Leopards

In my Silver Linings post, I referenced my "hedge bet" on Harris, and I am pleased to say it has so far paid off rather nicely. I wrote that:

...my bet on Harris was a hedge, and focus on the silver lining of my Bitcoin holding hitting a new all-time high. Hopefully Tesla will also benefit from Elon Musk's role with the Trump campaign, and the US futures look green across the board, especially the Russell 2000 which is comprised of smaller companies who will benefit from Trump's promised tariffs.

The three days since the election have been rather interesting with Tesla up 27.8%, Bitcoin up 10% and the S&P500 up 3.7% and Wednesday was my best single day ever beating the record set on March 24th, 2020 - eight days after my worst day ever - when the markets bounced back in the early days of COVID. 

Tesla closed on Friday at $321.22, still a little shy of it's November 2021 high of $409.97, while Bitcoin did reach a new high and is currently around $77,000. The S&P500 also set a new high going above 6,000 for the first time ever on Friday. 

As a new retiree, the sequence-of-returns risk is always a concern. Because of my severance, I have yet to dip into my retirement funds which is when retirement will get real, so for those funds to be about 10% higher than they were back in April when employment ended is a positive with the negatives unfortunately landing on people a lot less fortunate than myself, many of whom will have voted for Trump. 

'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you should be aware that I've long advocated for investing in low-cost passive index tracking funds over high-cost actively managed funds, and for the S&P 500 over the FTSE 100. 

While there are still about seven weeks to go in the year, it's looking most probable that the S&P 500 will again be the "winner" - results from the past ten years:

It's week 10 of the NFL today, and for the first time since week 5 of the 2020 season it looks very much like there will be no qualifiers for the Small Road 'Dogs System. With a 14-18 record this season, perhaps that's not a bad thing. 

The College Football cousin had four winning selections from five in week 11 to take the season record to 56-48, and the new College Basketball season has begun, although no selections yet as the early weeks are essentially warm-ups for the conference games which start in January.

The season didn't get off to a great start for the number 11 ranked Auburn Tigers, after two players started fighting on their flight to Houston and the pilots decided to divert.  Not a surprise that the replacement flight didn't include the two combatants Jahki Howard and Ja'Heim Hudson. Auburn won the game, so a new system is born - back the Away team if their flight is interrupted by a brawl. 

Odd Odds

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Killer Sports is not perfect. In the past, I've written that the line they record for a game is not necessarily the closing price, but:

"a representation of the line at which most people bet the game."

On the Killer Sports site today, this approach now seems to have changed to this:

The lines in our sports databases are currently a consensus of closing lines from several of the leading national sportsbooks. While that should provide a baseline for finding profitable situations, shopping around for the best available lines will only increase that profitability.

There were a couple of games yesterday in the NHL which highlight one of the challenges with Killer Sports.  

One of the Sacred Manuscript's NHL Systems had the Detroit Red Wings as a selection.

Running the query now shows them as -110 (1.91) in their game at the Chicago Blackhawks, but depending on where you went to bet them, you would have found some inconsistency.

At the time I ran the query, the Red Wings were -122 (1.82) and I did back them at 2.0 on Betfair where they were not the Favourite. 

Subscriber Stu decided to skip the game, and of course, as always happens in situations like this, the bet was a winner.

Some sportsbooks had the Red Wings as favourites, some as joint favourites and others as underdogs:

Coincidentally, we have the identical situation with a 'selection' again today. 

While it's a little confusing, showing both joint favorites as a favourite is reasonable, but in a second game yesterday - Washington Capitals v Nashville predators, both teams show up as favourite even though one was -108 and the other -112. Being priced at odds-on isn't the same as being the favourite! 

No system had an interest in this game so it was a curiosity rather than a problem, but it's something to be aware of if you are using Killer Sports to source your investment decisions.

Here are the 'official' results for the NHL systems so far this season, but with a little line shopping, these results should be the easily beatable:

Silver Linings

Since Jimmy Carter's win in 1976, only one underdog going into Election Day has won the Presidency, and last night the favourite won again. 

Here are the prices on previous elections courtesy of the Sports Odds History site: 

The "French Trump Whale" called it correctly, put his money where his mouth was and made millions while I, once again, managed to lose money betting on politics. 

