The Packers thrive on big plays, but managed just two in week 17, a 20-yarder to Donald Driver, and a 46-yarder to Greg Jennings which helped set up that late game-winning touchdown. Things probably won’t be too much different on Sunday. The Bears’ Cover-2 base defense is built not to allow big plays, so while Rodgers is capable of putting up some decent yardage, it probably won’t come easy. Green Bay’s offense isn’t the one the Bears saw in week 17. The Packers unveiled running back James Starks in the wild card game against Philadelphia to devastating effect. Starks didn’t run nearly as effectively last week in Atlanta, and the Bears rank second overall against the run, so don’t expect him to run riot at Soldier Field. What he does do, however, is bring a semblance of balance to the unit, something the Bears will have to take account of.

Check the line on running back James Starks for the Packers. It’s going to be low because the Steelers are the top team in the NFL against the run. More worryingly for the Packers, the Starks bubble looks to have burst already. He exploded onto the scene in the playoff win against Philadelphia, but in two games since, against Atlanta and Chicago, he’s averaged slightly less than three yards a carry. He’ll struggle to match that against the Steelers. Even worse news for Starks backers is that he comes out of the game in goal-line situations, so I don’t think he’s worth a lick in terms of scoring a touchdown. You’d be better off with human bulldozer John Kuhn.

So that’s the bad news. The good news for Green Bay is that you can move the ball against the Steelers through the air. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers is playing at a very high level, and there are plenty of weapons at his disposal. Picking the hot receiver is always the tricky challenge when betting on the Packers. You know Rodgers will get his yards. It’s just a question of who’s getting on the end of his passes. I have a hunch that it will be the obvious suspect, Greg Jennings. The Pittsburgh scheme puts a lot of pressure on their corners and consequently they are often isolated in single coverage. Their best cover man is Ike Taylor, and I’d be surprised if they had Taylor covering Jennings at all times – although that strategy worked pretty well for Chicago, who used Charles Tillman in that way.

But the weak link is on the other side, and oft-burned Bryant McFadden. He’s going to need help covering Jennings, and he might not get much. This, for me, is one of the key matchups of the whole game. McFadden on his own can’t cope with Jennings, certainly not for pure speed, and probably not for his ability to work the creases in a zone. Will the Steelers give him some safety help? They tend not to. The other option would be to bring in an extra defensive back and play nickel. It’s an interesting idea: being in nickel almost dares the other team to run on you. Would the Packers take that bait? How compromised would the Steelers’ zone blitzing scheme be if they played a lot of nickel? The man who knows is Pittsburgh’s defensive mastermind, Dick LeBeau, and if I had a bug in his office, I’d be cleaning up on Sporting Index myself. But I don’t, so I’m going to play a hunch. I think he’s going to play a lot of nickel to try and contain Rodgers and the passing game. Don’t blame me if I’m wrong: LeBeau’s the genius, not me!

The thing that really hurts the Steelers’ chances is yet another injury to their offensive line. Center Maurkice Pouncey, their best lineman by a country mile, isn’t going to make it after that bad ankle injury last time out. The Steelers are keeping their fingers crossed, but he has two hopes: slim and none, and Slim couldn’t get a hotel reservation in Dallas last time I checked. That means that they will have four backups playing in the Big Game. They’ve won with a makeshift offensive line before, two years ago against the Cardinals, but Arizona didn’t bring the kind of heat the Packers do. They run an almost identical defensive scheme as the Steelers, one based on creating mistakes and turnovers.

Already struggling at the tackle position, the interior of the line will now be compromised by Pouncey’s absence. Replacement Doug Legursky is a battler, but he is not a prolific run blocker, which could be bad news if you think Pittsburgh running back Rashard Mendenhall is going to be the key to the game. It’s also bad news for Ben Roethlisberger, who is going to be hit, hard and often. Big Ben takes sacks: that’s part of his game. But the Packers have dedicated themselves this week to improving their tackling, to make sure that when they have the big man where they want him, they’ll bring him down. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Ben is sacked six times. Perhaps even more if, as I suspect, the Steelers are chasing the game in the second half.

Given the pressure he will face, don’t be surprised if Ben is forced into a lot of hot reads and checkdowns. You could do a lot worse than have tight end Heath Miller being Pittsburgh’s leading receiver in terms of catches if not yards. If Ben gets time, however, watch out for Mike Wallace, who has the blazing speed to get behind the Green Bay secondary. One reception could give him more yards that five of Miller’s.

I’m also thinking there’s an early touchdown in this one. Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy is a graduate of the West Coast school of offense, which means that the first 15 plays are often scripted in advance. Don’t be surprised if their opening drive heralds points. That’s also the best time to get to the Steelers defense too, as LeBeau likes to take a look at what an offense is doing it – and then proceed to stop them doing it.

