Sacred Manuscript

"This is the nature of what we do. It's the intersection of business, people, psychology, sociology, and numbers. It's just inherently fascinating. There's a lot of macro factors and stuff that make sure you never have the game beat. Never."

The quote above comes from Michael Mauboussin who has spent more than three decades studying companies and the investment process.

Substitute "business" with "sports" and what most readers of this blog are trying to do is rather neatly summarised. 

As for the final seven words there, while it is true that no edge should last for ever, and we need to constantly evolve our ideas and systems as "macro factors and stuff" change, it is apparent that edges can last for a lot longer than we might expect. 

And yes, sports investing is inherently fascinating. Warren Buffett long ago moved past the point where more many had any utility for him, and is quoted as saying:

"In a sense, the game that I'm in gets more interesting all the time. It's a competitive game, it's a big game, and I enjoy the game a lot"

Compared to financial investing and Warren Buffett, for most of us sports investing isn't quite such a big game, but back in 2009 I described betting on sports as being a game:

I've never been one for games, (friends at work spend hours playing Call of Duty - why? What's the point?), but in many ways the exchanges are one big on-line game. It's me versus an unknown opponent. My opinion versus yours, except in this game the points are real money.

Thirteen years on and while a lot of things have changed, for example I no longer have any friends at work - the result of being moved to full-time work-from-home status rather than my personality, lest any of you be wondering - I do still enjoy the intellectual challenge of investing, and a little extra money is never a bad thing.

Sports markets are, or should be, examples of complex adaptive systems, but they are often verifiably inefficient. It's these inefficiencies we need to identify to gain an edge. 

A couple of comments on my recent Comment Review - Farewells, Draws and Muscle Mass post expressing interest in the document I mentioned "detailing the exact process and breaking down each step but it comes with details of 8 other long-term profitable systems".

The modestly named Onebrickshort wrote:

As a long term reader of the world's number one sports investment blog, I might also be interested in being able to purchase the sacred manuscript.

And Hkibuzz, a man of efficiency and few words, simply added:

Same here :)

I may steal the term 'Sacred Manuscript' for future use, as it appeals to my sense of humour, as does referring to this blog as 'the world's number one sports investment blog'! There's no downside to having fun while simultaneously taking sports, or any, investing seriously.

Unfortunately comments don't give me your email address, so if you are interested, please use the Contact Form on the top right of the blog or simply send me an email at calciocassini @ aol.com after removing the spaces of course.

The document is updated with last season's results and only the current MLB season is in progress. 

I may need to add another System since I mentioned here last weekend that:

To fill the off season for football, this year we have the Women's Euros, and so far every odds-on favourite has won, while every game without an odds-on favourite has finished as a Draw.

It's been a better suggestion than I imagined, with 12 of 13 odds-on teams winning so far (the only loss so far was Norway's at 1.91 yesterday), and of the other five matches, four have been Draws. The one 'Dog to win so far was Germany at 2.83 versus Spain, and both these teams are odds-on to win their games today.