However, the financial markets appear to be reacting positively to the result, so I shall pretend that my bet on Harris was a hedge, and focus on the silver lining of my Bitcoin holding hitting a new all-time high. Hopefully Tesla will also benefit from Elon Musk's role with the Trump campaign, and the US futures look green across the board, especially the Russell 2000 which is comprised of smaller companies who will benefit from Trump's promised tariffs. 

While it wasn't a market of quite so much significance to the world, we did have a winner in the NHL last night, a qualifier in two systems, and after a slow start the season has picked up with an overall ROI slightly above 25%.

In the NBA, the 'Overs on High Totals' system has started the new season positively too, with an 8-4 record to date and two more selections tonight, but the new 'Unders' system is 0-2 so far. 

Next Stop - White House or Prison?

Following up on my last post "Record Breaking" and one of my subscribers sent me an email containing some interesting data. Martin wrote:

I enjoyed your blog post 'Record Breaking' and was having a poke around myself so thought I would share my spreadsheet of Betfair ticks.

It doesn't look like much of that £1.4m @ 1.8 traded in the morning or afternoon, but £6m traded between 7 and 8pm, including £3.6m at 19:25-19:26.

Obviously Betfair is counting back and laid stakes so is double counting really, but that's still huge. I noticed the spike on their crappy charts on Sunday.

That's a lot of money and the backer is in a good position right now with Trump down to 1.59 / 1.6 at the time of writing.

Bogdan R left a comment on the same post asking:

How low did Trump trade in 2020? I remember something around 1.25. I'm not overly confident on Harris @2.30-2.40, but I'm tempted to leave a few lay orders on Trump, something like 1.40/1.30/1.20.

I looked back at my posts from four years ago, and in one of them I wrote: 

Trump's defeat is made all the sweeter given that on Tuesday night, with his odds as short as 1.24, he almost certainly thought he had won. 

Bogdan has a good memory.

Some of you may have heard about the trader known as "French Trump Whale" who had, at the time of this interview, bet $45MM on Trump to win the election.  

It promises to be an interesting night as the results start to come in.  Fireworks expected...

Record Breaking

I believe I'm right in saying that the largest market in Betfair's history to date is currently 2020's "Next President" market, in which around £125MM was traded up to and including Election Day before another £75MM was added during the period leading up to the Electoral College meeting in mid-December.

The total for the 2024 "Election Winner" market is currently at £154MM, and it's unlikely to be closed any time soon if Trump is the losing candidate.

This market will be settled once both the projected winner is announced by the Associated Press and the losing candidate concedes. If the losing candidate does not concede, or if there is any uncertainty around the result (for instance, caused by recounts and/or potential legal challenges), then the market will be settled on the winner decided by Congress, on the date on which the Electoral College votes are counted in a joint session of Congress.

Earlier today (Sunday) there was a large amount looking to back Trump, a sum that I can't recall ever seeing before. The market moved to 1.8 / 1.81 but whether that huge amount was mostly matched or cancelled isn't clear but over £7MM has now traded at 1.8, far more than the amount traded at either 1.79 or 1.81. 

That Trump is favourite at all is surprising to me, although I'm trying to learn my lesson after misreading the 2016 Brexit and US Presidential Elections. I've layed Trump at various prices over the past few weeks, and this may not age well, but my gut feeling is that Kamala Harris will ultimately win fairly comfortably.

Neither Trump or his campaign are sounding confident, he looks physically exhausted and flat, and the latest polls are generally good for Harris. I could cash out for a nice profit, but I'm going to let this run. It could be running for a while though as Trump ramps up his "stolen election" claims and provokes civil unrest. Interesting times.  

The Buzz Around Killer Sports

Following on from the last post, we are indebted to Hkibuzz for providing more details about the upcoming changes at Killer Sports. He comments:

Hi Cassini. The free access to KS will be limited to 10 searches per sport per day. While it should theoretically be enough most of the time, it is still not enough on the days when you will want to do further research. I believe I will be a basic member, and hopefully it will mean the site will keep going for a long time. https://killersports.com/plans-premium

The linked page shows the following tiers and confirms what Hkibuzz stated:

As he says, the 10 searches per sport per day included in the Free tier should suffice for me on most days to identify what selections there might be for previously identified edges, but for researching new ideas the Basic tier might be required. Even though I am now retired, I think I can justify $19 a month if it becomes necessary.

