Football Index Trader – Final Update
Given the news about Football Index, which we covered in some detail in a post the other day, it obviously makes sense to wrap up this review now.
In case you missed it, essentially Football Index are in financial trouble and have had to cut dividends by over 60%. That led to a crash in users’ portfolio values and a storm of understandable bitterness and anger on social media from people who felt they had been misled by the company. Our view is that Football Index is living on borrowed time in its current form and barring a miraculous turnaround or buyout and restructure, will have to face closing its doors at some stage with so little revenue coming in.
This obviously leaves Football Index Trader (run by a chap called Adam) in a sticky position and you have to feel for him given this was his main occupation. Adam is soldiering on for now whilst Football Index is still going, although members have been given the option to pause their subscriptions.
In terms of the Football Index Trader (or FIT for short) service itself, as we commented in the review below we thought it was excellent. The research was always in-depth and the analysis high quality. There were a high proportion of selections picked out in scouting who went on to perform very well and whilst there were a few who didn’t quite hit the mark, you are never going to have a 100% success rate but on the whole members would have done well following FIT’s advice.
It is obviously no fault of Adam’s that Football Index has got itself into this mess so all we can do really is wrap up this review and say if Football Index had been a well-managed platform and achieved the potential it had, then FIT would have been an excellent resource for people wanting to get the most out of the platform.
If as we say there is some miraculous turnaround or a buyout and restructure, then perhaps it could be once again, although trust with Football Index has been so thoroughly destroyed it is difficult to envisage a way back for it from here.
In any event, we imagine Adam’s skills could be easily transferred to one of the other platforms like Footstock or Sorare should he choose, but we could understand full well if he wants to take his career in another direction after what has happened at Football Index.
So alas all we can say really is that Football Index Trader would have received a resounding PASSED rating, but sadly that looks like rather a moot point now.
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Football Index Trader – Update
28th January 2021
Football Index Trader (or FIT for short) is a site designed to help traders maximise their gains on the “Football Stockmarket,” Football Index.
In our last update we covered some of the key features of FIT including “Scouting,” “State of the Market” and the live blogs. Those are really the core of the service but there are some other features as well which we will take a look at today.
Before getting onto those however, it is worth reporting that there has been a bounce back in the market following a recent announcement from Football Index regarding a change to the dividend structure that removes in-play dividends and replaces them with “match day extra” dividends.
This announcement seems to have restored confidence in the platform and got it back to its USP of being more of a long-term trading platform where you are betting on players’ careers (or three years of their careers, at least).
In addition to the general market improvement there have been some really good picks from FIT lately which have been winning dividends and increasing in price, including:
- – Mason Mount
- – Joao Cancelo
- – Bukayo Saka
- – Harry Maguire
- – Riyad Mahrez
- – Thomas Muller
And plenty more besides. As mentioned last time however, it is whether you have the funds to buy all these players, or any of them for that matter if you already have your funds invested.
So there is also the question of portfolio management and availability of funds when following the service. Presuming you do have some funds to buy new players (perhaps from ongoing dividends you are receiving) then FIT has been very adept at picking out players likely to win dividends soon and therefore increase in price.
Anyway, let’s move on to looking at the other aspects of the service:-
Player Ratings
This is where players are given star ratings based on their current performance and potential performance. Ratings are organised by position – goalkeeper, defender, midfielder and attacker and can be sorted by club or ratings top to bottom.
Five stars is for “elite” players who are expected to challenge for performance dividends 10-15 times per season, four stars is for “very strong” players likely to challenge 7-10 times per season and so on.
It’s a useful way of ranking players and comparing them against each other, allowing traders to narrow down their selections and concentrate on the top-rated players.
Transfers
This section of the site is devoted to upcoming transfer windows and where you might find potential bargains. These are players that could either rise in price (and pick up some dividends) purely off transfer speculation or those who could do much better at a new club where they might get more game time and be more comfortable etc.
The transfer section is only really relevant during the run-up to transfer windows so is not something you need to regularly follow, but is worth checking out when a window is coming up.
Wrapping Up
We have covered most of the main site features now in our updates so will look to wrap up soon with the final bits and some closing thoughts.
Overall though we have been very impressed with the service and found the advice indispensable for those involved in the Football Index.
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Football Index Trader – Update
17th December 2020
Football Index Trader is a site designed to help traders maximise their gains on the “Football Stockmarket,” Football Index.
Last time we commented that it was very difficult to do an update on Football Index Trader because the market on Football Index had crashed, making it almost impossible to sell shares and therefore making any kind of advice or guidance somewhat obsolete.
Well the good news is that the market has settled down a little over the last month and whilst prices have still been falling, there is at least more liquidity in the market and most players can be sold now. That gives us a more viable basis on which to conduct our review of Football Index Trader (or FIT for short).
So what is FIT exactly?
In essence FIT is more of a guide than a tipping service as such – there aren’t “tips” on which players to buy and sell at particular times, instead there is research and advice that a user can follow to help guide their decision-making. As such we won’t be able to record results for this review in the normal way, but thought we would still take a look at the information provided and our thoughts on it.
How have we found it so far?
Overall we really like the service. Although in many ways we would prefer a straightforward tipping service, the guy who runs FIT says that is against the rules so has constructed his site in the way he has, i.e. as more of an information resource. That means more work on the part of members, but there is very valuable information to be had with a little bit of effort.
Scouting
The real hub of the site is the “scouting” section, which provides updates on the latest round of matches across the leagues and competitions covered by FI and identifies any players who are currently value propositions based on recent performances.
