Thursday 1 August 2013

Consistency

I've long since given up the idea of a monthly review, because it is of no interest to anyone but myself, but one thing that caught my attention when wrapping up July's numbers was how boringly consistent my profits have been over the last four months.

Taking the average over this period, April was 3.5% above, May was 8.2% below, June was 2.7% below and July is provisionally 7.4% above. (The final number will depend on the Premium Charge which is weekly, not monthly, and will likely be charged to July, barring a bad weekend). Not surprisingly, my monthly Benford number has been boringly the same all four months too.

The Summer months are usually boring. Based on the median over the past eight years, June through September are four of my worst five months with April the worst by quite a long way, as I have somehow managed to have four losing months here.

Not all months are the same of course, making them arbitrary snapshots of unequal time periods and any observations are of academic interest only. Totals since September 2008 and October 2012 are impacted by the Premium Charge and Super Premium Charges respectively, which often makes depressing reading when comparing pre-charge numbers with post-charge, but it must be still worthwhile for me to continue to spend some, albeit reduced, time on the exchanges.

Looking at August 2012, I see my net profit was a whopping £68, so I shall be disappointed not to beat that! Not only does proper football get under way again, but the NFL starts on Sunday with the Hall of Fame game between the Miami Dolphins and the Dallas Cowboys in Canton, Ohio. August is all meaningless exhibition games in the NFL, with starters playing very little until the season proper begins in the first week of September.

The college version of the game does get started in late August, as does the US Tennis Open, and the pennant races in baseball heat up in August too. The New York Yankees look likely to miss out on the play-offs this season, and the fate of Alex Rodriguez will be interesting to see. 18 of the 30 teams either lead their division or are within 10 games, and only one division (NL East - Atlanta) is all but over.

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