In essence, there are two major schools of analysis among traders in the world's stock markets - fundamental and technical. Fundamental analysis is a weighing machine that measures the intrinsic value of a company. By contrast, technical analysis is a voting machine that measures the historical trends in the company stock price
With sports trading (e.g., horse-racing), there are two markets available on most betting exchanges (e.g., Betfair): pre-event and in-play. The pre-event market is similar to the standard bookmaker or pari-mutuel equivalent with respect to the back side (i.e. punting) of the equation. However, the addition of a lay option generates a highly liquid market for technical traders as they negotiate the ebbs and flows of money for the market leaders in the last fifteen minutes before the start of the event. Though there is some scope for a solely technical or fundamental approach to the in-play market, it actually requires a form of fusion analysis (i.e. blend of fundamental and technical) because, unlike stock markets, there is only one winner and many losers at the end of a finite time interval (i.e. end of race). Thus, even though the sports trader can punt (i.e. back OR lay) a single selection, the recommended approach is to trade (i.e. back AND lay) one or more selections to either "green up" (i.e. guarantee return regardless of outcome) or "red down" (i.e. spread liability across all selections to minimize loss regardless of outcome) the trader's overall position.