Other than some unsettled trading on Politics mentioned in my last post, May saw no trading or betting activity at all, with all my sports and markets continuing their enforced hibernations. If you were brave enough to follow me on the US Presidential Election bets, you're in the money right now with Biden currently the odds-on favourite, and the Democrats around 1.85 to be the winning party. Keep an eye on those swing state polls, but I'm not seeing any reason to lock in profits at this time.
As for when the sports I follow might return, with Baseball that remains undecided. Major League Baseball was planning on a shortened 82 game season, but that looks unlikely now with the MLB and the MLB Players Association miles apart on the number of games to be played and how much the players should be paid.
One example is Boeing (top entry on the left) which seemed to me have been oversold. In four days the price has soared by 47.48%. If it keeps this rate up, I'll be retired in a few weeks!
The NBA is targeting a return to play on July 31st, with all games being played at the Disneyland Resort in Orlando...
...where 22 of the 30 NBA teams are expected to participate in Orlando. That will include the 16 current playoff teams as well as the New Orleans Pelicans, Portland Trail Blazers, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, Phoenix Suns and Washington Wizards. Teams will play an abbreviated version of the regular season that will consist of eight games, as well as a play-in tournament for the eighth seed in both conferences. The tournament will only happen if the No. 9 seed finishes within four games of the No. 8 seed, in which case the No. 9 seed will have to beat the No. 8 seed twice to earn the final playoff spot in their conference. The playoffs will be a best-of-seven series in each round, with the NBA Finals concluding no later than Oct. 12.
For ice hockey, while the NHL has decided on the format when they return, the dates are not yet determined.
NFL is still a few months away, but of course could still be impacted by the pandemic.
Bottom line is that from a betting perspective, with empty stadiums and neutral venues, this year looks like being one where previous strategies will no longer apply - there's not a lot of data on teams playing on an empty, neutral site in Orlando for example - but as I have stated before, with disruption comes opportunity.
I haven't been idle regarding trading though, as my day-trading in stocks has increased during the 'lockdown', with a strategy of investing in quality stocks that had been hit hard by the pandemic, a strategy that is so far working out well. With some help from my son, my trading account is up 15.2% year-to-date and would have been more had I listened to him sooner about Llloyds Bank!
It's not always this easy though.
The meagre 2.74% gain has only gone green today after several months of being in the red, but some solid gains in those individual stocks have more than made up for no baseball, basketball or ice hockey.
The runt of the litter with the 1.82% gain was another stock recently purchased which was Pfizer, a company I know very little about but the technical indicators I use indicated a buy and heck, at least it is up which admittedly isn't anything to be proud of in a rising market.
On March 23rd, the markets closed at a pandemic low, but since then have risen enormously. The S&P 500 is up 42.75% and the FTSE 100 is up 29.84%. Regular readers will know where they should be investing. At the time of that linked to post in April, the S&P 500 was down 11% on the year, but as of last night, it is down just 1.1%. No surprise that the FTSE languishes so far behind, with no gains since 2013. 
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