Birthday Boy Buffett

A winning start to the 2020-21 football season, although laying the 4-1 outsider isn't likely to excite too many readers because, to quote Warren Buffett (who turns 90 today), "nobody wants to get rich slow." 

Unfortunately, barring an unlikely lottery win, for most of us getting rich slowly is the only way we are going to get rich, but the good news is that so long as you don't leave it too late to start, it's something that anyone can do.

"Personal finance is just math mixed with discipline and self control." - Steve Burns

In fact, birthday boy Warren Buffett has made nearly 90% of his estimated $82 billion after reaching the age of 65. 

"Investing well is important, but investing well for a long time matters even more."

Of course that means he had about $8 billion to his name when he reached 65, and I for one am behind schedule on reaching that goal (unless Tesla keeps up its run) but we don't all need to be Warren Buffett to be wealthy or rich.

The 20th-century journalist and social satirist H.L. Mencken once quipped that a wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife’s sister’s husband.

According to this article, you need $1.4 million (just over £1 million) to be 'comfortable' in the US, and another $1m to be considered 'wealthy', sums which may seem enormous in your 20s but which don't seem that enormous or unachievable as you get older. 

Coincidentally, the article mentions Warren Buffett's house and that it represents 0.001% of his total wealth suggesting a guideline:

Remember, housing should be no more than 30% of your income, so WB is doing okay!

I'm not sure that many of us live in a house that is 30% of our income, but perhaps the writer meant total wealth.

Funny how these articles never seem to mention his $11 million house in Laguna Beach, although he may have sold that by now. 

Baseball betting is definitely not helping me reach that $8 billion goal this season, with the T-Bone stakes getting burned to a crisp, and hot favourites performing lukewarmly at best. The totals systems are doing reasonably well though, but with the regular season half over, this isn't looking anything like a normal year.

As previously mentioned, I took a look at the Europa League (knock-out stages) this week and was expecting that clubs from the Big 5 countries might be poor value when playing clubs from other countries.

This turned out to be partially true, but the return from backing the 'Big' team was 6.18 units from 156 matches (ROI 4%).

The value in this 'Round-of-32' First Leg is to back the outsider, remembering that in football betting the outsider can be the Draw.  

Across 271 matches (an odd number because Feyenoord were kicked out in 2007 and Tottenham Hotspur were awarded a bye), blindly backing the outsider would have returned more than 6%, a number that leaps to 19% when backing the outsider in 'Big 5 v other' matches.

In First Leg matches between Big clubs, back the Away for an ROI of 21%.

In the Second Leg, results vary depending on the First Leg of course, but backing the outsider when the Second Leg Home team lost the first game by three or fewer goals, has an ROI of 17% from 101 matches.

I'll look at other rounds and scenarios later, but there definitely seem to be some weaknesses in these markets. As a reminder, for the Europa League I'm using the average prices from Odds Portal adjusted to a standard 103% overround, so these numbers can usually be beaten.