I’m not sure if the Steelers will score early or not. Last time, they put together a 10-minute scoring drive on the first series against the Jets. The week before, against Baltimore, they didn’t show up until the second half.

Whatever, that will be it for the NFL until September (and here’s hoping that the threat of a player lockout ahead of next season goes away). I hope my musings have helped you make a few quid. Most of them have been based on sound logic rather than just gut feelings – but as you probably know, there’s very little logical about American football at this level. Next season – assuming Sporting Index are still in business as I definitely haven’t bankrupted them – I’ll be looking to do even better. And yes, I say that every year……..

The Packers thrive on big plays, but managed just two in week 17, a 20-yarder to Donald Driver, and a 46-yarder to Greg Jennings which helped set up that late game-winning touchdown. Things probably won’t be too much different on Sunday. The Bears’ Cover-2 base defense is built not to allow big plays, so while Rodgers is capable of putting up some decent yardage, it probably won’t come easy. Green Bay’s offense isn’t the one the Bears saw in week 17. The Packers unveiled running back James Starks in the wild card game against Philadelphia to devastating effect. Starks didn’t run nearly as effectively last week in Atlanta, and the Bears rank second overall against the run, so don’t expect him to run riot at Soldier Field. What he does do, however, is bring a semblance of balance to the unit, something the Bears will have to take account of.

Check the line on running back James Starks for the Packers. It’s going to be low because the Steelers are the top team in the NFL against the run. More worryingly for the Packers, the Starks bubble looks to have burst already. He exploded onto the scene in the playoff win against Philadelphia, but in two games since, against Atlanta and Chicago, he’s averaged slightly less than three yards a carry. He’ll struggle to match that against the Steelers. Even worse news for Starks backers is that he comes out of the game in goal-line situations, so I don’t think he’s worth a lick in terms of scoring a touchdown. You’d be better off with human bulldozer John Kuhn.

So that’s the bad news. The good news for Green Bay is that you can move the ball against the Steelers through the air. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers is playing at a very high level, and there are plenty of weapons at his disposal. Picking the hot receiver is always the tricky challenge when betting on the Packers. You know Rodgers will get his yards. It’s just a question of who’s getting on the end of his passes. I have a hunch that it will be the obvious suspect, Greg Jennings. The Pittsburgh scheme puts a lot of pressure on their corners and consequently they are often isolated in single coverage. Their best cover man is Ike Taylor, and I’d be surprised if they had Taylor covering Jennings at all times – although that strategy worked pretty well for Chicago, who used Charles Tillman in that way.

But the weak link is on the other side, and oft-burned Bryant McFadden. He’s going to need help covering Jennings, and he might not get much. This, for me, is one of the key matchups of the whole game. McFadden on his own can’t cope with Jennings, certainly not for pure speed, and probably not for his ability to work the creases in a zone. Will the Steelers give him some safety help? They tend not to. The other option would be to bring in an extra defensive back and play nickel. It’s an interesting idea: being in nickel almost dares the other team to run on you. Would the Packers take that bait? How compromised would the Steelers’ zone blitzing scheme be if they played a lot of nickel? The man who knows is Pittsburgh’s defensive mastermind, Dick LeBeau, and if I had a bug in his office, I’d be cleaning up on Sporting Index myself. But I don’t, so I’m going to play a hunch. I think he’s going to play a lot of nickel to try and contain Rodgers and the passing game. Don’t blame me if I’m wrong: LeBeau’s the genius, not me!

The thing that really hurts the Steelers’ chances is yet another injury to their offensive line. Center Maurkice Pouncey, their best lineman by a country mile, isn’t going to make it after that bad ankle injury last time out. The Steelers are keeping their fingers crossed, but he has two hopes: slim and none, and Slim couldn’t get a hotel reservation in Dallas last time I checked. That means that they will have four backups playing in the Big Game. They’ve won with a makeshift offensive line before, two years ago against the Cardinals, but Arizona didn’t bring the kind of heat the Packers do. They run an almost identical defensive scheme as the Steelers, one based on creating mistakes and turnovers.

Already struggling at the tackle position, the interior of the line will now be compromised by Pouncey’s absence. Replacement Doug Legursky is a battler, but he is not a prolific run blocker, which could be bad news if you think Pittsburgh running back Rashard Mendenhall is going to be the key to the game. It’s also bad news for Ben Roethlisberger, who is going to be hit, hard and often. Big Ben takes sacks: that’s part of his game. But the Packers have dedicated themselves this week to improving their tackling, to make sure that when they have the big man where they want him, they’ll bring him down. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Ben is sacked six times. Perhaps even more if, as I suspect, the Steelers are chasing the game in the second half.

