Volatility

A few more matches to round off the weekend's schedule, with one XX Draw Selection, Nice v Paris St. Germain, finishing a perfect 0-0, the other - Siena v AS Roma finishing 1-0. I also got involved with Sunday's Internazionale v Novara game, with my price on Inter (1.39) making a lay at 1.29 value. It was also encouraging that one of Novara's two wins this season was in the home match against Inter, which finished 3-1, but an away win was certainly unlikely - Novara's first in my lifetime at the top level, and when you are as old as me, that's a long time! Then there was the Aston Villa v Manchester City match where both teams seemed to be wearing the same colour shirts and shorts, but I twittered that the Under and a lay of City were value based on my numbers. The Under was never seriously in doubt, but City did win for a wash on this game. The latest results for the Tipster League are over at Gold All Over, with a good idea from George to be added as time permits. He wrote:

I suggest you add a passive benchmark strategy to your league table. Something along the lines of: back draw in every match (in the leagues, which you scan for selections). Logic: A fund manager might be profitable because of his stock selection or because the broad market is going up (or both). Alpha or beta etc. It is always illuminating to separate the passive benchmark effect from the active match selection effect. IMO, the real tipster value added is the selection effect i.e. ROI(yourstrategy)-ROI(sensiblebenchmark) is what one should be looking at.

The Random Draw selections were supposed to act as a benchmark, but selecting three games from a full schedule of 49 each week is really not 'benchmarky' enough.

Geoff's selections went missing this week, but he re-sent them, and from the four games left after postponements, he had found two winners, both in Scotland, for a profit. There are a few updates still to be made once the weekend schedule is complete, but for now the standing are as shown here:

Unfortunately, the profits from football were more than wiped out by losses elsewhere, most notably in the NBA where the Chicago Bulls, after a week where they had never been behind in a game, lost to the Boston Celtics, in a game they never once led in. It happens, but it rounds off a volatile couple of weeks as you can see from the past 14 days below.

Once again, the PC will not be a problem this week. It did occur to me on Monday that another benefit of having a 'proper' job is that the day after a bad loss, you are not afforded the luxury of moping around feeling sorry for yourself. There is also the forced break from trading, and a chance to clear your head and get things in perspective. My trading seems to follow a familiar pattern. After taking a big loss, I go back to basics, with smaller stakes and baby steps, slowly increasing until the loss has been erased and once again the green in my running total is bold. My bets also become bold, until I hit the next big loss, and the cycle begins again. One of the ways I handle a loss is to break down what is needed to recover, e.g. a loss of £2,000 is unlikely to be won back the next day, but it should be won back over the amount lost divided by the long-term daily average - e.g. 20 days if your average is £100 a day. Twenty days isn't so bad. However, it also occurred to me today that after the Super Premium Charge becomes effective, that mental strategy won't work quite so well, knowing that the long-term daily average needs to be reduced significantly to be appropriate. Losses continue in full - wins are halved basically.

Post along the same lines as this always puzzle me:

This week sees the return of the Champions League however, and this should provide a good few opportunities for some trading.

How does a Champions League game offer 'a good few opportunities' for trading that any other game doesn't offer? I just don't see it. I also don't get this:

In other news Wolves have split from manager Mick McCarthy however I will wait until there is a clearer picture before getting involved.

Surely when there 'is a clearer picture' any advantage is gone? Isn't the time to strike early on in these markets, and lay all day as Borisranting has been suggesting? Buy the rumour, sell the fact. Makes sense to me. Not that I am a fan of Next Manager markets myself, but if there's a time to be involved it is surely early rather than late.