One of the purposes of the manuscript is to trigger ideas for subscribers to carry out their own research, and it's gratifying to hear that at least some people are doing this. Hopefully the changes at Killer Sports won't prove to be show-stoppers for anyone. Tiers, not tears.

Thank you to Hkibuzz for your research and taking the time to comment. 

Killer Sports Pro Time

Weirimdi left a comment on the blog:

Hi there it is me again. What is your opinion on the new paid structure of Killer Sports? i don't want you to be positive or negative about it, but rather like to know if this will have an effect on the user structure and use cases of this great tool. I used the Db to experiment and to research. It was fun for me, but now i think a lot of silent researchers will leave the ship and this might lead to a decrease in researchers.

Killer Sports sent an email to registered users a few days ago, which included this paragraph:

Included in our tiered membership structure is a free access to the ability to run a limited number of queries / Simple Searches and some saved systems to satisfy our most casual users. The paid tiers expand from there to accommodate our avid users who want to frequently search the database and/or take advantage of our expanding number of valuable tools.

As I do not use the feature which allows you to 'save' systems, I'm hoping I will stay under the radar and be considered on of the 'casual users', but if the 'limited number of queries' is set too low, then I may be in the Pro tier, but at $39 a month, I would consider this to be excellent value. As my account is now showing Pro, I suspect I'm enrolled in the 30 day free trial.



As I wrote on the blog at the time, a little over three years ago that it looked like Killer Sports would be shutting down which would have been terrible, but fortunately the site was saved with more sports being added. It's not perfect as I have mentioned before. The data isn't 100% accurate but it's a wonderful resource nonetheless.

For the time being the site remains free to use but should that change I'll update you all here.

One subscriber asked me if a strategy of betting the Moneyline rather than Against the Spread (ATS) would be profitable. It certainly should be since the odds are aligned, but the beauty of ATS is that the ride is a lot smoother.

A few years ago I came up with a table showing the approximate 'true' Moneyline odds based on historical results from the spreads for American Football (F) and Basketball (B).

Like Killer Sports, it's not perfect, but I find it helpful and thought I'd share it here.

And no, that isn't a typo for favourites giving a point in Football.

Billions, Drama and Fading in the NHL

Tesla had a rather good finish to the week with the stock up 26% since Wednesday after their Q3 earnings report was released.  

Elon Musk made about $35billion on the day, so his net-worth spreadsheet updates last night would have been an enjoyable task. I assume I'm not the only one who tracks these things almost daily... 

My gains were a little less than those of Musk, and not enough to pull October into the green, but it at least made a dent in the red. 

The World Series got off to a dramatic start last night, with the game going to extra innings, the New York Yankees taking a one run lead in the 10th before the Los Angeles Dodgers hit a grand slam home run with two outs for a walk-off win.

It's unlikely that tonight's Game 2, or any game for that matter, will match that one for drama, but in sport you just never know.  

I mentioned the idea of fading popular teams recently, and Thomas suggested that in the NHL:

The popular team fading works the best for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Overall, for the past ten seasons, backing the Leafs straight up or on the Puck Line in every game gives the third worst outcome of the 33 teams - Utah are new this season and have just six matches to their name so far. 

As Thomas added, when they are playing against a losing team they are top of the list with an official ROI of -12.7%. 

It's impossible to get a definitive answer on which team in the NHL is the most popular, in Canada but the most popular team there appears to be either the Leafs of the Montreal Canadiens who rank ninth worst in both scenarios. 

Sports Equinox Starring New York

While the NBA season is about to begin, for the women the 2024 WNBA season is now over with New York Liberty dramatically beating Minnesota Lynx in overtime in Game Five of a best-of-five series for their first ever Championship. 

The WNBA systems finished the season with a 58.7% winning record ATS, a 17.8% ROI and a profit of 11.24 units from 63 selections. Since records began in 2011, the results are:

A similar set of results for the NBA season which starts tomorrow (Tuesday) would be most gratefully received. 