Given the pressure he will face, don’t be surprised if Ben is forced into a lot of hot reads and checkdowns. You could do a lot worse than have tight end Heath Miller being Pittsburgh’s leading receiver in terms of catches if not yards. If Ben gets time, however, watch out for Mike Wallace, who has the blazing speed to get behind the Green Bay secondary. One reception could give him more yards that five of Miller’s.

I’m also thinking there’s an early touchdown in this one. Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy is a graduate of the West Coast school of offense, which means that the first 15 plays are often scripted in advance. Don’t be surprised if their opening drive heralds points. That’s also the best time to get to the Steelers defense too, as LeBeau likes to take a look at what an offense is doing it – and then proceed to stop them doing it.

I’m not sure if the Steelers will score early or not. Last time, they put together a 10-minute scoring drive on the first series against the Jets. The week before, against Baltimore, they didn’t show up until the second half.

Whatever, that will be it for the NFL until September (and here’s hoping that the threat of a player lockout ahead of next season goes away). I hope my musings have helped you make a few quid. Most of them have been based on sound logic rather than just gut feelings – but as you probably know, there’s very little logical about American football at this level. Next season – assuming Sporting Index are still in business as I definitely haven’t bankrupted them – I’ll be looking to do even better. And yes, I say that every year……..

“As Gordon Gecko says in the classic 1987 film, Wall Street: ‘It’s a zero sum game: someone wins, someone loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred.’ When a market falls, even as dramatically as most markets did at the end of last week, investors don’t take their money right out of the system and shoebox it under the bed: they simply move it elsewhere. And that means there’s still profit to be made.”

This is the wisdom of Vince Stanzione, veteran trader of 25 years and financial coach, who has amassed a personal fortune through the volatility of recent years. “Let’s get one fact straight: money can be made whatever the market conditions. The media love their grim headlines but front page stories don’t tell you how smart traders are still earning money. The trick is to do it with small bets, spreading the risk.”

Aside from his coaching, Stanzione’s fortune comes from spread trading or spread betting: distributing investments across markets in order to make gains whatever the conditions. At its simplest, spread betting allows a trader to follow the money: if it flows out of one market – say, equities – it will be flowing into another, such as gold or bonds. “Though curiously,” points out Stanzione, “Gold may have soared, yet most private investors have not profited!”

Investment in currencies tends to stay in currencies. “In the currency markets,” says Stanzione, “people sell one currency to buy another, not to shut up shop and go home. So as the US dollar or the Euro weakens, the Swiss Franc, say, or the Japanese Yen will be strengthening. And as currencies generally weaken, bonds can strengthen. Even with the recent dollar downgrade, the US Treasury Bond market remains the largest and most liquid market in the world and acts as a safe haven.

“And if everything dives as steeply as last week, perhaps with markets, shares, currencies and commodities all dropping, the smart money switches to short selling.”

Short selling is about as popular in the media as a Liverpool looter but, says Stanzione, that’s because it’s misunderstood: “It’s never explained correctly and is always referred to as being risky, even evil. The truth is that short selling is simply part of a balanced strategy: it’s insurance for your share portfolio, no different to insuring your house or car. And over the years it’s saved my bacon many times.”

‘Shorting’ can also have the added benefit of a speedier profit: as the last two weeks have shown, markets fall far faster than they rise, so earning through short selling is a matter of days, not weeks or months. Two key ways to sell ‘short’ are traded option (Puts) and the Inverse Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), or Note (ETN), nowadays quite popular in the US and UK.

“The advantage of the put option is that once you’ve paid your premium, although of course you aim to make a profit, the option cannot go below 0 so you know the maximum loss you’re exposed to,” says Stanzione. “And the benefit over a spread bet is that you’re buying time. Let’s say you think silver is going down, and you buy, but silver carries on going up for a while before falling: with a spread bet you would likely have been stopped out before profiting from the fall. With a put option, you benefit even if the fall takes a while. If you stick to the basics, traded options are not as complicated as they may seem at first glance. You make the choices but your broker does the hard work.”

You can make money in all market conditions -shares and markets fall faster than they rise so you can make much more money in a falling market than a rising one. If money flows out of Shares it flows into Gold or Bonds.

An Inverse ETF, on the other hand, is a financial instrument designed to do the opposite of whatever the underlying market does. For example the ETF short Cotton goes up as the price of Cotton goes down. A FTSE 100 inverse ETF – such as DB X Trackers FTSE 100 short issued by Deutsche Bank – can be bought via a normal online broker and is not subject to stamp duty or any extra margin requirements. “Inverse ETFs are not perfect and are not ideal for long term shorting as they’re reset daily and the compounding effect can give unexpected results,” says Stanzione, “but over the short term, and if markets are falling steadily, they do a good job.”

