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.

Expert Fee

As mentioned in my previous post, my granddaughter and I attended the Crystal Palace v Arsenal match last Saturday and we now have in common that our first Palace defeats in person were both 1:5 losses at home to Arsenal, mine being way back in November 1969.

At age 7, it's fair to say that she didn't seem to find this coincidence quite as interesting as I did, and was more interested in getting to BOXPARK Croydon for a healthy post match meal of chips and milkshakes but in a further disappointment for the evening, Croydon appeared to be undergoing a milkshake shortage.

Aside from those challenges, my trip was good and while betting activity took a back seat to family matters, I did see the news that after 16 years Betfair have decided to get rid of the Premium Charge and replace it with a new 'Expert Fee' starting next month.

Per the Racing Post, this fee:

"will focus on gross profit over a rolling 52-week period, rather than lifetime profitability, with a flexible rate of commission rather than a fixed level.

Exchange users with a 52-week gross profit of less than £25,000 will not pay the new fee, with rates of 20 per cent for those winning between £25,000-£100,000 and a top rate of 40 per cent for players winning more than £100,000 in the measured timeframe. Users can go up and down the fee structure depending on their level of success."

Whether or not this change will reverse the challenges with liquidity remains to be seen, with the Racing Post article stating:

The incoming change in the fee structure comes at a time when liquidity levels – the amount of money being bet on events – have been falling. Data from the exchange shows the average traded in win markets on British horseracing has fallen every year since 2016, with a sharp fall between 2019-2022.

Affordability checks have been put forward as one reason for the drop in liquidity, with bigger layers on the exchange not prepared to disclose financial information to continue betting and leaving the site.

Speaking in August, professional gambler Neil Channing said: "If you're a professional layer on there [Betfair] you need a big balance as there will be volatility and swings. So if you're restricted in what you can deposit it makes it very hard to operate. It's a barrier to entry and it's hard for me to be a big layer on the exchange."

The impact on individuals will vary of course. £25,000 a year works out at about £69 a day while £100,000 is about £275 a day.

I have never exceeded this latter amount with a rolling 52-week high of £177.57 set on November 6th, 2009, which was a long time ago when the majority of my sports investing was on Betfair and almost all was in the form of in-play trading. 

Circumstances change in life though, and with the Premium Charge implementation a big reason why in-play liquidity in my favourite sports dried up, my strategy changed to bet-and-forget as I wrote about back in 2019:

I still don't have many friends, but I do have other betting options these days. Yes, Betfair may be taking 50% of profits, but this penalty only kicks in after reaching a lifetime limit, and complaining about paying a higher rate of tax as your income increases isn't something that is morally defensible. Payer a higher tax rate is generally a good problem to have.

My complaints about the Premium Charge were about how it was implemented. The goal posts were moved, but I don't set the rules and no amount of crying or whining will move them back.

The 2008 implementation of a 20% tax was reasonable, but in late June of 2011, the second, and more punitive, phase was introduced when I was already about 90.4% of the way to the lifetime limit. It didn't seem fair to include previous winnings in the lifetime total, but there are some things in life we control, and for those we don't control, we adapt.

In my case, this meant that the time spent trading in-play could no longer be justified, so I moved to a bet-and-forget approach. Winning 50p for a few minutes 'work' is one thing; winning 50p after several hours is quite another.

As it happens, liquidity on the in-play markets I followed took a dive around the same time anyway, so in a way, the Premium Charge did me a favour. I made lemonade with the lemons I was given, as the saying goes.

With just a couple of trading days to go in the financial markets, and anything can happen, it does look as though 2024 will be one of the better years with the US's S&P 500 index currently up about 24% on the year. It's also been a strong year for some of the individual stocks I've mentioned over the years with Bitcoin up 115%, NatWest up 80%, Tesla up 75%, and Walmart up 74%. 

If my former employer's stock price had performed anywhere close to these numbers I'd be ecstatic, but they are currently down almost 4% with the most recent options granted earlier this year out of the money. Plenty of time before these expire though.

Unfortunately another number that has gone up this year is the one on my scales. With my son's wedding less than 150 days away, Dry January may need to be extended next year! 

Service Announcement and American Football Updates

It's not been the best of seasons for the NFL's Small Road 'Dog System, but after a Week 14 that went 4-1 the system has at least clawed its way back to a 22-22 record. The Divisional version of this system is now at 16-8 for the season, but the totals systems are underperforming slightly so the final few weeks of the season will determine whether we end up in the red or the green.

College Football has been a similar story with the Road 'Dogs systems having a 75-67 record, but the totals have the exact opposite. 

In other news, I shall be travelling for the next couple of weeks. A short trip to North Devon with one of my sisters to pay pre-Christmas respects to our parents this week followed by a few days in the Surrey and Kent area before taking one of my granddaughters (age 7) to the Crystal Palace v Arsenal game on the 21st. 

Normal blogging services will resume around Christmas so in the event that I don't get around to it before the holiday, a Merry Christmas to everyone who reads this. 

Bots and HFA in the NFL

Beeblebrox, possibly not his real name, had an explanation for my observation that recently bets placed between the available back and lay money are often being matched instantaneously:

That will be a bot matching your bet. It's very simple to create bots that get notified about every change in a market and then they decide what action to take.

This makes sense, although why this is something I've only noticed recently is still a mystery, since bots have been around for a long time. It could be a timing issue with these bets being placed closer to the event start time than usual, as apparently it's nothing new as Subscriber Rob let me know:

Regarding your latest blog post on bets getting matched on Betfair at
‘Invisible odds’

This has definitely been happening for quite some time and occurs on other sports not just NFL although I do notice it more on American sports.

And a subsequent email today pointed out that it:

Happened again last night. I put in 1.76 for the Islanders and it got matched immediately despite the market being 1.75 / 1.77. They lost!

It's not been the best of runs lately for the NHL Systems, but the ROI is at 9.1% for the season which is in line with their records since 2005.

Two more likely selections tomorrow night.

Subscriber Larry sent me an interesting article on the value of Home Field Advantage in the NFL, a value which is constantly evolving and needs to be looked at on a team by team basis. The article concludes with a table showing the highest as 6.3 points (Detroit Lions) and the lowest as -1.5 (Washington Commanders).

Five of the eight 'North' teams feature in the top 10 which is likely due to their familiarity with the weather, while only two 'West' teams feature in the top half, one of which is Denver with the 'mile-high' location the likely major factor.

Little Boys

My old Mum (RIP) used to tell me that "little boys who ask, don't get" to which, when I was a little older, I would respond "but if I don't ask, I still won't get as no one will know what I want". 

The importance of getting the best price when investing can't be understated and when using Betfair's platform, those extra pips will add up over time. 

I've noticed recently that not all available money is necessarily displayed. It's always been the case that amounts less than the minimum bet won't be displayed, but this seems to have changed.

For example the Indianapolis Colts were a selection today and there was a gap between the prices available to Back and Lay which were 2.0 and 2.04 respectively.

When there is no gap, I typically put in a bid at the higher price, but when a gap exists will often fill it, which is what happened today.  Immediately, my back at 2.02 was matched: 

Of course it is possible that someone just happened to put in a lay at that price for the same amount at the exact same time, but this doesn't seem likely, and it's not the first time I have noticed this recently. 

Happenstance, coincidence, enemy action, as James Bond was told and to the idea that it could all just be a coincidence, as Jim Gordon said "You're a detective now, son. You're not allowed to believe in coincidence anymore."

It's not really a big deal, but another reminder that it usually pays to not take what someone is happy to offer you, but to ask for more. 

After all, if you don't ask, you won't get. Sorry Mum.