I managed to survive the six-state road trip with my son mentioned in my previous post. After flying into New Orleans, Louisiana and spending a couple of days there we drove to Savannah, Georgia stopping overnight in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, Asheville, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina. We were able to catch the College Basketball Championship game between Florida and Houston in Nashville shortly before we were hauled up on stage to sing along to, in my case, Take Me Home, Country Roads and for my son, The Gambler.
Wednesday, 16 April 2025
Country Roads, Eggs and Baskets
Monday, 31 March 2025
Factors of Seventeen
an independent look at challenges and opportunities in sports and financial investing, with occasional diversions as my mood takes me.
It's better news in the NHL which is also in the final stage of its regular season, with the core system having an official ROI of 4.3%, and the Embarrassed and Rested system up 13.6% - numbers that are easily beatable. The "Tough Guys" system hasn't fared so well, with a 28-29 record so far and an ROI of -8.5%.
Friday, 7 March 2025
February Flops
February wasn't the best of months. Sports betting saw a miniscule 0.7% return, which at least was positive, but overall the month ranked as the 194th best in nominal terms out of the 197 since I started tracking, and the 184th best in percentage terms, which is a more positive way of saying that the month was one of the worst ever.
As a new retiree, I'm still getting used to the new world of no salary, but if returns on investments could be like January all the time, I'll be a happy man.
Along with being a retiree comes the experience of having gone through a few roller-coaster rides in my investment career, and I'm well aware that it can be a bumpy road. Tesla will be interesting. The CEO has closely (to put it mildly) aligned himself with the current administration, which is not usually a great idea for a CEO, and leading the DOGE effort can't be anything but a distraction from running Tesla.
With Tesla importing around 25% of their components including some from China, a tariffs war is not going to be helpful. Then there is the issue of the Elon Musk "brand" hurting demand for Teslas in Europe (a 26% drop in sales in February and likely a bigger drop when March's numbers are released) plus the competition in China and Asia from BYD and Tesla is looking like a sell.
I reduced my position slightly at $433.63 on 17th January which was a good move, but then I bought the shares back on the 23rd at $411.75 which wasn't a good move, given that I could buy them back today at around $263.
As I've mentioned before, most of my money is invested in low cost broad index funds with these individual share holdings just me playing with money I can afford to lose, although I'd prefer it didn't come to that. I'm planning to continue holding Tesla for now, given that I'm playing with house money after getting in back in 2017.
In the Premier League last season, backing the draw in Big 6 matches was a profitable strategy with an ROI of 104% from the 30 matches, but so far this season hasn't been as profitable with a loss of 10% after the 22 matches played so far.
The broader strategy of simply opposing Home teams in Big 6 matches rather than target the unpredictable Draw does continue to be lucrative though, with last season's 24% ROI up slightly to 30% this season. Sunday sees Manchester United play Arsenal.
Wednesday, 19 February 2025
Half-Term Report
It's half-term for the arena sports of NHL and NBA in the USA and as promised here is the half-time review of how the systems in the Sacred Manuscript have fared do far.
Tuesday, 4 February 2025
Fixes, Breaks, Investments and Oct '23 v Jan '25
As many of you will know, sports betting has been on the rise in the US ever since the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act which made it illegal outside of Nevada was overturned in 2018 as a violation of states’ rights.
Since then, individual states have one by one legalized in-person sports betting with the ball set rolling by Delaware just a month after the legal decision, quickly realizing the financial benefits of legal sports betting.
According to Forbes, Americans wagered $119.84 billion on sports in 2023, which represented an annual increase of 27.5%.
Just last week it was revealed that Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier is under investigation for allegedly "altering his performance" during a March 2023 game, and today we read that:
"Accounts connected with a gambling ring that is under federal investigation for its participation in two NBA betting cases have been tied to "unusual wagering activity" on at least three men's college basketball programs this season. The three schools -- North Carolina A&T, Mississippi Valley State and Eastern Michigan -- were all reportedly bet against by the gambling ring and flagged by betting integrity monitors at various points this season, according to ESPN.
