Trent’s Take: What should my trading strategy be over the next 3 weeks?

Traditionally, weeks 4-7 focus on eliminating mid-priced players who are performing at rookie levels and upgrading rookies who are either meeting their break-evens or have been benched. This year is no different. Plan trades for the next three weeks, using the emergency loophole and the rolling lockout to optimize your trades. You’ll likely have a handful of underperforming players; for me, that’s Paddy Dow, Tom Green, and Jordan Clark. In terms of rookies, Paul Hunter and Miles Bergman didn’t play in Round 3. Draw up a list of rookies to cut by the end of Round 7 as they’ll either be dropped or reach their cash maximum. For me, that includes Hawthorn’s Jacob Koschitzke and Tyler Brockman, along with possibly Lloyd Meek.

Create a strategy to gradually eliminate these players, aiming for at least three additional premiums and cash generators by the end of Rounds 7-8. Depending on your team’s overall structure, in Round 4, consider either a double downgrade or a downgrade plus an upgrade to a premium (especially if trading Jarrod Witts). Avoid trading for semi-premiums or mid-pricers; while it might work (think Darcy Parish), if it doesn’t, your trading plan could unravel for weeks. Round 4 is a good time to double downgrade players scoring at rookie levels or worse. Even Dow’s on-field performance lagged, and Parks scored more than Clark, while Green was easily outdone by Scott from the Bulldogs. These players need to go, and there are alternatives with similar scoring potential and reasonable job security: Parks, Robertson, Chapman, Waterman, and Perkins, for example.

A quick word on using the rolling lockout and emergency loophole to maximize your score and shape your trading. For example, this Thursday night, I’m considering trading Dow for Waterman (or Perkins if you want extra cash), setting Waterman as an emergency, and leaving Bergman on the field. If Waterman scores 65+ and Bergman isn’t named, he’ll stay in my team an extra week or two. If Bergman plays, I might switch him to the bench and play Rowe instead. The rolling lockout and emergency loophole can enhance your score, similar to how a forex robot monitors market conditions to maximize trade results automatically. You can try this across different lines over the weekend (though it’s risky to attempt with more than one line).

 I suspect there will be rookies who are going to get dropped or rested in Rounds 4-7 and using them as a loop against players who play early gives you an option to keep the dropped player for that week and therefore trade out another player, like a Green or Clark or soon to be dropped rookie from a later game in the round like Koschitzke or Brockman. For Round 4, Essendon and Sydney rookies on Thursday, Port’s Bergman on Friday night, Western Bulldogs with McNeil, and Scott on Saturday for example. Also, now is the time if Hunter is not named in Round 4 to get a Ruckmen off utility as the flexibility of moving your team structure around in the upcoming rounds will be important. Even a sideways trade of Hunter to Robertson this week has benefits (assuming he is named). Lastly, on trading strategy, if you can’t get to Grundy this week, you should be making plans to do so by Round 7-8 when Flynn’s price starts to level out. By then you might only need 350K, which is going a mid-pricer to a rookie and upgrading Flynn (unless you wish to keep Flynn as R3). At this point in the week, I have roughly 2 options which are double downgrade or one down and one sideways, Paddy Dow to Alec Waterman Paul Hunter to Deven Robertson or Tom Green to Deven Robertson (around $470k in bank with option 2) This allows you to go one up and one down on Round 5, for example Clark and Brockman or Stephenson and Bergman or whatever combination looks like it is underperforming and can be traded for the next Round 5 rookie and likely premium on that line who will hopefully finish in your team.