Betfair Trading - Bankroll & Staking Strategy - How much do you need?

There has been a big demand for a blog post on Bankroll Management from our members so I have heeded to your wishes and will try and write a great document for you all.

Let me start of by saying: There is NO definitive Betfair Trading bankroll amount or bet staking strategy, many different traders have very different trading styles and thus their bankrolls and staking percentages will differ widely. What I aim to do in this blog post is give my opinion of some of the best Betfair trading staking plans and bankroll tips for starting your journey to becoming a professional Betfair Trader.

So let’s start with bankroll, now me and Ryan get asked all the time how we built up our initial bankrolls, we did it through starting with small bankrolls around £100 and building up slowly over time!

What is the ideal bankroll for becoming a Betfair Trading pro-trader?

Well the first answer to that question is, forget the bankroll, make sure you have your living expenses taken care of for at least 6 months-1 year. Once that is safely banked away in savings then you can start thinking about the other money you wish to use. My advice is lock this money into your bank and never use it for Betfair trading, it is your safety net and will help you mentally if you have a bad day, knowing you won’t go hungry for a good while yet!

After this, you can start to think about how much of a bankroll you want to set aside for trading. Mentally you need an amount which you are willing to discount from your wealth, you need to think of it as ‘dead money’ because if you include it in your wealth it will be very painful when you lose even 1-2% of it!

So let’s talk money!

Ideally you want a Betfair Trading bankroll of at least £2,500 in my opinion, although I would want £5,000 to be a little more comfortable. Anything £10,000 and above is more than plentiful!

I would suggest a conservative approach to start with. If you trade pre-match then 10-20% of the bank is reasonable but you must NEVER ever let that go in play! If you do not trust yourself to trade out before the event starts then use a much lower amount 1-3% would be my suggestion.

For swing traders like me, it is commonly suggested to use between 2-5% of the bankroll to start with, if you are a good trader this will give you plenty enough of an increase each month to live off. I consider myself quite a defensive trader and often only use 1-2% of my bankroll (or sometimes even less!) when trading in-play, as I lay at short odds generally this can be very profitable even still.

A lot of it is ‘feel’ do what you are comfortable with. Making a lot of mistakes? Trading out too early? This could be a sign that you are risking too much. If you are not comfortable with the amounts you are trading with this will only lead to disaster, which will only lead to loss of money in the long run.

What if it goes wrong?

I have a simple rule that has never let me down, if I lose half my bankroll I half my stakes. If I have a £10,000 bankroll and my usual stake is £200, if it goes to £5,000 I make it £100. This way it would take you absolutely ages to lose your bankroll (and if you lost your whole bankroll following this staking plan, then this may not be the career for you).

As I have said before I like to test my trading techniques/strategies out for at least 3 months before putting any serious money on them. I advise all traders old and new to paper trade and test things as much as possible. After all, this is risk management, as opposed to gambling. As risk management experts we must first control and reduce our liabilities before getting carried away with our trades. Please read my blog post on Paper Trading to find out more about this.

If you are not a member of the site why not Join us and get a helping hand along the way. With many pro traders supporting each other every step of the way, it really is a great place to learn.

If you have any more questions about this please do not hesitate to ask or contact me info@betfairtradingcommunity.com