North Carolina A&T recently suspended three basketball players -- including the top two scorers on the season for "violating team rules" last week -- though it's unclear if the indefinite suspensions are tied to the betting case.
The same accounts linked in the probe were also involved in suspicious betting activity that placed large wagers on prop bets involving former Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter during the 2023-24 season and former Hornets guard Terry Rozier in 2023, ESPN reports.
In baseball, one of the best - at least in terms of calling balls and strikes correctly - umpires Pat Hoberg has been fired by MLB for "gambling violations."
It's disappointing, but not really an unexpected byproduct of the huge increase in interest in betting. It happened here in England when spread betting became popular in the 1990s and elite players such as Matt Le Tissier were tempted into trying to fix things such as the timing of the first throw-in.
In my opinion, the more players on a team, the higher their compensation, and the higher the profile of the match, the lower the risk is that a bet on something macro such as the final score will be impacted.
Tennis, golf, snooker, darts etc. and it only takes one individual to make a big difference to the final outcome, and that could be due to illness, mood, motivation rather than betting related.
The end of January means just the one NFL game remaining, the Philadelphia Eagles looking to stop the Kansas City Chiefs (-1) from becoming the first team to win three consecutive Superbowls.
With the mid-season breaks for the NBA and NHL coming up in a few days, it makes sense to review those seasons so far at that time.
At the start of the year, I didn't recommend a few stocks, but if you disregarded my suggestion, you wouldn't be complaining too much. I wrote:
These aren't recommendations, but for the record they are AbbVie ($ABBV), Applied Materials ($AMAT), Amazon ($AMZN), Alibaba ($BABA), Bristol-Myers Squibb ($BMY), Salesforce ($CRM), Alphabet ($GOOG), NVIDIA ($NVDA), Palantir ($PLTR), Thermo Fisher Scientific ($TMO), UnitedHealth ($UNH) and VeriSign ($VRSN). For crypto I'm now in on Dogecoin as I mentioned back in November.My two regrets are not investing more, and adding that last sentence. Dogecoin has not had a good month, but overall these numbers are very good.
Palantir is the standout, and Wayward Lad will be happy about that although maybe not so happy about halving his stake!
Tesla is down on the year, but overall it was a good start to the year. As a new retiree, I'm still getting used to the new world of no salary, but if returns on investments could be like January all the time, I'll be a happy man.
In the same post, I also mentioned my target of dropping a few pounds, and again, this is probably not of interest to anyone but myself. I wrote:
Back to my health / weight, and while some of the gain is from building more muscle and focusing on weight training during the latter part of 2024, I do need to get back on track with my calories. I have two weddings, a school reunion (50th), and a climb up Helvellyn coming up and an expensive (for me) suit purchased when I was 11 1/2 stone (162 lbs) which I need to fit into (for the weddings, not the climb up Helvellyn!).Another Dry January did just that. I actually noticed that my starting weight in October 2023 was exactly the same as that for January, and decided to try to match or surpass my habits from that month as it was a 'Sober October', it was also a 31 day month, and I dropped almost 18lbs.
Fortunately I know how to do it, but it's just rather slow and not the most fun with alcohol a big factor.
While exercise is very beneficial in lots of ways, for losing weight (by which I mean fat) it's far less important than calories ingested which has a correlation to wight loss of about 88%.
Fewer than 2100 calories a day, and the weight falls off. Simple. Another Dry January will get the year kick-started.
My October 2023 / January 2025 comparison:
The numbers are daily of course, except for the totals lost which were very close, even though with more time on my hands these days, I was a little more active than before.
Wednesday, 22 January 2025
The Rest Is Current
There might be only three games left in the 2024 NFL season, but the NHL and NBA seasons are a little more than halfway through their regular seasons, even if their all-star games are still a couple of weeks away.
Tuesday, 21 January 2025
Resting On Their Laurels
I've written before about the market overvaluing rested higher-seeded teams in playoffs, for example the MLB, the National League (the English Football fifth tier, not MLB's National League) and of course the NFL, which completed its Divisional Playoff Round where this 'feature' is present.