Rather than dwell on the removal of IPD's, I mocked this concept up earlier as a thought experiment for the type of system that I think could replace IPD's. It's a little sloppily done but I thought it'd be good to show an example of how the removal of IPD's might turn in to a good thing. (or bad if you don't like the concept I guess)

Ladies and Gentlemen of FI... I present to you.... the all new singing and dancing IPD replacement....

TARGETS!

The concept is super simple , players earn dividends when footballers hit specific targets. For example, if a midfielder scores 5 goals, holders are paid 10p.

In many ways, it's just an evolution of IPD's, where traders win dividends for specific actions... albeit, in a more prolonged manor, so as to incentivise long term trading but the system would offer a great degree of flexibility to FI and the targets could be just goal/assist related OR as granular as FI choose to make them. (10,000 passes = 10p, 50 tackles = 5p. 20 GWG = £1), etc. Some might never come off, others might be low earners but frequent winners.

The targets would change from position-to-position, with a Striker needing to score more goals than a Defender to win the dividend. Goalkeepers could be rewarded 10p for 5 clean sheets, where as a Defender could be rewarded 5p for 10 clean sheets. FI, could even tailor this system to specific players, for example, DM's like Kante, could have lower goal targets than other midfielders like Ilicic or perhaps receive a dividend for 15 clean sheets to reward the defensive side of their game.

One of the issues with the existing IPD's, is the need to regularly refresh to stay in the game. With a system like Targets, it could take a DM such as Kante, multiple seasons to score 5 goals but if you picked him up at a time when he's in red hot form, he might score 4 in a week, then keep you hanging on in there for an entire season (or 2) before scoring the 5th.

Obviously, there's a few challenges for a system like this. For starters, FI would need to give users a full breakdown of our holds incase we have bought the same player on multiple occasions... but that functionality is meant to be coming anyway.

At this point any new system at all has the potential to cause an absolute earthquake on FI or a gold rush, so, I just hope, whatever they go with, they find a way to phase it in properly and give us something fun.

They could even take this system to the next level. Imagine you did buy Kante in a hot streak and he scored 4 out 5... they could let you sell that Kante with the 4/5 Targets attached, so you would be able to list him for a higher price than someone with a Kante who has no Targets met. At this point, it's more a redesign of the entire Index though...

Anyhow... If you've made it this far... you're obviously as bored as I am... feel free to pick this to pieces or post your own alternatives.

@FootballArgos said in Football Index has lost it's enjoyment:

@Maradonaman if the fun stops, stop. Would advise selling up slowly though and obviously, would be useful to air your suggestions for improvement in case FI happen to read this thread.

The saying "If the fun stops... stop", arguably highlights a major flaw in the platform.

You can't really stop, even if you want to, when the only way out is to take gigantic losses.

Introduction
So far this season, Trent Alexander Arnold has picked up 47p in PB, which on the surface sounds brilliant but his price point of over £10 is frankly ridiculous and it means that if he gets the same next season, he's going to return just £45 worth of PB for every £1,000 spent on him.

The £10k+ investment needed to buy 1,000 shares in Trent, would return just £450 worth of dividends... Could be worse... but by contrast... Gaston Ramirez from Sampdoria, has picked up 40p worth of PB so far this season, having played just 27 games. If he were to repeat that next season, that same £1,000 investment in him would return just short of £870 worth of PB, almost double what the £10k+ investment in Trent would return. A £500 bet on Gaston Ramirez, would return almost the same amount of PB, as a £10K+ bet on Trent.

Can Ramirez return the same next season? I'll let you figure that one out... but the point is... we've had just 1 season under the new PB matrix and the fellas on the list below have all won PB multiple times, which suggests that they have it in them to win it again.

So, here's the top 40 PB players who earned 17p per share this season... ordered by how much they would return if you bought them today... and they reproduced their winnings next year. (Check out my boy Cuadrado...)

Important Note
In an ideal world, I would have based this list on 'Players Who Won PB At Least Twice', to rule out any 1 time flukes. I can't find a list of such players, so I limited the selection to 'Players Who Picked Up At Least 17p Worth Of PB', as it ensures every player on the list won PB on at least 2 occasions this season.

Sadly this leaves out guys like Henderson and Fabinho who both should be on the list, given that Henderson won PB on 3 occasions even picking up Star Man. If Henderson replicated his 8p worth of PB next season, he would be 33rd on the list and Fabinho would be much higher at 19th, well above "PB players" like Kroos and Kostic, which is especially impressive given that the Brazilian spent half the season on the injury list.

