Football Index Tips: Top 10 Tips to Trade like a Pro (2024)

Football Index is the UK's first football stock market where you can buy, sell and trade footballers with real money. Although, of course, you do not actually own these football players, the site still gives you the potential and tips to make real money from your investments. You can do this by in several ways, including profits from sales, media dividends and performance dividends.

On the Index, prices can go up and down, depending on various aspects. It can take a lot of experience and practice before you find the right strategy that will consistently profit from Football Index. Naturally, this takes time. Once you start looking at the bigger picture, rather than day-to-day losses or gains, you will see your general ability to trade improve, and consequently increase your profit on the way.

In this article, we will go through and explain the top ten football index tips to start trading like a pro. If you want to know more about the Index, visit the site or read our Football Index Review.

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Tip 1 – Don't Panic Buy/Sell

Panic buying or selling is the most common way to lose money on the Football Index. This often occurs during the transfer window, for example, when a player is linked to a move outside the Premier League. This leads cautious traders to drop their holdings. While this could be a good strategy in some cases – protecting yourself from a potential loss that would be even greater – the same player’s price could just as well go up after the final transfer.

Many traders do this simply out of a sense of relief. As soon as a player goes slightly in the red, they sell. If that player represents a good percentage of your total portfolio, this can be a serious hit, especially if you consider the commission.

The same goes for panic selling. Inexperienced players may be tempted to sell the minute their stock goes up by a few pence.

The key is to be stricter in your trading patterns. Try to be ahead of the market by anticipating what the price of a stock will be in the future. Check what you expect the stock to be worth in a few months' time, rather than simply looking at its current price.

Tip 2 – Follow all football-related media

This tip ties into the previous tip, of course. If you want to gauge a player’s current success level, future success, and of course price, you need to stay up to date on everything football-related. As you know, part of a Footballer’s value comes from media dividends at Football Index, so follow the media intensely.

By being better informed than your peers are, you can anticipate the market, snapping up players before their stock goes up, or selling them before their stock goes down.

You need to be aware of every aspect of football news, transfer news, starting line ups, match results, or injury news. You need to follow every football-related media.

Football Index monitors Talksport, Guardian, Metro, Daily Mirror, BBC, UEFA, The FA, ESPN, FIFA, Football League, Daily Mail, Daily Star, The Times, Telegraph, Independent, Express, Football365, Goal.com, Huffington Post and Sky Sports to calculate their media dividends.

So it is probably wise to follow all of the above outlets. One way is to set up Google news alerts for specific players or teams, or football in general. However, there are plenty of other methods.

Tip 3 – Follow the transfer markets closely

The January window often sees huge transfers. These are highly likely to affect a player’s value on the Index. How exactly it will affect the player is not always clear. Usually, a transfer to a higher ranked club or league means a higher value for that player. The summer window is another time when positive media mentions of a player are essential, since there are no competitions during that period. The more media mentions, the higher the chances of a media dividend and the better the price.

Manager transfers also make a big difference. If a team has been under-performing under a certain manager, chances are that the team will do better with a new one. Perhaps a player’s under-performance can be partially blamed on the coach, making him undervalued and a good bargain. Players may perform better under their new manager. A manager can boost the value of each individual player on his squad.

Tip 4 – Look for Football Index bargains

At the Football Index, there are always undervalued players. Most European leagues have plenty of up-and-coming talent. If you see a player that is hyped by the media, or is performing well in a lower league, it could be a great investment for the future.

Big competitions such as the World Cup, the UEFA Euro Football Championship or the Champions League also greatly affect player’s future value. As soon as you see a player performing well in one of these, you could well see them moving to another league in the near future.

Young players are often hit and miss, since many do not perform to their full potential, but with their relatively low price, you can own talents before other traders discover them.

Tip 5 – Use a Football Index spreadsheet

Using a spreadsheet is essential to keep track of your trading motions. While you could log your profits, it is important to keep an overview of your trading strategy. Long-term growth is what you should be looking for.

A spreadsheet is the best way to calculate your growth over a particular time-frame. This allows you to better understand how well you are performing as a trader. Equally, inputting your buzz returns allows you to understand as a percentage how much dividends have contributed to your profit. You can make a simple spreadsheet yourself detailing withdrawals/deposits and trades.

Tip 6 – Have a good exit strategy

Knowing when to buy can be a challenge, but deciding when to sell can be a tortuous affair. You need a sound exit strategy. In general, you should have a sound plan of what you want to do with a player when you buy him. Do you want a long term hold or a short term hold? At what target percentage do you intend to sell? Or after how much time do you intend to sell?

It is important to understand that while you lose nothing until you sell, you do not make any gains either. It is therefore important to have a sound strategy when it comes to selling by taking profits before a player's ceiling closes. It is equally important to minimize losses; for example, if you think the player will decrease in price due to an injury/bad patch of form. Damage control is part of being a smart trader.

 Tip 7 – Diversify Your Risk and Profit

If you want to take football trading seriously, you of course need to diversify your portfolio. For example, let's take a situation where you hold 10 players in your portfolio; each of them equates to 10%of your total value, and one of them loses 10% of his value. This would mean your total holdings lose just 1% in value. If your portfolio is valued at £1000, this means you have only lost £10 if you were to sell immediately. This is a very small obstacle to overcome, and can easily be compensated by gains from other players.

Now consider if you had 10 players in your portfolio and one of them equates to 50% of your portfolio. If your key investment loses 10%, that will be a total of 5% of your total value. If your portfolio is valued at £1000, this means you have lost £50 if you were to sell immediately. This is a much larger hole out of which to climb.

We recommend diversifying your portfolio between star players, undervalued mainstays and up and coming talents. Try to have at least 20 players in it, with no player representing more than 5% of your total investment, unless your goal is to sell that player fast.

Tip 8 – Be Proactive Not Reactive

It is important to be a step ahead of the competition. The Chelsea striker merry-go-round is an example of how transfer news of a new striker decreased the value of the two other strikers on the team. If you catch onto news before your competition, you can sell before the player’s value goes down or buy before it goes up. This is key to making money on the Index, since traders tend to move in mass.

Tip 9 – Never forget the 2% commission

Many beginning traders neglect the fact that Football Index takes a 2% commission on ALL sales. You cannot avoid this and it happens on every trade, no matter how big or how small. If you want to know a player’s real value, you will need to multiply by 0.98. Similarly, you also need to multiply the price of any player by 1.02 in order to understand the true cost of your investment.

This shows that players who go up in value by 2% are not really worth selling yet, since there is no real margin for you. Keep this in mind for all trades.

Tip 10 – Find a strategy that works and stick to it

It is important to find a strategy that works. If you have a player you wish to keep for a long term, do not sell him too quick in the long term. There can be lots of media noise surrounding various players, and it is important to keep a level head. Stick to your plan of selling once you have a certain percentage of profit and do not sell out because of one bad media report or poor performance. Some players need time to mature and reach their full potential, and you need to keep a level head and remain patient.

ThePuntersPage Final Say

Aforementioned are some of the important Football Index tips that can help you trade like a pro. It takes a specific type of personality and mindset to become a successful trader – betting at the Index is not for everyone. Still, the risk is significantly lower than in betting on odds, since you can usually recuperate even on players who lose a significant portion of their value. You need patience, common sense and plenty of time to become successful.