs back to back (pardon the pun). Bruno has brought in over 50p so far in media wins from the 11th Jan which isn’t gonna stop soon.

That’s incredible dominance. Shows what pull he may have as a Man Utd player. He still has the aftermath of the transfer, his debut and then stories on whether he was brilliant or awful.

So even throughout the dips and rises of his price, those who have sat on him this whole time have seen a great return. This is one of the beauties of the index, there are different ways to make your coin.

Transfer divs pointless?

The other offer FI introduced, bizarrely halfway through the transfer window, was pay-outs on completed transfers. These players must be worth over £1 and for perm transfers you get 10p and loans you get 5p. You must have owned at least the day before to get them.

At first, I liked this as it seemed to add another dimension to the usual pump a rumour and sell on the flip. However, in practice, I don’t think it has really worked. People don’t seem bothered about holding for transfers and those that do can be at the mercy of those selling by holding on to a player for the divs but has dropped in value.

Not so bad for anyone that would hold a new signing regardless but all this has done, for me, has added another dimension to flipping rather than substance to transfers. We have all seen those pumped to within an inch of £1 and then listed or dumped for fun.

Adding more madness to January has been an interesting move. I don’t think these will stick for future transfer windows. Not without slight changes anyway.

IPOs

“Can it be tedious? Hell yea”

January hasn’t just been about transfers but FI have gone IPO crazy and been pushing these out on a regular basis this month. For someone that loves IPO’s, I have been well happy with this. Nothing gets the heart racing like a player dropping and trying to maximise your potential profit. Whether you wanna flip or hold.

Some don’t like them, which is fair enough. I can see why as I have had my fair share of burns in my time playing with these fireworks. I have been left with players at a loss for ages that I don’t even want plenty of times and I will do again I’m sure. However, when it comes off its a brilliant way to make instant profits.

In my mind IPO stands for Instant Profit Opportunity so why wouldn’t I want to get involved in that? Can it be tedious? Hell yea. Can you question your life choices as you sit staring at a screen? Many times. Do you care about any of that once it lands and you get on at a good price? Hell no.

If you think IPOs can be rollercoaster rides than this month has been something else. On Xmas eve there was a technical issue which meant Rayan Cherki price stuff and was given away at a rock bottom price for people to hoover up in the thousands of shares. So, when the next batch came out it couldn’t happen again, could it?

IP-Oh what the fu….?

Remember the name, Japhet Tanganga. Not because he has done a Wayne Rooney and stuck one in the top corner but because he has done a ‘Rayan Cherki’ and got “stuck” on his IPO day. Some of us were waiting on him just in case it happened and my God it only went and did.

His price got stuck on and around the 85p mark and ppl ploughed in. You then had no access to the system but if you waited around and kept trying, it opened up again and had a free hit at him without his price moving an inch. I myself managed to get 5700 before he started to rise and then tried to breathe slowly to lower my heart rate! 😀

Then the question was when to list. I had scars from the Cherki situation where I gave away 80% of my shares bought for free as I didn’t realise what was going on quickly enough, so I was hesitant on listing too early amongst the frenzy.

To cut a long story short of a week’s worth of my all-time profit making jumps and falls like never before, I sit here with 3000 sold one way or another at all kinds of different prices with 2700 left in the sale queue.

Who knows when these will go but if they do sell anywhere near his current price of £1.30 I will have made about £3k from all of this carry-on. This is one player I will never forget for a long time.

Today is the IPO of Jude Bellingham…well it was supposed to be. FI at this stage of writing have delayed/cancelled it for further notice given they didn’t think the system could handle it.

So, we could have had another Cherki/Tanganga situation and yet still get one if they release him and despite all their tests the system still can’t handle it and he gets stuck. I can only imagine the peak price of him if this were to happen. My God almighty.

People have asked why have they delayed it today and not made it clear they were going to do so last night or earlier this morning. I can’t say but they must have felt confident otherwise they wouldn’t be attempting it at all. Will watch this space on this one…

*Update: Bellingham is being released tomorrow! Hold on to your balls!*

The younger the better?

“…his 35-minute cameo was something to behold…”

With Cherki coming on the platform it has seemed to reignite people’s desire to get on youth holds, as the 16-year old had a barnstorming ’10 out of 10′ performance in the French Cup where he scored twice and grabbed two assists against decent opposition. Outrageous.

I myself was monitoring this game and grabbed 600 at £2.75 average and he reached £4 before Lyon’s league game in anticipation that he might have got a start. He didn’t and has dipped since but this kid could be an FI monster. Fingers crossed.

With the rise of Cherki, we have seen other youth players get some action like Ryan Gravenberch of Ajax. Harvey Elliot went up a bit. Barrenextea had some buys into him. It was basically anyone without a picture, fill your boots!

I made a bit of money on Gravenberch but Ander Barrenextea was one that intrigued me the most given his low price in comparison to the others and the fact he was in and around the first team at Real Sociedad already.

He grabbed a goal and an assist in the Spanish Cup so I grabbed 300. I wish I had grabbed more as others seemed to buy in dribs and drabs and before I knew it he had a decent rise.