The 16p cut off, also rules out Bruno, given that he's on 16p worth of PB since joining Man Utd. With only 12 games at Man Utd, it's hard to do a full Bruno comparison... but assuming he picked up 4x more PB next season he'd average a similar amount to KDB. Let's be right... you're buying Bruno for MB more than PB.

@AndydfopT said in Best time to invest:

I'm so depressed and worried about everything now. Iv done the decent thing and told mrs and close family how much I have put in and cant get out. Just to clarify this is all my own doing but this wasnt the index I deposited into 18 months ago.

Andy,

You're not alone mate. This whole thing has stung a lot of us big time.

One thing to try....

Mentally write off your entire port.

Think about it. The money that you have put into FI is already in their account. It's money that you will never see again. You don't have any control over it, they do. If they choose to close tomorrow, they get to spend it, you get nothing.

I know that's brutal... but when you accept that... When you realise that's the stone cold truth of the matter. You see that the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen, has already happened.

The mistake has already been made. You can't change that mistake. You've already paid the price.

But you still have your wife, you still have your family, you're not going hungry tonight. If you shut the app down now and never look at it again, you'll be no worse off than you are right now.

BUT...

Without a single penny more leaving your account, you might be able to take some money out of their bank and put into yours. There are fixtures galore over the coming weeks and beyond that there's the Champions League, the Euro's.

If you want to talk over your port, post it up and maybe we can have a think about when those players might come good, or when might be a decent chance to at least claw some back.

There's a somewhat helpful stat in FI's Data Centre that might be worth looking over if you're interested in the new dividends.

The below screen shots, show the players who had the most 'Top 5 Finishes' and the most 'Top 3 Finishes' over the last 3 months. If you want bigger lists, go to the Data Centre. Probably no big surprises here mind.

Ordered By Top 3 (As in players who finished in the top 3 x amount of times in the last 3 months)

Ordered by Top 5 (Players who finished in the Top 5)

EDIT: And here's what a year looks like for Top 5 finishes.

For a minute there, I thought it was gone forever.

https://www.footyindexscout.co.uk/

So, at least one good thing happened this week.

Seria A teams have more fixtures remaining than other clubs, especially those who are still in European competitions.

Fixtures Remaining

• Prem = 9/10
• Seria A = 12 /13
• Bunds = 8
• La Liga = 11

Of the teams that are still in Europe, Juventus, Napoli and Roma have 12 league games, whilst Inter and Atalanta have 13 league games.

• Atalanta are already through to the next round.
• Inter have both matches with Getafe still to play.
• Juventus were losing 1-0 to Lyon (Lyon are away in the return fixture)
• Napoli were 1-1 with Barcelona (Napoli are away in the return)
• Roma have both matches with Sevilla still to play

This means Inter has 15 PB fixtures scheduled, plus potentially another 3-5 games if they make it to the final of the Europa, which will be determined by how many legs the Quarters and Semi's are played over. (Usually it's 2 legs but there's talk of them just being 1 leg each).

To put that into perspective, Inter have 15-20 PB games, where as teams in Ligue 1 don't have any games left.

@NewUser680086
@Gazz127

When FI stepped in to put an end to the Brown Sunday crash, the actions that they took meant that spreads would widen, building a lot of pressure because there were traders wanting to sell, who couldn't "Offer" their players low enough to attract a trader to buy. (You could only offer 1p lower than the market price).

We were told at the time that the 1p fix would be temporary. This meant that when the stabilisers came off, the added pressure would need releasing and the 'Brown Sunday' crash, would continue. Some of us started preparing for this in October by liquidating as much of our ports as we could, others waited until a few weeks back, when FI popped up to confirm the date that the stabilisers were coming off. As we neared the date of the crash event, more people pulled out making the pre-crash feel like the actual crash event. Nobody wants to buy at market price during a downturn and people that wanted out, were accepting low ball offers, driving prices down even further.

To make matters worse, a lot of people who pulled out early... bought back in too early, thinking that they were getting in at the bottom but the pre-crash coincided with International Week, which is a time when many traders pull their money out anyway and deposit less, it was a perfect storm. Throw in a bunch of high profile injuries like Van Dijk, Kimmich, Ronaldo, Phillips, Fati, etc, and the pressure was really building.

The daily dividends that circulate the market are significantly lower when there's no football and with people 'getting in' during false bottoms, then savagely undercutting each other in a market-wide race to the bottom, some traders will have sold their shares and walked away, which takes even more liquidity out of the market.

At the moment just before the crash event, there's an 'air of excitement' so you see some people buying, hoping that the changes were going to bring rockets. This meant we saw some green shoots for the first hour... once those buys dried up... the actual crash event happened and a large amount of the pressure was released.

So what changed?

