Movers & Shakers: steamers and drifters

Movers & Shakers shows where the money is going before the off: steamers being backed in and drifters easing out, live on your dashboard.

Movers & Shakers is the live market widget on the dashboard, available to Premium and Pro members. It watches Betfair exchange prices across today's remaining races and surfaces the horses the market is talking about.

Steamers and drifters

• A steamer is a horse being backed in, its odds are shortening because money is coming for it.
• A drifter is the opposite, support is draining away and the odds are lengthening.

The widget has a tab for each, with a live count, and refreshes itself every ten minutes through the day.

Reading the table

Each row shows the horse, its course and race time, then three prices: Earlier (the first price snapshot of the day), Previous and Current. The Swing column is the key number: how much the horse's share of the market has changed, in percentage points, since the day's first price. Green arrows are steamers, red are drifters, and you can sort by swing to see the biggest moves first.

We measure swing in market share rather than raw odds because a move from 3.0 to 2.5 is a far bigger statement than a move from 51 to 41. It also accounts for the knock-on effect of non-runners.

Filters

Two controls keep the list meaningful:

• Min Swing (pp), hide moves smaller than this many percentage points (default 2).
• Min Odds, ignore very short-priced horses whose moves say little (default 2.0).

Change either, then hit refresh to apply.

Using it well

A steamer isn't a tip, but market moves plus a strong RTR rating is a powerful combination. Cross-check big movers against the ratings columns before you act, and see LTO Stats for runners that traded short last time out.