The World Series for baseball will be between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers after the Dodgers clinched the National League title last night against the New York Mets. It'll be the 12th time the two franchises have met in the World Series although the first seven were when the Dodgers played in Brooklyn. The Dodgers have home advantage in the best-of-seven series with the first two games in Los Angeles and games 3,4 and 5 (if needed) in New York, before returning to Los Angeles for games 6 and 7 (again, if needed). 

October is always a busy month with all four major US sports active and there will be another sports equinox next Monday, 28th with an NFL game (Pittsburgh Steelers v New York Giants), Game 3 of the World Series in New York, 10 NBA games (including New York Knicks), and 5 NHL games (but sadly no New York team, so no single-city equinox to match Phoenix's achievement in 2001). New York City FC do have an MLS play-off game that day though, so not a bad effort by the Big Apple. 

After a slow start, the NHL systems are picking up with five wins from the last six selections:

As for American Football, it's not been the best of seasons so far. The less-followed CFL is slightly in the red with a record of 21-25-0, while the College Football systems are up a little with a 123-109-0 record. There are two NFL games tonight.

Betting With the Heart

The NBA season is almost here, and a subscriber mentioned to me that:

Along the same lines I also avoid betting on the Lakers as this is probably the most hyped up team in the history of sport..

There's logic to this argument, and it's one I used in baseball one summer about 25 years ago when I was between contracts and would oppose the four most popular teams - Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Cubs. 

The system didn't last long as another job came along, and it was with small stakes for entertainment rather than a serious effort to "bash the bookies", but my thinking was that casual bettors would back these teams and in theory there should be value on the other side. 

A few minutes after I saw the comment about the Lakers, ESPN published an article today on the topic of sports betting in New York  written by David Purdum.

The final paragraph reads:

"When the Yankees are going well, we'll most likely need their opponent every night," [Johnny] Avello, a New York native and longtime Las Vegas bookmaker, said. "They say, 'Don't bet with your heart,' but we all do."

Maybe not "all" of us, - at least not when it's sports betting (personally, politics is another matter) - but I took a look at the lines for the Yankees since the state of  New York legalised online gambling in January 2022, and backing them isn't as terrible an idea as I thought it might be. Of course it helps that they are a good team, winning 56% of their games, but the lines should reflect that over 500 games.

Blindly backing the Yankees would have lost you 3.1% of your bank, but when backed as a Road Underdog, you would have made 13%, the fifth highest return of five teams in double figures in this category. The markets tend towards a Home bias and a Favourite bias, which appears to hold true even if the away team is the Yankees.

Looking at the Lakers, and avoiding them does have merit, with a negative ROI of 11.2% since COVID, and a negative one as Road 'Dogs too in case you were curious.  In the playoffs it's a profitable strategy to back them, but as I seem to keep saying, the sample size is very small. 

A winning start with Thomas' two NHL selections both winning last night, but a losing start to the American Football with the Thursday Night game not following the script.

Inbox Nuggets for the NHL, NFL, NCAAF and CFL

Back in March, towards the end of the 2023-24 NHL season, I received an email from 'Anonymous fan' with an interesting idea for a system which had a promising track record supported by a solid hypothesis.

Hey Cassini,

Thank you for your work and your blog. I really appreciate everything you do. I have been messing around with killer sports since you introduced me to it and I have a lot of fun thinking about things that may matter for the sports I enjoy.

I think I may have found an intriguing one for NHL.

Since 2007- ROI +10.5% in 948 games

Since 2021- ROI +5.5% in 208 games

Since this season- ROI +12.9% in 51 games

It seems to be steadily profitable year after year, present a solid number of plays, and the games that meet the criteria are typically quite enjoyable to watch. I am not very good at math or statistics though so maybe it is too small a sample? Either way I was curious to get your thoughts.

Best,
Anonymous fan

I've said before that it's pitting your wits against others and the intellectual challenge of beating these markets that is in many ways more exciting than winning money and having fun with ideas like this is what it's all about. When we can make some of the ideas profitable, so much the better.

I did respond with my thoughts, but back in March I was about to head over to Arkansas for the Total Eclipse and with the NHL season wrapping up, I put this idea to one side and, if I'm being honest, forgot about it. Retirement was apparently a distraction, or I'm simply getting old. 