Generally this information is excellent and there have been a number of players we have bought on the basis of being highlighted in scouting – e.g. Theo Hernandez, Angelino, Thomas Lemar, Andre Silva, Andrew Robertson – who we would have been unlikely to buy otherwise but have produced good returns.
At the same time of course there are some players we have bought based on the scouting who haven’t done so well – yet anyway – so it hasn’t been all winners so far, but patience is a virtue with FI so we expect at least some of those players will come good eventually (ahem Dybala, Coutinho).
The danger as well is that there are so many players highlighted in scouting you can end up trying to buy too many players and find yourself with a rather verbose portfolio – something we have definitely been guilty of!
A possible solution to that is to only buy the players on his “explosion imminent” list, which is more selective list of around 20 players he really expects to do well soon.
The point we really value from the scouting and across the site in general though is the focus on value and ignoring the over-hyped, over-valued players who are actually quite poor performers in FI terms, even though they may be good players. It can be just as important knowing who not to buy as who to buy.
And by focusing on the value at the lower end of the market – from 50p up to £2 per share, you start to see how lucrative the returns can be on those “out of favour” players who are genuine quality but have just had a slight dip in form lately or have happened to not hit a dividend win in recent weeks.
We have also utilised the “IPD rotation” strategy very successfully so far, which involves refreshing shares on those players who return a lot in IPD (in-play dividends) but are cheaply priced, either due to age or not being likely to win the Performance Dividends very often. As FIT has said a few times, this is like “printing money,” so we are grateful to him for highlighting that strategy.
Live Blogs and Market Sentiment
Another aspect of the service we really like is the live blogs, when FIT provides a running commentary on the latest developments at Football Index, with very astute insights and an ability to see the wood for the trees – which many supposed “FI experts” on social media seem to lack!
There are also regular updates on the “State of the Market” in which he presents the overall sentiment governing FI at the current time and the reasons for that prevailing mood. This is helpful again in understanding the bigger picture and reminding traders not to panic when things go awry, as well as noting the things that do need to be improved on the platform.
Caan Berry Video Response
It would be remiss of us not to also mention FIT’s response to a recent video by renowned Betfair trader Caan Berry. Basically Caan made a Youtube video explaining the problems (as he saw them) with Football Index in its current form and why he wouldn’t be joining the platform at the moment.
Whilst he made some good points in that video, we felt there were some misunderstandings of the mechanics of FI and some other issues that whilst on the face of it look like problems, when you delve into them more deeply either aren’t actually much to worry about or could easily be dealt with by FI.
These points were dealt with in an excellent and very in-depth blog post by FIT. It is a long post but well worth reading for those either on Football Index or thinking of joining.
To be fair to Caan, he has addressed some of the points in a follow-up video looking at why prices are crashing and what FI can do to fix it, which is also worth a watch.
For what its worth from our point of view, without wanting to get too bogged down in the debate over the mechanics of the platform and market dynamics etc, we think the most important thing for FI is to improve the functionality of the platform and to make it slicker, simpler and more user-friendly.
If they do that then it will be easier to attract new traders and new money, liquidity will increase and everything else will fall into place. The platform will be able to grow organically and any money they spend on marketing will be more effective in attracting new traders.
They should also not announce things and then not be able to deliver them, which they have done numerous times recently (Nasdaq anyone?). It should be the other way round – under-promise and over-deliver.
As Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have said in the past (to paraphrase them) – just have a relentless focus on making your product better and then it will sell itself and people will keep coming back for more.
Offering gimmicks or just increasing the spend on marketing without improving the product would not be advisable in our view.
Overall Thoughts
In summary then we would say we really like FIT and feel it’s definitely worth the cost of membership for anyone serious about trading on Football Index. There’s some great info on there and the overall strategy/mindset of focusing on value is – well, invaluable!
We would like it to be just a little bit simpler/quicker to use – perhaps a summary of the top players found in that week’s scouting for instance, or a “hot players of the week” with a value price band could help.
And whilst there is advice on building a portfolio and the overall strategy, a bit more clarity on how to use scouting and avoiding the pitfalls we have experienced of buying too many players would be of benefit (although perhaps that’s just us!)
At the same time it’s fair to say it has not been an ideal time to do this review with Football Index having been in a state of turmoil recently but with a guide like FIT it’s been easier to stay level-headed and not to panic about the market fluctuations.
It would be nice to be able to talk about some big gains we have made based on FIT’s advice, but unfortunately with the market crash that isn’t possible currently. Hopefully if FI can get their act together and focus on improving the platform though, that’s something we can do in future updates.
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Football Index Trader – Update
16th November 2020
We had hoped to provide an update on Football Index Trader, a site designed to help traders maximise their gains on the “Football Stockmarket” known as Football Index.
However, sadly things have been going a little pear-shaped for Football Index lately. They say a picture speaks a thousands words so here is a look at the top 8 players on the platform at the moment:
You might notice a problem…there is a sell price on only one of the players. Of the top 20, there is a sell price on only four players.
What is happening here?
Essentially lots of people want to sell their shares but no-one wants to buy. Confidence in the platform is shot and lots of people are trying to exit…but at the moment they can’t. Not a good situation. Not good at all.
Why is this happening though?
Well a few months ago Football Index changed the way the platform operated. Previously, they had a system whereby Football Index themselves would buy up shares of people who wanted to sell, in a queue system.
In doing so, they were able to maintain tight spreads (the difference between the buy and sell price) and everyone was happy because traders knew they could sell shares of players they didn’t want anymore at a reasonable price – or sell players they had made a good profit on.
We say everyone was happy. Well, not quite everyone…
No, it appears the regulator – which we assume was the UK Gambling Commission – stepped in and said th