SIMON NOTT: The Market Knows

As far as my own personal betting goes, some might say I’m lazy, others realistic.

Whichever camp you might want to consign me to, I follow other people’s advice as to what to back. The reason for this is that I bet in the hope I’ll make money, not for entertainment, I’m too busy to watch most of the races I bet on. I’m also too busy with working, or life in general to devote the time it takes to study form well enough to make it pay.

I’m a realist and understand I could never be as good a judge as the people I follow, just like I wouldn’t try and fix my own roof or rewire my house. It’s good on the mind too, I’ve got my staking in a place I’m comfortable with, put everything on a spreadsheet and hope to make a few quid for little luxuries over a year. 

This year started well, but I’m now in the red to the tune of a nice few quid. That’s not because the shrewdies have had a bad run, though of course they all do. No, I decided I knew best and opened my shoulders and bet on something using my own judgement. At this point, I’ll admit that it was quite a liberating thing to do – at first. 

My independent betting foray was into the Tiverton and Honiton by-election. OK, we all know the result of it now, the Liberal Democrats must have been shoo-ins and only an absolute mug would have been against them.

It’s OK, I’ve been called worse. I was absolutely convinced that the Conservatives would win, though fully expected that their near 25,000 majority would take a hit. I just couldn’t have it that the Lib-Dems should be quite long odds-on to turn that over. I live in North Devon now but was born and raised in ‘True Blue’ Tiverton. Some of my earliest memories in politics were my parents getting involved with the Liberal Party campaigns in the 1970s, they even had Jeremy Thorpe in the back of their Ford Capri while he spoke to the good folk of Tiverton through huge speaker horns bungeed to the roof rack. This was before the Liberal leader was embroiled in controversy, but still the good folk of Tiverton and surrounding rural areas voted Conservative. 

I had taken an interest in politics since those days, but made my own mind up as the years went on. I don’t do political opinion in public anymore, but I even joined a party and used to canvass for them, the last time was over 25 years ago. Still, Tiverton stayed Tory, through good times and bad and even Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997. 

So, back into 2022, I had been taking an interest in the by-election, Neil Parish may have been disgraced watching porn in Parliament but he had been well-liked. During my brief tenure as an Independent Tiverton Town Councillor, I’d met him and he’d seemed a nice enough chap. Surely Tiverton and Honiton wouldn’t turn their backs on the new candidate. It didn’t look that way, try as the TV might on the build-up to the by-election they appeared to find it difficult to find someone who’d give the Tories a mouthful. After all, I thought, Tiverton and Honiton won’t budge, they never have. 

I even asked a fellow Tiverton Councillor, the sort of fellow that would make Jeremy Corbyn appear right-wing, he couldn’t see the Tory electorate switching to the Lib Dems, Labour had beaten them into third in the last General Election. I asked a couple of political shrewds, OK I was making my case, but they didn’t disagree. 

I decided to bet like a hero, this was an opportunity not to be missed. It wasn’t too hard at first, I’d spun up a few quid into a nice few quid on Betfair so decided to invest my previous winnings, then invest again with my own money, and again. In fact, every time I thought about it, I bet again, a little bit here and a little but there. I was looking at it as a bit of a savings plan, and to be honest, I was that confident, I didn’t want to wake up after the Conservatives had held Tiverton and Honiton and be kicking myself that I’d not had enough on. By election day, I’d had quite a punt. Who were these people happy to bet odds-on the Lib Dems, I thought arrogantly to myself, they obviously didn’t have the feel of the locale as I did. 

Yes, Simon, that’s the big bet question isn’t it, who ARE those people? As election day progressed, those ‘mugs’ kept filling their boots, at around 1/33 just before polls closed the writing was on the wall. I’d dreamt about a Lib Dem win half a dozen times before I woke to the confirmed news that they’d won a famous victory. 

Then it all began to click, I hadn’t known that the Lib Dems had been stuffing letter boxes on a daily basis for weeks, even in the most rural areas. The Conservatives had hardly been sighted. On polling day, the Lib Dems’ army of volunteers were keeping their eye on who hadn’t voted and were going to their houses offering lifts to cast their vote. In certain areas, the Tory call to arms to their volunteers wasn’t responded to by anyone, it seems their heart wasn’t in it. I’d also dismissed the call for Labour supporters to vote tactically for the Lib Dems as the rantings of the vocal on-line minority.

I didn’t think for a minute that many of those thousands that voted Labour last time would swallow their pride, desert their candidate and vote for a party they despised marginally less than the incumbent. There had been rumblings in the farming community about failings of Brexit and so it went on. I was clueless.

The market certainly wasn’t. The market had done their homework, their sums, bet like men (and of course women) and copped plenty from mugs like me. 

My foray into making my own betting decisions has been a brief one, I have confidence the shrewdies I follow will slowly but surely dig me out the hole I willingly fell into. Of course they will, they do their homework.

The market knows better than you or I. If it’s consistently strong against your opinion you need to have a deeper look as to why, the people that make it don’t have a guess up or go on hunches. I’ve learned that to be so arrogant to assume you know better is a very costly lesson. 

Double or quits at the General Election…

SIMON NOTT

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Views of authors do not necessarily represent views of Star Sports Bookmakers.

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Simon Nott is author of: Skint Mob! Tales from the Betting Ring
available on Kindle CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

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