I was reminded of the system when Anonymous (I shall call him Thomas moving forward) wrote with an observation about an NFL system, and there in the e-mail thread was buried the NHL system.

With 17 full seasons of data dating back to 2006, (for some reason the data we need for 2017 is missing), the numbers are now:

My only concern is that the ROI is down for the latest five seasons, a trend to keep an eye on, but overall the results are good.

Included in my numbers are playoff games where the edge appears to continue.

The fledgling 2024 season has had just one selection to date, a loser, but with two qualifiers tonight it's another system I'll be adding to the Sacred Manuscript and sharing with subscribers along with Thomas' simple, but highly impactful, NFL observation.

After running the numbers, Thomas has essentially managed to obtain the same returns but from fewer than 56% of the selections. 

Side by side, here are the basic returns pre and post Thomas' modifier:

Excellent work, and two probable selections this weekend. It also appears to be effective in College Football with a similar improvement:

And in the CFL too, although with only a dozen games remaining it's a moot point for this season. Thomas deserves a medal.  

It's been an unusual NFL season so far, with just six games having a spread of more than a touchdown and extra-point, i.e. seven points.

At this stage of the season the average number of such games since 1989 is 18, and four of the six hotties this season have lost straight up, with only one covering the spread. 

Finally, and the topic of my previous post regarding shutouts in MLB playoff games is relevant again as we had another one last night in New York as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Mets 8-0. 

MLB Playoff Shutouts

One of the recurring themes in the Sacred Manuscript is how the markets react to a team after they've been on the receiving end of what John Cleese might call a 'damn good thrashing.'

While the sample size in playoffs is always going to be small with fewer games to begin with and shutouts fairly rare, nevertheless when a team is shoutout (fails to score) and loses by five or more runs in the MLB, the market typically discounts them in the next game.

I may have mentioned this in 2014 when the World Series provided a good example. The San Francisco Giants beat the Kansas City Royals 5-0 in Game 5. The Royals got revenge two days winning 10-0 before the newly vanquished team (this time the Giants) bounced back to win Game 7 and the World Series. 

With such a small sample size, it's not surprising that the p-value isn't significant but with a good premise behind it, this is an idea that may be worth watching and of course, it paid off on Monday night with the New York Mets bouncing back from a 0-9 loss in Game 1 with a 6-1 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 2. 

It's encouraging that the Run Line returns support the theory, but it appears that the 'damn good thrashing' theory only applies when teams are shutout. 

Scoring just the one run in a big loss, and there is no carryover to the next game, nor is the theory validated in regular season games. 

Someone at Betfair actually settled the market after three innings as a Dodgers win at a time when they were trailing 0-6, but they corrected the error and brought the market back in-play after I pointed this out to them on Twitter. Mistakes happen, but the response was immediate which was as impressive as settling the market incorrectly in the first place was unimpressive. 

Game three of this serious is later tonight

Roller-Coaster, Tight Pants, and Bromley Car Parks

It's hard to believe that next month I will have owned Tesla ($TSLA) for seven years. I've written about this investment several times since 2018 and although it had a terrible finish to the week yesterday, it's still up some 940% overall for me, but down about 12% so far this year.  

I'm a little top-heavy on this stock as it currently represents more than 25% of my "play" account, but it's nothing like the position that Canadian Christopher DeVocht managed to achieve before things took a turn for the worse.

Christopher DeVocht, a carpenter by day, successfully traded Tesla stock and options during the COVID-19 pandemic, when a record amount of stimulus helped stocks soar and drove a retail-trading boom.

At the end of 2019, DeVocht had C$88,000, or about $65,000, with the Royal Bank of Canada's brokerage division. At its peak in November 2021, according to the lawsuit, DeVocht's account grew to C$415 million, or about $306 million.

But DeVocht and his professional advisors didn't cash out and instead lost everything as a brutal bear market took hold in 2022, leading to staggering losses for his heavily concentrated portfolio.

$65k to $306m to zero is quite an emotional roller-coaster. One commenter stated that:

Yeah I would never have made $300M. As soon as I hit $10M, I would have cashed out, set up an annuity or plopped it all into index funds and went fishing and mountain biking the rest of my life.

