Top Notch

Miguel Rodrigues ( @Adonis9898 and well worth following on Twitter) had a comment on my Men's Singles Grand Slam post from yesterday:

Cassini your blog articles are top notch without a doubt but I'm still very sceptical regarding this type of technical analysis mainly due to the fact that it seems to me very random and with technical analysis you will never now if the market adapted already in the current price.

This is not a criticism, just trying to understand how to check these two limitations with technical analysis, I guess for sample size you use p-ratio,but regarding knowing if the market has already adjusted I don't have any idea.Thank you, all the best

I appreciate the comment regarding the quality of my articles and completely agree that any observations need to be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism.

My goal with these things, whether it be football, tennis, baseball, american football, basketball or whatever, is to try and identify areas in the market where there appears to be a weakness, i.e. the prices are inefficient. I'm all too aware that past results are no guarantee of future results, indeed the expectation is that any weakness should soon be corrected by the market. 

It is why I long ago cautioned against waiting for statistical 'proof' of an edge before getting involved. It's a paradox that by the time an edge is proven, it probably no longer exists! 

As I've written before, markets change overnight. In my opinion, the trick is to identify a trend, and ride it to the end with sensible stakes. Ideally you add to your bank, move a trailing-stop up as profits grow and if the stop is breached, stop betting. 

Of course you can and should, still continue to monitor the system to confirm that the edge is gone, as I will do with the Bundeslayga system, which was a loser last season after many seasons of giving.

Specifically with the tennis findings in yesterday's post, my 'research' confirms that the favourite-longshot bias is very much alive and well in Men's Singles Grand Slams, and that blindly backing underdogs is akin to throwing your money away.

I was interested in looking at a few possibilities, one of which was to see if the First Round of these tournaments showed any weaknesses, but as the results above show, although the market tends to undervalue the favourite, it's a very slender advantage.

But here's an example of what I find interesting when looking at these things. 

If you dig a little deeper, you find that the First Round is a graveyard for favourites in the U.S. Open. Back First Round favourites in the first three Slam events each year, and historically (2013-2017) you would have been able to achieve an ROI between 2.6% and 4.6%. Will this hold in 2018? We'll see.  

Finally, James, possibly his real name, had some thoughts on poor Eadwig's early demise at age 19 or 20 - opinions differ: 

I would assume Eadwig died of exhaustion.

Quite possibly. The tale of young Eadwig being pried from his bed, and from between the arms of his “strumpet” and the strumpets’ mother, reminds me of a similar incident that befell me a few years ago.

I was in a 'lower end' pub chatting to a reasonably attractive lady who I was guessing was probably in her early 40s, based on appearance and from the fact that she had been talking about her daughter who was currently at university, and from the pictures she showed me, extremely attractive. 

After last orders was called, she asked me if I'd be interested in a 'Sportsman's Double', a term which at the time, coming from a sheltered upbringing and leading a quiet life, I had never heard of.

She explained what the term meant - a threesome with a mother and daughter, lest you not know - so of course, I was all over that.

We headed down the road to her place, and on arrival she opened the door and yelled up the stairs.

"Mum! Are you still awake?"