October Frenzy

October is always one of the best months for sport, with all four major US sports in action alongside football which is usually getting into its stride although this season seems more disjointed than previous ones, and that's before the World Cup next month.

Baseball finishes its regular season next Wednesday, with the playoffs beginning on Friday. 

In the American League the playoff teams are set with the Houston Astros, New York Yankees and Cleveland Guardians Division winners, joined by Wild Card teams Toronto Blue Jays, Seattle Mariners and Tampa Bay Rays. 

In the National League, the Los Angeles Dodgers have dominated with 110 wins and in the Central Division the St Louis Cardinals have also clinched a playoff place, but the East is up for grabs with the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves currently one game apart and playing each other tonight. 

The two remaining Wild Card places are between the San Diego Padres, Philadelphia Phillies and the Milwaukee Brewers.

The playoffs this season have been expanded to include 12 clubs, and no longer feature the single elimination game, with all series being best of at least three. 

MLB Hot Favourites had another losing month losing 1% on the Money Line, and 3.4% on the Run Line, with the season numbers now at -3.2% and -4.9% respectively. 

Of the six divisions, only the NL East and AL Central are positive this season. Killer Sports lines have an average overround of almost 104% (ML) and 104.5% (RL) so the actual results for most followers won't be as bad as the 'official' results, but clearly the markets are different this year. I'll look at this in more detail once the regular season ends on Wednesday.

In the NFL, September saw the Small Road 'Dogs end with a record of 5-5-1 after Thursday's Miami Dolphins loss. One of the benefits of following a system is that it takes the emotion out of the decision, but on Thursday I didn't like this bet at all. 

Underdogs playing on a Thursday having played at the weekend only cover the spread 41% of the time, and sure enough, after leading at the end of the third quarter, they gave up 13 points unanswered in the fourth and failed to cover. 

I've written about Thursday NFL games before back in 2016 and noted the bias towards Unders, and at least this bet was a winner.

Being a Thursday night game, this rather neatly ties in with the second suggestion, for which the source wishes to remain anonymous. He tells me that coaches detest the Thursday night game which has recently become established, mostly because they prefer the routine of playing weekly on a Sunday, with a full seven days to prepare for the next game.

While the Monday night football game reduces this to six days, it's been around for a long time, and at least Monday adjoins the weekend. Thursday doesn't, and so my anonymous source is convinced that with less time to prepare, coaches play with a 'vanilla offense' which results in low scoring games. "Back the Unders", he told me.

We may well have five selections in the remaining Week 4 games.

In the other football, the EPL Draws only had three selections in September. No winners unfortunately while the Bundeslyga System was on fire winning 17.13 units. For the season to the end of September, the EPL Draws are up 0.15 units from 10 matches and the Bundeslayga up 16.49 units from 88 matches. 

As September began, I wrote here that:

For the first time since June 2016, my overall year-on-year return is negative, and with September traditionally the worst month for stocks, things could yet get worse.

Thus it was not a big surprise when September became the fifth negative month in six, and a new record drawdown from April 20th's high was set on the 26th. 

The drawdown record was 14.1%, set in the midst of the COVID-19 panic on March 23rd, 2020, but last month's 15.7% has eclipsed that number.

On a positive note, Q4 is historically the best quarter and "nearly twice as good as the next best quarter of the year" which is Q1. Plus I am still employed, which is emotionally helpful. 

On a negative note, October has been the month in which several memorable crashes have been seen:

The Bank Panic of 1907, the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and Black Monday 1987 all happened during the month of October.

I use the term 'memorable' loosely since the only one I can personally remember, and I do remember it quite well, is the 1987 Black Monday crash when I did everything wrong, but learned a lot. Fortunately in those days I didn't have a lot of capital, so in real terms, the damage was limited. 

The first three quarters of 2022 have been unusual as:

"this is the first time stocks and bonds have fallen in tandem for three consecutive quarters since 1976" - Strategas Research.

The past two quarters have both been negative for me, which is another (unwelcome) first, but as the Irrelevant Investor puts it today:

Bear markets are no fun, but this is where all the best long-term returns come from. The dollars you invest on the way down will be worth more on the way back up.

On the personal health front, a winning month with a record distance covered on foot (234.6 miles), a record Kcal burn, moderate alcohol intake (just 39 pints on 7 drinking days) and a weight loss of 9.6 pounds. 

As mentioned before, if I drink on fewer than 9 days in a month or ingest fewer than 2200 calories a day, weight loss is guaranteed. The best correlation with pounds lost is Alcohol Days.

With "Sober October" starting yesterday, it should be another good month but my wife is going travelling with relatives on the 20th, and it'll take a small miracle for me to stay home and dry for the entire month. Here's the data from the past two years: