East v West MNF

One of the podcasts I listen to on a regular basis on my daily walk is Steven Bartlett's The Diary Of A CEO and his latest episode is a conversation with Dr Cheri Mah, who is "a sleep scientist and Professor at the Stanford Sleep Medicine Centre, specialising in the relationship between sleep and performance in elite athletes."

As readers of this blog and subscribers to "the document" will know, the impact of teams crossing time zones has long been an interest of mine, since markets tend to be inefficient in certain scenarios, and one of my systems does take advantage of this.

At the 14:50 mark of the episode, Dr Mah claimed that over 25 seasons, if you had bet on a West Coast team when playing an East Coast team in a Monday Night Football (NFL) game, you would have covered the spread 68% of the time. 

On returning home, I took a look at Killer Sports data which goes all the way back to 1989, and found that when a West Coast team (there are only five of them) hosts an East Coast team (there are 17 of these), the Western team has covered the spread 60.6% of the time with 20 wins, 13 losses and 1 push. 

For the games where an East Coast team hosts a West Coast team, the numbers are slightly better, at 23 wins, 13 losses and 2 pushes, a win rate of 63.9% and overall an impressive 62.3%. 

Given that I'm not sure what 25 year period she was referring to, or where the spreads were sourced, that claim wasn't as far off as I thought it might be. 

72 matches over 35 seasons isn't a lot, but the upcoming 2024 season actually has six such matchups.  

There's also an interesting inefficiency on the Totals market for these games, and additional qualifier that takes this 62.3% win percentage to over 70%, but reduces the number of qualifiers from an already low 72 to an even lower 29. I'm going to add this system to the Sacred Manuscript with a few additional details. 

Even though the system doesn't generate a lot of bets, it's a great example of how certain markets are affected by biases, and of the kinds of angles people should be looking at. 

Just Another Manic Monday

It was brought to my attention by the ever vigilant Frédéric that the gimmethedog site - an important resource for the Sacred Manuscript's newly added CFL system since Killer Sports don't cover this sport - wasn't working correctly.

To their credit, the site admin did respond to my email within minutes, but of course the selection that was now, but wasn't previously, showing up went on to lose. Ain't that always the way? And by one point after leading by 17 at the end of the third quarter. A tough loss, but we had a winner on Saturday which eased the pain. 

The 2024-25 document seems to have been well received, with more than two-thirds of subscribers previous members returning, which means I must be doing something right. 

It's especially gratifying when someone finds an interesting market inefficiency to look at, and all the more so when there is a solid rationale to justify it. 

Ivica did this at the weekend, and while College Basketball isn't for everyone, and the season is still a few months away, it looks like I will be adding a new system to the document.

At a conservative -110 line, the system has a p-value of 2.15%, which equates to a 1-in-47 probability the results are from luck.  Many thanks Ivica. 

I had no time for a July end of month updates, but it was a good month with new highs reached, and I'm not just talking about Ben Nevis.

August not so much, or at least not yet anyway.  There is still time. 

Thankfully my exposure to the Nikkei 225 Index is limited:

TOKYO -- Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock index plunged more than 12% on Monday as investors worried that the U.S. economy may be in worse shape than had been expected and dumped a wide range of shares.

The Nikkei index fell 4,451.28 points to 31,458.42. It dropped 5.8% on Friday and has now logged its worst two-day decline ever, dropping 18.2% in the last two trading sessions.

At its lowest, the Nikkei plunged as much as 13.4% on Monday. Its biggest single-day rout was a drop of 3,836 points, or 14.9%, on the day dubbed “Black Monday” in October 1987. It suffered an 11.4% drop in October 2008 during the global financial crisis and fell 10.6% in the aftermath of a massive earthquake and nuclear meltdowns in northeastern Japan in March 2011.

Monday's decline was the second largest percentage loss in a single day and the largest ever loss in terms of points.

Black Monday is a day I remember very well as I have mentioned before in this post while talking about memorable stock market crashes.

I use the term 'memorable' loosely since the only one I can personally remember, and I do remember it quite well, is the 1987 Black Monday crash when I did everything wrong, but learned a lot. Fortunately in those days I didn't have a lot of capital, so in real terms, the damage was limited.

I wasn't too thrilled at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, learning that lesson at that time was a blessing in disguise.

Keep calm and carry on buying, although now that I'm no longer working and investing every fortnight by default, that probably isn't so applicable these days.

If the past is anything to go by, and it usually is, then we're in for some volatility for a few days before the market finds equilibrium and we go back to slow and steady gains. 

With just a 2.0% loss, the FTSE 100 actually had a relatively good day, but the S&P 500 in the US was down 3.0%.  

As I write this post, the markets in Japan are open and the Nikkei is currently up a little over 8.5%, which isn't a bad recovery.  Tesla and Bitcoin both had very red days yesterday, and a similar recovery there would be appreciated. 

Bundesliga Lays Restored - Partially

In my previous blog post announcing the launch of the 2024-25 Sacred Manuscript, I mentioned that the Bundeslayga Systems had been removed. 

I also mentioned that I had asked subscribers for feedback, and was pleased to receive this comment from Peter who wrote:

I’m surprised to see you ditching the laying of Bundesliga 2 odds-on away favourites.

I keep my stats by calendar year and am showing +44% in 2024, +11.7% in 2023 and +5.4% in 2022.

At this stage, I see no good reason to ditch them.

Peter also suggested I put Page Numbers in the Contents section, which was actually a great suggestion, but one that led me to realise how unfamiliar I am (or was) about Microsoft Word. But I did get there in the end, and the document is all the better for it.

But back to the Bundeslyaga Systems, and the question of whether I should have killed these off, should have killed some of them off, or simply let them all run for a while longer.

There's no correct answer of course, but with the 2024-25 2. Bundesliga season kicking off today, the clock is ticking.

The facts are that we have 12 years of Pinnacle Closing price data, and the total P&L of the four systems (Home and Away Lays in 1. Bundesliga and .2 Bundesliga) is 155.70 units which, from 4,655 matches equates to an ROI of 3.3%.

Unfortunately, three of the past four seasons have seen losses (for a total of -8.12 units) and only a great 2019-20 season keeps the latest 5-year period in the green.  

However, as Peter noted, the results from laying qualifying Away teams in 2. Bundesliga haven't ben too bad - more on those later.

First the results from laying qualifying Home teams in 2. Bundesliga:

The first four seasons had an ROI of 8.7%; the second four of 2.3%; and the most recent four seasons a negative ROI of -1.9%. While I continue to track results, I'm not inclined to put anything other than small 'interest' bets at most on these selections for the time being. The trend isn't positive at all.

When we look at laying Away qualifiers in 2. Bundesliga, the results over the twelve seasons look like this:

The same four season periods here have ROIs of 13.2%, 43.8% and 16.6% respectively, and while the most recent four years is lower than the previous four , it would be hard for it not to be, and 16.6%, albeit from a low number of selections, is a very good return.

My conclusion is that Peter is absolutely right when he says that "at this stage, I see no good reason to ditch them", and the Sacred Manuscript has been updated to reflect this.

Version 1.02 is now at 77 pages with the feedback from Robert regarding one of the MLB systems receiving some care as well as the aforementioned page numbers being added.

Please keep the feedback coming.