Easier said than done. While I'm a big fan of index funds and cycling, fishing - not so much, I suspect many people would struggle to call it quits on reaching $10M especially if that number is reached rapidly. It would be a nice problem to have, but very easy for that market driver of greed to take over.

With Kiké Hernández hitting a Home Run for the Los Angeles Dodgers as they eliminated the San Diego Padres last night, presumably while wearing his extra tight pants, and Elon Musk talking about car parks at the Tesla Robotaxi unveiling yesterday, I'd be missing a great opportunity if I didn't mention this post from a couple of years ago which addresses both car parks (Bromley Sainsbury's specifically) and baseball pant tightness. 

MLB Totals, Playoffs, and Ice Cream

It seems a long time ago now, but the issue I mentioned in the last post regarding the line for the Green Bay Packers @ Tennessee Titans has now been corrected, and the winning bet will now show up in the 'official' results.

Peter confirmed my thoughts, and my betting, writing:

That Green Bay spread line from Killer Sports is wrong. I placed my bet at +3 only a few minutes before the start and was watching the lines across the board until the kick offs and it didn't move into favouritism. And covers.com reports on the result: "Green Bay covered the spread of +3."

Mistakes happen, but Killer Sports corrected this one fairly quickly, so no harm done.

The MLB regular season has ended and for the totals system which doesn't carryover into the playoffs, the all-time and 2024 season results are updated as below:

These calculations use the Pinnacle Dime line of -105 (1.952), but the system is historically profitable with the line as short as -123 (1.813):

Some of you may recall the UMPO system and while these low volume systems can be volatile in any one season and ROIs meaningless, historically the record is good, especially for qualifiers playing at Home and we have the first one for this season playing tonight. 

For some reason, Killer Sports no longer has the data for the first three seasons, but since 2007 the 'official' ROIs are 6.7% (all) and 14.2% (Home) - excluding the COVID season of 2020.

Due to the rule changes post-COVID, this system wasn't included in the Sacred Manuscript, but I feel confident now that it should be. 

On a personal note, our trip to the mountains was mostly very relaxing, but my wife was a little concerned when the campground was under an evacuation warning last Monday but personally, being surrounded on three sides by water (we were staying by a lake), I felt quite safe. In the end, no evacuation was necessary, and it was a very relaxing trip with no TV, and no computers (though I did have my phone with me). This meant plenty of time for reading and exercising, although the scales didn't have good news for me when I got back. The usual aphorism refers to doughnuts but adapted for me, it is true that 'you can't outrun an ice-cream'.

With now four years of personal health data, the clear trend is that I lose weight (hopefully fat) in the first quarter of a year (thanks to Dry January and New Year Resolutions) then gain weight every other month with the exception of October (thanks to Sober October, although there will be no fully sober October this year due to the trip extending beyond September by a few days).

It's often said that losing weight is 80% diet, 20% exercise but for me, calories ingested alone has a 91.1% correlation to weight loss, with exercise actually decreasing the correlation to 85.6%.

On a quarterly basis, if my average daily intake of calories is fewer than 2,230 I lose weight, as I do if I have fewer than 8 days a month with alcohol. It's that easy, but not very exciting. 

Moving Lines

There are still a couple of matches to play before Week 3 of the NFL season is complete, but so far it's been a winning one. 

Something very strange happened leading up to the start of the Tennessee Titans v Green Bay Packers game. 

Less than 30 minutes before kick-off, the Packers were a selection at 1.96.

But according to Killer Sports, the Packers went off as favourites, giving two points, which is quite a large move in a few minutes.  I'm pretty sure my 50p didn't move the line that much... 

Anyway, the bet was a winner, but it won't show up in the 'official' results. As I've written before, sometimes these 'ghost' bets go for you, and sometimes they go against you.

The College Football Week 4 went 10-10 and is 39-29 overall for the season and there were no Canadian Football Selections this week. 

We did have a winner at 3.66 with the Manchester City v Arsenal game finishing all-square, perhaps a little fortuitous but again, sometimes the breaks go for you and sometimes they go against you.

The new baseball system I mentioned a couple of days ago started off with a winner for subscribers on Friday, and then produced two more on Saturday. The p-value is even more significant now! 

