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%.

Along with this increase in sports betting has come an increase in people associated with sports getting themselves in trouble. Last April, Jontay Porter (age 24) became the first active player to be banned (for life) from the NBA for gambling since 1954.

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!).

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.

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.

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.

One other difference is that although the starting weights were identical, my body composition wasn't. 

I've been adding strength training to my routine (my son tells me that as I approach old age, this is a must) so there was less fat to lose this year than 15 months ago, so with less weight (i.e. fat) to lose and more calories burned, the similar results are explained. I also bought a Fitbit a couple of days ago, another of my son's suggestions, so I'll have more metrics to play with moving forward.