Football returned, which naturally increases user activity. Those who were patiently waiting for the crash to pass, had funds to mop up some bargains but I suspect those were quite minimal at first.

The big game changer was Bruno and Ronaldo winning PB with Haaland winning MB on a gold day. This pumped a lot of liquidity back into the market at a time where prices were low because a lot of traders hold those players. It doesn't take much to cause prices to rise now, which will have sparked FOMO in people and potentially had some reaching for their credit cards.

If you look at Sunday afternoon, you'll see many of the top players were trending down again after the early morning green, this suggests, that the crash would potentially have kept going but unlike 'Brown Sunday' (which followed the exact same pattern), the market closes at night now, which means there's not as much time for the liquidity to fully dry up. Bruno won MB Sunday night, and on Monday everyone on the market who bought players picked up the 'Rebate', not to mention the IPD's and a good win from Robertson/Yazici.

The 2% tax on bids and the ability to see the bids/offers, meant that traders were (ever so slightly) more likely to 'buy' rather than 'bid', that increases the price, which means we've seen growth in places where previously it would have looked stagnant.

There's wall-to-wall football for a while now, which means a constant flow of liquidity for several weeks. That's not to say it will be totally smooth sailing. It is worth noting.... the market didn't stop crashing for a lot of players. Over 700 were still crashing yesterday, compared with 300 who rose but money should eventually trickle down.

I've probably missed a few things but that's the crux of it.

Hope it helped.

Knowing when the next period of low fixtures is coming would be useful. Likewise, tracking some of the players who are still crashing, might help you find some bargains.

I don't know when they added this Fixture section but I've only just seen it and I am chuffed about it.

Not only did they give us the fixture list with a break down of which days will be gold/silver/bronze (heavily requested feature) but they also gave that little 5 star value rating system, to help easily identify 13 fixture gold days vs 25 fixture gold days. It's a minor touch but one I really appreciate as it helps with planning.

Look at the difference between the number of players on two same fixture gold days... 267 vs 666.

This bronze day where there's roughly 40 players... by the time you narrow that down to who's likely to start, win and the positions, you probably have a decent chance of predicting the PB player.

@Deano4dawin

The logic is that over summer Sancho could generate a lot of media because of his transfer and that will push his price up like it did last year.

I don't hold Sancho or advocate for or against but that's the logic.

@Fletch said in What's triggered this buying today🤔:

Definition of a scam is a dishonest scheme

what I would say Dan is that if you replace the word scam with misleading then you have hit the nail on the head.

What's honest about misleading someone? And fraud is misleading to gain money... which is the outcome here.

Look chaps ( @Sherbet), whether you want to say it's misleading or you can bring yourself to use the S word, either way, I think we can all agree, products shouldn't be misleading.

@Sherbet said in What's triggered this buying today🤔:

Right, your comparison of the port value being equivalent to a bookie telling you can cash out when you cant isn't a fair comparison.

It's the exact same thing. Besides, it's not just the Port Value overall figure that it impacts.

These are two different benchmarks. So you can look at each individual bet.

If I have multiple bets in-flight with Bet365 I dont have a nice combined figure letting me know the combined total of all of my cash-out options across all inflight bets just like you could on any cashout bet. The bottom one is the default, does it seem right to you that the company tells me my shares are worth £813, when there isn't even 1 bid for it?

If you scroll up, you'll see me say:

"They don't have to show anything at all (who's making them?) but the absolute thing that they shouldn't do, is show something that's utter bollox"

Which is precisely what they are doing.

Still not seeing how the Portfolio value makes FI a scam?

OK, so now I'm back to "What would you class as a scam?"

@Londoner said in What's triggered this buying today🤔:

Well the issue is liquidity, not a scam.

No that's a separate issue. FI could clean up things like Benchmarks without changing the liquidity. Let's not conflate the issues.

My port is Mid Price, but I value it at the IS price, because that is the price I'll get if I want to get out quickly.

Of course you do, because you're a reasonable guy and that is what your port is actually worth at that point in time. Yet, somehow, it's the only option not there. If that were the default option, the guy doesn't show up asking why his port value is so different from what he can actually sell his players for but instead of showing him the shit reality of his port, therefore allowing him to make decisions based on facts, they show him 4 massively inflated options and they set the most inflated option to default, which tricks him into thinking he's doing better than he is.

Since you believe it's a scam, are you prepared to leave? It's not logical to stay on a platform and make yourself miserable if you believe FI to be a scam.

When I eat this chocolate bar, I know it's going to make me fat and I know that being fat is going to make me miserable but what can I say.... I really enjoy this chocolate bar but just because I like the bar, doesn't mean I like everything about it and it doesn't mean I don't understand that consuming sugar can lead to diabetes, cancer, addiction, etc. Most importantly, if Mars started advertising their bars were calorie free, I'd point out they were scamming folk. Would it stop me eating a Mars bar though.... probably not.

