Rolling On

Another winner last night for the XX Draw Selections, as Toulouse and Lille played out un draw parfait (0-0), meaning another win for the Unders on these selections too. A great start to the weekend, and that is now six 0-0s in the last 25 picks, and the ROI on the season after 55 selections now stands at 26.8%.

Griff's expecting plenty of draws in the EPL this weekend, going for no less than half the card:

and the Green Pullover has even more selections with draws selected in the games at Swansea City (3.4), Middlesbrough (3.6), Reading (3.5), Watford (3.4), Millwall (3.75), AFC Wimbledon (3.6), Bradford City (3.55), Parma (3.25), Villareal (3.45), Valencia (4.4) and Racing Santander (3.35).

I mentioned previously that I would, at random (by throwing a die), come up with three matches each weekend from the Top5 leagues, just for fun and to see how they measure up with other picks, and this weekend's completely random selections are Chelsea v Liverpool (3.7), Juventus v Palermo (4.6) and Stoke City v QPR (3.75). Against the odds, given that there are 49 matches to choose from, but the Chelsea v Liverpool game actually came up twice during this selection process. Make of that what you will, but I had to have a cheeky tenner on it after that. Even stranger, this is one of the EPL games NOT on Griff's or Green Pullover's lists.

jokerjoe had this comment on my advice to get over any ideas about trading the financial markets from your living room yesterday.

Nonsense. Trading pure news even in the sporting arena is a tough game requiring speed. Secondly long-term stock investing is not all that, there can be decades without growth. And finally day-trading is not about trading news. Trading on all timescales is similar, the one advantage with day-trading is being able to read order-flow better though there is less liquidity and smaller ranges.

I'm not sure which piece of my post the 'nonsense' was directed at, but let's take a look at jokerjoe's comment.

To address the first part - "Trading pure news even in the sporting arena is a tough game requiring speed" - I never said that trading pure news wasn't a tough game. What I said was that in the world of sports, we all see the game unfolding at the same time and was contrasting this to the world of finance, where we don't. Thus sports at least offer you the same opportunity to profit as everyone else. Whether or not an individual is able to profit from that opportunity is a different matter. Some people are just better than others at being able to make the most of opportunities. And yes, speed is always of the essence when it comes to opportunities - the older the news becomes, the more people know, and the more that news is factored into the price. The point is that events in sports are pure news, events in finance are not. The release of unemployment figures may be news to the living room trader, but as I explained yesterday, the process of compiling those figures involves many hands and eyes.

Jokerjoe's then dismisses long-term stock investing as being "not all that, there can be decades without growth". The term 'long-term' when applied to investing perhaps needs to be defined. For me it is 20 years plus, and over a 20 year period, stocks have always had a minimum of a 2.4% annual return. That's the minimum, after selecting the worst possible 20 years from the last 140 years. So saying that long-term stock investing "is not all that" is wrong if we agree on that definition of long-term. Three, five or ten years is not long-term. I would be interested to know where jokerjoe invests for the long-term. I hope it's not in bonds, because "stocks have also outperformed bonds — the current investment of choice for risk-averse investors — nearly 100% of the time over 20-year periods since 1871, a Vanguard study found". Of course there have been periods with poor returns, lost decades even, but long-term, the strategy of consistently investing in stocks is hard to beat.

jokerjoe finishes with "And finally day-trading is not about trading news. Trading on all timescales is similar, the one advantage with day-trading is being able to read order-flow better though there is less liquidity and smaller ranges". I never actually said that day-trading was about trading news. What I actually wrote was that day-trading from your living room trying to beat insiders just isn't viable, and the evidence supports that statement. For example:

There have been many studies that have concluded that most day traders lose money, but there have also been studies that documented successful trading by day traders. The data currently available seems to imply the following results:

· The majority of new day traders probably do lose money.

· At some firms a very high percentage of day traders lose money.

· However, there is some evidence that a majority of (surviving) day traders at some firms are profitable and many traders generate tremendous returns on their money.

· Industry commentators also suggested in the past that day-traders using software at home are much less successful than those trading at professional day trading firms.

Note that the profitable day-traders are not self-employed and working from their living rooms while on a break from trading sports. They are full-time professionals employed by a firm, and I stand by my statement that "day-trading from your living room trying to beat insiders just isn't viable".

Finally, updates to this blog may be a little infrequent for the next week or so. I am off to Las Vegas to roll the dice for a couple of days, before spending some time with Mrs. Cassini's family for the Thanksgiving holiday later in the week, but I will be keeping up with the XX Draws, accepting donations, adding new subscribers, and updating my numbers and the blog when I can. It may be a while before Green Pullover's selections are finally updated though - eleven!