I joined the platform in May 2018 in the first 6 months I invested £20,000 and turned this into £40,000 I then withdrew my initial stake of £20,000 not to de-risk but because I was unhappy with the direction of the platform (IPD's). Thankfully I was wrong and the management of FI were correct. The platform continued to thrive and I am well on the way to doubling the £20,000 I left in.
I would not say I am cleverer or have any special methods that other traders do not have, I have simply benefited from the growth of a brand new product that is disrupting the existing gambling market. Many other traders will have similar or better returns and will admit that the main driver of there profits is simply the product growing.
Now when Football Index raised funds to develop there product they would have had short,medium and long term objectives and I would imagine all the changes in the platform were part of an original business plan. As they have continued to raise funds and develop the product these changes will be part of a financial plan that was designed a long time ago and is needed to move the product to a profitable sustainable entity.
As each change has come there has always been disgruntled voices on the forum but if you took your bat and ball home at those points you would have missed out on substantial gains and would now be regretting the knee jerk reaction. I personally regret taking the £20,000 out as I would now have nearly £80,000 instead of £60,000!!
The gains we have made have been extraordinary and deep down each of us here for any length of time must be laughing at the fact we stumbled on to this as most will have normally been losing money to the bookies. We now have sums of money that if not life changing that can make our lives substantially better.
However gains and growth like that cannot continue forever and we must understand that the product owners are not here to just gift us money for so little risk. I have posted elsewhere that you must be an idiot if you thought you could continue to make bets where the bookie allows you to keep all the profits but underwrites 95% of your capital by providing the majority of your money back even if your bet is completely useless.
I personally think covid has accelerated the situation and without it we would have seen the introduction of full order books for the start of the 2020/2021 season with plenty of warning. However the suspension of instant sell was needed to protect our portfolios, if they had brought it back at any point the result would have been carnage with so many traders cashing in at instant sell prices, therefore the next best thing was to introduce buy orders as they have provided some liquidity.
Unfortunately without sell orders liquidity will be limited and poor and even when they arrive it will not be the supreme comfort blanket that we have had in the past. I can accept this as I have profited greatly from the platform and if you were to look back at my posts over the last year have been suggesting that order books will move the platform to a more modern transparent future but with more risk and lower profits as in effect FI have been feeding our pockets with cash to get the product to a certain critical mass to move to the next phase of there development.
Now I know there are several vocal disgruntled forum members and I understand you feel let down and are currently financially disadvantaged (I felt the same a while ago). Mostly you all feel that the removal of an instant sell price has changed your bets and yes it has. However we were all playing a rigged game, we put thousands in that could easily double as the house paid us all the gains but we were in effect only gambling with a few hundred quid as we could instant sell and get it nearly all back. When you look at it like that it was not sustainable and maybe you should now be buying premium bonds.
Therefore for those lucky to have been here for a while maybe you should be thanking FI for the free money and accept that the cushy easy days are slowly going and now we all may need to work a little harder for our money. Profits will still be easy to come by but we will now have to accept that for every 10 big winners we may have a few substantial losers.
I am truly sorry for those who cannot sell low/medium priced players at prices that seem acceptable or because there are no bids, especially if you are new and do not have profits to offset this against but the platform is moving and maybe we should be being more vocal about the things that we possibly can get changed through group pressure:
Increased dividends due to increased commission
Improved player bios
Removal of retired players
Better communications
I would really like this thread to be positive about how FI has improved traders finances and lives and the opportunities it affords in the future, we all know the instant sell removal issue but it has happened so lets look forward.