Also, many of my players are up for sale. I haven't made a deposit in almost a year and don't see a time where that would change and I'm trying to use this current period of FI fattening up the pig, to get out of as many holds as possible before they slaughter the pig again.

@Sherbet

We're not talking about cash balance, we're talking about port value, which is the equivalent of Bet365 telling you, that you can cash out of your bet for £50 when in reality, you can't.

And by the time that guy had realised something wasn't right and that he needed help, it was too late for him.

Let's try and establish some common language. What would you class as a scam?

@Londoner said in What's triggered this buying today🤔:

@Dan-The-Man said in What's triggered this buying today🤔:

@Londoner

Sorry mate but I don't follow your logic on that one.

What company do you know tells you, that the assets it sold you are worth 2x more than they are?

I did a spreadsheet today to get an accurate picture of what my port is really worth if I tried to Instant Sell it, then I put some estimates at the side of players as to what I believe the can sell for if I hold out...

Well, my port is worth 50% of the Mid Price if I try to sell it today and around 70% of Mid based on my estimates. To put that into perspective, the AAO setting tells me that my port is worth more than 2x what the Mid Price setting is showing. So AAO is roughly 4x more than what my assets are worth.

There's no justification for that setting to be the default and it very easily can fool people in to thinking their assets are rising in value, when in fact they are falling.

The logic is that if it were a scam, FI would not have the more realistic Mid Price benchmark if their intention is to mislead. You say your port is 50% of the Mid Price, but that is only true if you IS. If you are patient, you can make an offer that is the price you wish to sell at. Whether selling to break even, or to sell at a profit.

The Mid-Price is itself completely misleading and very much a scam.

Here's a couple of examples from my port...

EXAMPLE 1: Aleksandar Dragovic

According to Mid Price, I'm up 5p on Dragovic which is a 30% increase but there are just 30 bids at 14p, no other bids at all, and I have 301 shares, which means if I try to sell my shares right now, I could get roughly £4 of the £50 back.

So according to FI. I'm 30% up on a player that in reality, I'm 91% down on. Surely, you can understand that telling someone they are 30% up on a player that they are 91% down is completely misleading them?

Your logic is that if I'm patient, I might one day be able to get a bid on him at 22p but that in itself is part of the scam. Firstly because, it might never happen. When you check your bank account, it doesn't show you what it might look like. Secondly, it's shaping behaviour based on a false reality. You yourself just said... "If you are patient you can make an offer that is the price you wish to sell at" but making an offer, doesn't mean it will get matched.... you're adjusting your behaviour based on the fictitious price they are showing you.

So let's move to example 2.

EXAMPLE 2: Lee Jae-sung

Now, according to this, I'm £34.60 up on my £242.20 bet, so I'm 14% up on a player who doesn't have a single bid and I've had him on the market now for months, which shows that being patient doesn't cut it and that's just Mid-Price. According to Average All Offers (the default), hell, I've practically quadrupled my money.

There are users out there, who have no idea that the 4 Benchmarks even exist. We see people show up all of the time confused about them. This conversation you and I are having was prompted by a guy who recognised his players weren't worth what FI shows him but he didn't know about the 4 benchmarks and the difference in valuation between AAO and MID was already £6k for him. That's a lot of money for his port to be out... and given that my port is actually 50% of my MID, that poor chap thought he was sat on £17,000, his MID turned out to be £11,000 and he could very easily be sat at £5,550.

Sorry mate but there's no justification for that. The poor guy could very easily have been making financial decisions like buying a car based on the knowledge that he had £17,000 in assets waiting for him.

@Karl

Does it track sell price?

@Karl

It was a class website. I'm hoping they'll be back. We saw Scout go down for a month at one point.

@Karl

Haven't been able to get on for weeks.

@Londoner

Sorry mate but I don't follow your logic on that one.

What company do you know tells you, that the assets it sold you are worth 2x more than they are?

I did a spreadsheet today to get an accurate picture of what my port is really worth if I tried to Instant Sell it, then I put some estimates at the side of players as to what I believe the can sell for if I hold out...

Well, my port is worth 50% of the Mid Price if I try to sell it today and around 70% of Mid based on my estimates. To put that into perspective, the AAO setting tells me that my port is worth more than 2x what the Mid Price setting is showing. So AAO is roughly 4x more than what my assets are worth.

There's no justification for that setting to be the default and it very easily can fool people in to thinking their assets are rising in value, when in fact they are falling.