Short selling is normally a short-term activity. But falling markets can also offer more traditional gains, especially for the canny investor who, once again, thinks beyond the headlines. “Some of the best times to buy are when the media’s baying, the crowd is terrified and there’s blood on the streets. Markets go down through a lack of buyers, not because sellers have withdrawn. So for people who were still buying, there have been some terrific opportunities over the past few days and that’s one of the reasons why the indices have risen again today.”

Bounce-backs follow falls and are another place to make money, especially if a bounce is quite large. But Stanzione urges caution: “A bounce back this week does not mean a long-term recovery. Markets will stay volatile until at least October and even then 10%+ falls in major market indices will become common. The way to profit in such volatility is by spreading the risk with small bets.”

Stanzione is a firm believer in spreading risk and not over-reacting in the very short term. Spread betting provides a profit from markets which go down and up, and even allow investors to trade sideways, making it ideal for today’s markets.

“‘Day trading’ and short-term bets may sound exciting,” says Stanzione, “but, in truth, my wealth has not come from there. It’s come from trading trends over weeks, months and years. Brokers and bookmakers like to generate more business from active customers but the overall winners can be the more sedentary traders. Perhaps surprisingly, when I look at my own trading students, the best results come from the over-55s, an age group that has learned patience. And I am not normally glued to a screen all day and only check prices at the end of the day and, on some trades, only once a week.”

www.fintrader.net

Stan James is a private bookmaker who originally started as a small group of betting shops in Berkshire and is founded by bookie Steve Fisher in 1973. The company is named after the combination of Steve’s name and his wife Ann. The company has only small number of shops in UK but has larger internet and telephone betting operations in Gibraltar which can handle a great number of customers per day. During the past ten years the company already established a reputation for innovative markets, value prices and specializes in In-running betting.

Stan James already conquered customers from different countries all over the world like UK, Canada, Germany and Greece. This is not hard to understand, since the company has a good strategy that can level up to some other bookmakers in the market. Their in-running product is “one of the best in the industry”. Not only that, they also have their ways on how to catch the attention of the prospective customer through their homepage. The homepage is where all the important information is given. From list of sports, upcoming events, fast links available to events that are about to start, and reviews of some valued customers can be seen on the homepage. And the most enticing one is the Stan James free bets offered to newbie customers.

Stan James free bets offer their customers a 25 pound worth of free bet the moment the customer decided to open an account with them via the links of Bettingpro or via phone through their 24/7 customer support. It is an openhanded account opening offered by the company to their newly signed up customers. All the customers have to do is to register at the exclusive Stan James £25 free bet page then use their special promotion code MAXIMUMBONUS and deposit £25 and Stan James will match your stake with a free bet up to £25 right after you sign up.

With the Stan James, free bets customers can be assured the safety of their money plus a chance to make their money doubled since the free bets offered by the company is matched up with the customers first deposit. In this way, customers will have a great chance to get familiarize with the sports they selected from the wide range of sports lists offered by the company.

Other than that the company offers a 24/7 customer support with efficient customer service operators that are very quick to respond to any forms of customers inquiry. Rest assured, customers can have the assurance that all their worries and concerns can be addressed right away.

Over the last couple of years you have read about or heard of the financial terms such as derivatives, hedge funds, insider trading, call and put options and other Wall Street phrases. Some have a derogatory reputation based on the output of those who abuse them. Perhaps the most clouded and unregulated of these instruments of deception are the hedge fund managers who deal in derivative trading and creative financing. They can derive or create a financial instrument based on two or more investments coming together to bounce off one another for greater profits — thus one derived from another. The same strategy or derivative is used in Sports Betting.

Sports bettors know these derivative sports bets as Parlays, Teasers, If Bets, Reverses and some Proposition bets along with cross over sports wagers – a parlay based on sporting events from different sports occurrences.

A parlay is based on two or more teams you select to win or using the over or under totals. The payout is derived from team A winning the first half of your derivative bet and then team B winning the second half of your wager. The more teams or totals used in the wager the larger the payout but the harder to win. To win a parlay you have to win each bet.

A reverse bet is similar to a parlay but the payout is usually double if both teams connect in your wager. The very popular teaser wager allows you to add or subtract points with your teams involved in your selection. An IF bet states that IF team A wins, your IF wager automatically goes to your next selection. One is derived from the other.

Of course, many professional bettors consider these derivative style of bets or sometimes called exotic bets as risky and a “suckers bet”. It depends on your risk-reward tolerance for larger profits against higher odds of probability. Hitting a 3 team parlay at 6 to 1 odds is a little more exciting than getting even money for your one timer.

Sports betting has become more innovative over the years with these derivative types of wagers especially with the popularity of online Spread Betting used extensively in Europe and Asia —  mostly in the UK where it is legal.