After another goal in the cup, the recently turned 18-year old came on as a sub in the league and scored within a minute. It took a little delay for people to realise if he even was given the goal or not but when his PB score came in after his 35-minute cameo was something to behold…

Once word got out he had thousands of buys and went up around 40p from his goal and settled around the £2.30 mark. I am on him after topping up at different times and a few sales at peak for 1000 and will continue to monitor closely. If he shows he has a strong PB base he could be special. A youth player with FI substance is what we all want. Right?

Another young player without a picture has been IPO’s this week in Sebastiano Esposito, so it would have been foolish of me not to get involved in this right? With Lautaro Martinez facing a 2-game ban after getting sent off for going mental last week, Esposito has a chance of some minutes. If he can do a Barrenextea I will be extremely happy!

Pick that out!

“Outrageous how the Matrix was seemingly built just for him.”

Apart from IPOs and transfers, I have made some normal trades as always with some cracking suggestions put out as well. I don’t give out “tips” that much these days but when I see a potential fixture buy I may ‘let the people know’.

The three I have put out lately were Riyad Mahrez, Jordan Henderson and Virgil Van Dijk:

Mahrez has won star man on a Silver Day and top forward on a Bronze night with some quality capital appreciation.

Henderson bagged a goal to help him win top Midfielder on a Bronze night and has gone up 25% in value.

Virgil went and won top Defender on a Gold day before he had even played the games I bought him for. Those “easy” games are yet to come after his rise in price and divs already won.

Lovely jubbly!

Some other players I am into at the minute that I have mentioned here and there on Indexgain mainly but maybe the odd excited tweet are:

Samu Castillejo who is showing some really strong stats that suit the PB matrix. He was under a £1 but has gone up a lot over past 24 hours after another impressive performance in the Italian Cup.

Maxwell Cornet was one I got on as soon as he grabbed an assist the other week as his PB was extremely strong. He put in another high-class FI performance past weekend so is one to watch if he can sustain it in Depay’s absence.

One to watch atm is Adam Ounas who put in a very impressive PB score for Nice in his last game and could be due a nice rise if he repeats it anytime soon. His age is still decent at 23 so could have all the cards in his favour.

All of the above sit within the £1 – £1.30 range so sit nicely in terms of value in the market if they prove to be solid PB players and are all 25 or under, so consistent scores will only bring good things.

I also wanna mention Alphonso Davies who is my muse right now. 19 years old and is absolutely smashing it for Bayern which is bringing consistent rock-solid PB scores without any bonuses in assists or goals.

The hope is he will be switched to a defender soon by Opta and that’s when he will really rocket! You can fully expect him to be £3+ with the chance of a clean sheet bonus to add to his PB game. Just wait til he grabs assists and the odd goal. Boom time baby!

Also want to mention the great man. The King. The cheat code. Neymar strolling his way to more Gold star man wins. Outrageous how the Matrix was seemingly built just for him. How many more star man’s will he win this season?

Numbers

FI have just released our all-time profit email which is nicely timed, so will work to that figure. January has been a unique month with transfers, IPOs and offers being released. However, I have missed out on lots of profit in some areas and gained in others like any other month.

Last time out I had an all-time profit of £35,930 and a month later this has moved onto £45,256. This means an increase of £9,326 for the past 30 days. An increase of around 26%.

My all-time dividends have gone up to £5,962.88 so slightly annoying as an update not quite getting over the £6k mark. 😀

This month has also seen me tick over a landmark of an ROI of 503% since the start of this season and when I started this blog.

I had £6,700 in the index on August 11th and turned it into £40,456 over the course of just over 24 weeks with no deposits. I have actually made £3,500 in withdrawals over this time.

For a broader outlook, I went back over my initial time on the index and have worked out that I committed £2,700 of my own money into FI over my first few weeks before any withdrawals and one-off temporary deposits for Deposit Bonuses etc.

So, based on this my overall ROI is 1574% as of the start of September 2018 to now.

Signing off

This month started extremely slow in terms of the all-time profit figure rising, as all profitable trades were offsetting drops on the players I was holding. It was only until this new “risk-free” offer kicking in on the 10th Jan where profits started to really kick on.

The Bruno trade was a good one, although I did not take advantage of it by any means. If I had to just left my 600 shares I bought I would have made a lot more money as of today. I just can’t help myself with these types of trades.

Weighing up risk can go against you on the Index when sometimes its best to just not think and keep it simple. Did I think Bruno was going? Yes. Would have I put money on it? Yes. So that’s all I needed to know.

Although I will say, this move looked very dodgy at one stage and the spread was eye-watering. If it had fallen through I wouldn’t want to be ISing on that!

IPOs have been decent and look like to be a regular thing given how many there have been lately. I welcome this with open arms. Others won’t for various reasons but we are all different with different lives on the Index.

It will be interesting to see the youth players and how much investment they will receive from now on. They have always been popular on some level but they could really get some serious money pumped into them.

PB players seem to have lost their appeal but like all trends, this may come back around at some point. Keep your eyes on that one.

Thanks for reading and follow me on Twitter @GingerPirlo_FI

Peace out!

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