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. 

The NHL broke-up first and aren't back until the weekend, while the NBA has a shorter break with play resuming tonight (Wednesday) with the regular season ending in less than two months on April 13th. 

In the NHL, the first basic system is off to a great start with an ROI of 10.9%, with the Puck Line bets with an even more impressive 32.2%. 

I've included the Over/Under for these matches because the Under shows a big edge so far this season. Historically, Unders have a slight edge winning at 53.8%, but the increase this season is interesting. 

For the more selective system the results are a little disappointing, but still profitable and the Unders trend here is even stronger: 

In theory, and certainly over the longer term, these more selective bets will have a higher ROI, but the reduced volume means that variance is a factor in the short term, and 15 nets is very much short term. 

For the second system the results are not as good. Long term (i.e. since 2006) the ROI on these are 8.2% and 15.1% but so far this season we are down 22.7% (from 60 selections) and 2.9% for the more selective system although this has only had 13 selections to date.

The third main system is down 11.5% (from 40 selections) with the more selective offshoot up 49%, which sounds more exciting than it is given that there has literally only been a handful of selections so far. Again, Unders at 59.5% are coming in at a higher rate than expected this season.

Moving to the NBA and the results are so far very disappointing. Most of the Spread systems are based on the premise that certain Away teams are often value, but this season the winning percentage (46.4%) is the lowest since records began in 1995.

This basic system currently has an ROI of -9.4% from 334 selections and it's not much comfort that factoring in the previous result for both teams this into a 12.1% ROI since this is just 54 selections. 

The Totals systems are at least performing decently so far, with the 'Overs on High Totals' system hitting at 55.5% while the 'Alpha Unders' has a losing 28-29 record to date, but in the hunt to be profitable at least. 

College Basketball doesn't have a mid-season break, and selections are few and far between in the earlier part of the season, but so far the three systems are a combined 9-9 with the end-of-season tournaments when we get really busy.

At least my bet on the Superbowl was profitable even if I didn't get the best value by waiting until kick-off. 

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. 

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.

I mentioned 'bye' weeks in my previous post and while the NHL and NBA schedules are quite different, there are differences regarding how rested one team is compared to another. It's interesting that of the five NHL systems in the Sacred Manuscript, the three that factor in this parameter are the three that are in profit, whereas the two that don't are currently down for the season.

One basic system has a 24-18 record, but when applying the 'rest' factor improves to 8-1. 

The one system that was a late addition to the manuscript thanks to Thomas is currently negative, but once again, if 'rest' is taken into account, the results turn positive with an 18-19 losing record turning into a 4-1 winning record.

In my haste to add this system to the document, I failed to look at the impact of this additional qualifier, a miss that will be fixed moving forward.

You could actually do far worse this season than simply back teams that are better rested than their opponent which has an ROI of 7.0% and a P/L of 37.51 units from 352 bets. This using Killer Sports' data which can almost always be improved upon when it comes to prices. 

However, unless there is some significant change to the scheduling, this is likely to be a blip in the statistics since no other season in the past comes close. 

In the NBA, which shares a similar schedule with the NHL, better rested teams have a slight advantage this season with a win percentage of 52%, but historically this hasn't been an area where an edge has existed except for some totals systems. Or I've just not found them yet! 

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.

The rested teams this season were the Detroit Lions in the NFC and Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC. Both played on Saturday with the Lions favoured by 8.5 points and the Chiefs by 9.5 points playing against the Washington Commanders and the Houston Texans respectively, and neither covered the spread, with the Lions actually losing the game. 

Since the NFL moved to this playoff format in the 2021 season, the favourite is just 2-6 ATS, and eliminated three times from the eight games so far. 

This is a small sample of course, but rested teams have been a feature of the NFL playoffs since 2001 and the numbers since then are 38-46-2 ATS with 26 of the 86 teams eliminated. 

Hopefully some of you remembered this idea and took advantage.  With just two selections a year this is not included in the Sacred Manuscript, but then I do include the National League system which only generates six a season which seems a little inconsistent. 

The College Football season ended last night with favoured Ohio State covering the spread against Notre Dame, but for me, the post season interest was more in how the new 12 team format would play out.

Similar to the NFL, four teams were given byes to the Quarter-Finals and all four lost their matches straight up which looks promising. 

One big difference is that all these games are all played at a neutral venue, and the nature of College Football is that not all four teams on a bye were favourites, (actually none were), but it's something to keep an eye on as the format becomes more established and we get more data.    

NFL 2024 - Year of the Favourite, and Overs

With 19 full years of betting profit and loss totals now complete, here's the annual, or somewhat annual as I think I missed this much anticipated update last year, look at how the actuals compare with the expected in regard to Benford's Law.

With a 99.8% correlation it's pretty close, although as in 2023 still a little untidy at the bottom with the 9 remaining unexpectedly higher than both 7 and 8. I'm probably not going to lose any sleep over it. 

Nor will I lose any sleep over my bet on the Jacksonville Jaguars +3 on Sunday which was settled as a Push after they lost by 3 points in overtime, which in US sports counts. 

The Killer Sports line was +3.5 so it will count as a Win in the 'official' records, although it was the only one of three selections to win so the basic Small Road 'Dogs have a second consecutive losing season finishing with a 24-30 record. 

It's only the fourth losing season since 2004 and the more selective Division version at 19-15 had a winning season and it's now 11 years since this one had a losing record. 

The totals had the reverse record of 15-19 with Overs having its best season in all regular season matches since 2010, and it's third highest success rate in the 26 year history of the Killer Sports database. 

My gut feeling is that the standard of kicking and rule changes may be factors here, but something to look at in the off season.

