Stuff, Vandals, Oscars, and L2A

A deluge of rain in Ireland, so I am told, and a deluge of comments too as the blog closes in on 2 million hits… OK, so that’s likely three years away, but it's been a busy week at Villa Cassini. Here are some of the comments received - I'll get to the rest later:

First up was Irish Jimmy, formerly known as James, who had some stuff to get off his chest:

Stuff is the downfall of the aspirational, who assume the super rich go online everyday to clean out Amazon, eBay and a car dealer.

As the Buffet video you recommended showed, the super rich spend a lot of their time deciding how to give their money away to those who just want to scratch a living.

Incidentally, my car is 20 years old and counting. I like working on it. Hopefully, it is my first and last car, driving being something I never aspired to as I got a license late in life.

Any gadgets I have tend to be secondhand and purchased cheaply at the end of a product's consumer life cycle.

Though I have no billions to give away, my wealth is destined for charity when I pass on. The reason is personal but also, if I gave my wealth to a person they would most likely fritter it away as any lottery winner would.

I think James means "no billions - yet". Surely all he needs is to believe in himself?

Replacing a car unnecessarily frequently must be one of the most wealth damaging actions you can take. While not all of us can keep a car for as long as 20 years, there’s certainly no need, firstly to buy a brand new car, and secondly to replace your car within a handful of years.

As for giving any money I may have left over upon my death to charity, my wife, kids and grand-kids might have something to say about that.

James also sent me a link to a story about some football fans who inadvertently vandalized their own team bus, presumably after mistakenly believing it belonged to the opposition. 

Mistakes will happen. Just look at the award for Best Picture this week, which Trader 247 suggests may have been intentional. 

I wonder if there'll be any time left for news outlets to talk about the racism story after this staged, oops, I mean unfortunate mix-up?

What a suspicious mind. Conspiracy theorists will no doubt have their opinions, but mine is that one of the two Pricewaterhouse Cooper's accountants simply made a mistake. Humans do that.

TMZ explains it more fully:

His name -- Brian Cullinan -- an accountant at Pricewaterhouse. He's a veteran ... 30 years at the accounting firm.

Here's the thing ... Brian was supposed to discard the spare Best Actress envelope and hand Warren Best Picture.

As for why ... we know this. Brian was tweeting like crazy during the ceremony, posting photos ... so he may have been distracted. Brian has since deleted the tweets, but one was a pic of Emma Stone with her Oscar. If it was tweeted right after her win, that's exactly when Brian should've been prepping for the next category ... Best Picture.

No word on whether discipline is in store.

You had one job… I would not have wanted to be in his shoes the next morning, although I believe that while he has kept his job, he will not be in his usual role at the Awards next year.

One unfortunate aspect of the screw-up was that the Moonlighting team’s moment was somewhat diminished by the chaos and confusion playing out on stage. The previous two Award ceremonies were criticised for their ‘lack of diversity’, and with hindsight, perhaps more attention should have been paid to the impact of this on voters. Maybe next time Jordan Horowitz is up for an award, we should factor in the fact that voters will recall his classy handling of the error and reward him accordingly.

Steve of Mull It Over overcame his envy of my numbers to write:

Well done on the longevity of the blog- I still look in with regularity.

Mull It Over is still going strong- blogging everyday since September 2009. I can't boast those numbers however haha.

Every day since 2009 is impressive! Almost everyone reading this will know I’m not a horse racing man myself, but it does seem that blogs specialising in this sport have greater longevity than those of other sports. 

I did take a look at Steve's blog and he has some cool videos on there, some of which took me back to my youth! Check it out.

And the final comment was from Chris K who has looked into the League Two results:

I took a closer look into the L2 results for away wins recently, seems to be down over 20points this year, a "system" which is likely to achieve big DD's at times i'd imagine. It was up over 13p's Dec 16.

Would be really interested to know what the results were like in years with a lower away win %, from 2011-2015- would it still have been profitable? If we think the trend of away wins growing will continue i'm sure we could put up with the big DD's, i guess you have to look at the factors that could be causing the away win % to increase, less hostile crowds etc.

Enjoy the blog, keep it up. Regards, CK.

I’m not sure what a ‘big DD’ is, but I do know that as I was googling the term, my wife walked in, and I’m not sure she completely believes my story. I’ll assume it means DrawDown, and yes, if you look at a small sample size from a month or two, you are always going to have large swings, so I take a longer view on these plays. Although Mark Iverson illogically thinks that there is something special about days 1 to 31, 32 to 59, 60 to 90 etc.. there really isn’t. To further highlight the ridiculousness of it, last year the key days were 1 to 31, 32 to 60, 61 to 91 etc…

The vagaries of the fixture list can also play a big part in a short period of time, so I prefer to look at the numbers over a longer period.

I'll try to find time to retrieve the numbers for earlier seasons this weekend, although prior to 2012-13, and we don't have Pinnacle’s Closing Prices courtesy of Joseph Buchdahl. 

Prior to that season, the prices are snapshots and still in flux, and while they were better than nothing, scraping a price sometimes three days before kick-off is not ideal and not data I’d trust.

While the average number for Away wins across all the leagues and divisions I track is ~27.77%, the last season that League Two was below this was 2005-06. 

The other key point is that there's little point in looking back to results / returns prior to the trend being identified. 2015-16 saw a 15% increase in Away wins, and so far in 2016-17 the trend is holding, and is profitable, but from the chart left, you can see how 2007-08 was a false dawn.