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 βCan I make a living from Football Index?β 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. π
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. π
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.
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 Β£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 Β£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 Β£6.7k has become Β£68,819.77.
(My net withdrawals is Β£8,740 so I have just over Β£60k actively in the market.)
That’s a total profit of Β£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 Β£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.
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. π
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! π
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 π
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 ππ
So that’s it. Ten episodes are up. 927% profit achieved. Β£62k added to the pot to split between the Index and my back pocket. All from a Β£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!
The Ginger Pirlo 