The non-Divisional Small Road 'Dogs were unable to overcome the season long headwind that resulted in Favourites having their best season since 2005 both Straight Up (SU) at 71.9% and Against The Spread (ATS) at 53.4%. 

Some of the Totals Systems were profitable with the Prime Time System recording a 29-26-1 record, the non-Conference version a 12-7-1 record, and the 'Off-a-Bye Week' systems had a combined 50% record at 8-8 so we were down the vig there.

I'm not sure if it is an issue just for me, but I am no longer able to access the Gimmethedog site so the official CFL numbers aren't available. It's a rather niche market I suspect, so no one really cares, but a little frustrating.

Overall the 2024 American Football season numbers look like this - underwhelming for sure, but it does feel like it could have been a lot worse. 

For perspective, the numbers since the systems began are:

Ten-Baggers

In my previous post I mentioned a bunch of individual stocks that I am now following, in addition to the few I've already mentioned, but it occurred to me on my walk yesterday that I should probably clarify that these are being traded in my 'play' account which comprises less than 10% of my investment portfolio. 

The majority of my money is invested in low-cost index tracking funds, and while it would be nice to beat the market with individual stocks, I'm probably not going to be able to over the long-term.

Last year this account was up 26.5% so I did slightly beat the benchmark S&P 500 index (+23.3%), but only with the help of a late surge from Tesla and a late decline for the S&P 500. 

My financial advisor made clear to me, this (choosing $TSLA, not beating the market) was likely a once in a lifetime event, but I'm not sure about that. 

While Tesla became a ten-bagger in a couple of years, there are several other companies who have met the definition.

"eToro analysed the returns of FTSE 350 companies and S&P 500 firms from 2013 to 2023 to identify ten-bagger stocks i.e. companies which have seen their share price surge by a factor of 10 or more (+1,000%) over 10 years."

Your chances are improved by looking to the US markets with just two UK companies (JD Sports (JD) and Games Workshop (GAW) achieving this, a strike rate of 0.6%.

Over in the US, 21 of the current S&P 500 made +1,000% returns from 2013 to 2023, a 4.2% hit rate. This list includes Tesla and the article concludes with the sensible advice that:

It’s also worth bearing in mind that even if you don’t directly invest in these winning companies, you can still benefit from their success by investing in Exchange Traded Funds tracking the performance of particular stock markets as a whole.

2024 / 2025 - Red December

A Happy and Healthy New Year to all of you reading this post. 

It wasn't the best of Decembers with both my health and net worth spreadsheets displaying a lot of red and with the goal of being green all over, this was not good. 

For my net worth spreadsheet, December ranked 194th of 194 in real terms, although it was "only" the 190th worst in percentage terms. And yes, while it's sad that I've been tracking this figure since 2008, my son (age 34) already has 12 years of such data! 

The post US election rally has evaporated. Although some of my individual stocks are still ahead, overall the broader indices in the US are now lower and as I have mentioned many times, this is where most of my money is invested. 

Retirement gets real in the new year as I shall be dipping into retirement funds to pay for my not-so-lavish lifestyle now that the severance has been used up, and withdrawing during a downturn isn't ideal. 

Reversing the mindset from one of accumulation during my working years to decumulation in retirement almost overnight isn't easy. I've had a nice transition period thanks to the severance, but it's time to adjust. 

I'm removing the 'target' sections which have served me well during my earning years, but which now serve little purpose as I am, for the most part, now at the mercy of the markets.

Perspective is always important and while December has been terrible, July and November were the best and third best months all-time respectively, so it's not been a terrible year overall. 

All these years have had the benefit of a salary, and while that became less of a factor in recent years, with market gyrations having the biggest impact, there was a comfort factor in having that steady income. 

The S&P 500 ended up 23.3% for the year, with the FTSE 100 up 5.7% and my 'play account' for individual stocks was up 26.5%, in large part thanks to gains for Bitcoin (+121%), $TSLA (+63%), and (perhaps rather surprisingly) NatWest ($NWG +81%).  

Other market beaters were Walmart ($WMT +72%), Chipotle ($CMG +32%), and Berkshire Hathaway ($BRKB +27%) but of course there were losers - notably Target (-5%), Boeing (-31%), and Pfeizer (-11%). 

And as I wrote in August 2022, acting on investment tips from your daughter's boyfriend isn't the best of ideas. Despite almost doubling in 2024, I am still down 87% on this "investment" in $MNMD. 

Looking ahead to 2025, which is the only year I will see that is a square number, and there are a few other stocks and crypto I am buying into with some cash I freed up after selling some of my Tesla position.

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. 

Apologies if this isn't of interest to you. I am fully aware that most of the above post is of interest to one person, i.e. me, as it's nice to have a record of where I was with my thoughts at the start of each year. I do like to read the thoughts of others, and Ian at Pension Builder is always worth a read even if his updates are few and far between! Interesting to see that we have - or had - a couple of stocks in common, Lloyds Bank and Palantir although Ian has sold out his position in the former. 

I also agree with his comment here although 1/12th seems on the low side! :

As a result of Trump winning the US presidency - I'm no fan of his by-the-way - I've invested a 12th of my portfolio value into the S&P 500 via iShares. I've no idea which way the US stock market will go, but (if it goes up substantially) I don't want to miss out.

On to sports, and with just one week of the NFL season remaining and a 23-28 record, it's almost certain that the basic Small Road 'Dogs System will see its second consecutive losing season after being profitable in 15 of the previous 17 seasons. With a 17-11 record for the Divisional bets, we're close to breaking even on these overall, but more on this when the regular season wraps up.

The College Football season has finished with the newly expanded playoffs currently in progress, and for these the basic Small Road 'Dogs System had a 76-71 record, with the FBS games 76-67.  

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.