I'm going to be away from my computer for a couple of weeks starting tomorrow. One of my retirement goals is to try out RV life. It's been about 30 years since my last trip which was to Florida when I was living in Arkansas, but with the father-in-law now recuperating slowly at home, my wife and I will be heading into the San Bernardino Mountains for about ten days. 

I'll be back in early October, by which time the regular baseball season will be over, with my wife's San Diego Padres now looking almost certain to be featuring in the playoffs.

Winners and September Baseball

It was almost a perfect night for the Sacred Manuscript yesterday with the Thursday Night NFL game (New York Jets v New England Patriots) a comfortable winner, and all three MLB selections were winners too.

The final WNBA selection of the regular season was a loser though, and while the systems in this sport do apply in the playoffs, there's typically not too many selections. 

One of the baseball systems is under review. Not because it's not been successful - this season it has an 'official' ROI of 27.6% and is up 14.84 units - but because it has generated no selections since the All-Star break.

Too late for this season, but there definitely seems to be a case for either making this a system a first half of the season system only or adjusting the parameters. 

The last month of the regular season is one in which the motivation for all teams is not the same. There are teams looking to win their division, teams looking to make the playoffs via the Wild Card, and teams looking forward to the season being over.

In the latter category, historically the market under-values Home teams, in particular Home teams on a winning streak who are playing a Divisional opponent. I suspect the focus for most bettors at this time of year is understandably on the more important games with post-season ramifications.

We have data since 2007 thanks to Killer Sports and the p-value is significant:

Stateside

As some of you know, it's been an interesting few weeks, with my father-in-law being rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, blood transfusions and all that good stuff, but he's on the mend now. 

The challenge is that my wife is an only child and California is a long way away and it's probably not the last time we'll get a call like this as neither of her parents are getting any younger. 

Her dad will be 79 in December, her Mum (or Mom) is 75, and as were my own parents, they are somewhat stubborn when lifestyle changes are suggested that would help them. 

They live in a tri-level house that they built themselves, so while that is not an ideal environment, they have this deep emotional attachment to it and simply refuse to even consider moving or down-sizing. 

Neither are particularly mobile, (her Dad was a professional baseball player for several years and has paid the price in recent years with knee and hip replacements) and the consequences of a fall can be severe, but there's only so much one can do. 

At least now that I am retired, it's a lot easier to hop on a plane and fly over there, but it's certainly not an ideal situation. 

Vent over, and the NFL is back, and it's been an unusual start in more ways than one. I mentioned the Friday Night game in Brazil in this previous post, but it's been unusual in terms of results with the biggest favourite losing straight up in both Weeks 1 and 2, the first time this has happened since 1980 according to Sports Odds History.

Week 1 was not pleasant for followers of the systems in the Sacred Manuscript - "brutal" as one subscriber called it - but while it's always nice to get off to a strong start, it's important to remember that it's a marathon not a sprint, and Week 2 was profitable bringing the overall record for this season to 9-13.

The College Football systems are purring along nicely though, with a 41-23 record but the CFL Totals are hurting us north of the border with an overall 16-18 record there. 

The WNBA regular season ends today, and we have one final selection before the playoffs start on Sunday. The three systems are a combined 31-16-2 (12-7-1, 10-6-1 and 9-3-0) so far. It's not the highest number of selections each season, but since records began it has a good record:

Baseball has another ten days of its regular season to go, with the playoffs starting on October 1st. 

The NBA starts on October 22nd.  

NFL 2024 - An Unusual Start

The 2024 NFL season kicks-off tomorrow (Thursday 5th September) and it looks very much like we'll have two systems in play, one spread and one total.

And then on Friday there is a very unusual game. Friday NFL games are rare enough, with just six all-time, but this one is unique in that it is the first regular season game ever to be played in South America.

São Paulo, Brazil is the venue, and it's officially a Home game for the Philadelphia Eagles who play the Green Bay Packers. I'm also aware that one subscriber from Brazil, Victor, will be present at the game which coincidentally is the same match-up for the last NFL game I saw live when my son was living in Philadelphia. Unfortunately we will be on opposite sides when it comes to who we will be supporting. 

Of the six previous Friday games, four were Christmas games, and last year there was a Thanksgiving Friday game, so this is the first non-holiday Friday game other than a 2005 game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs which was moved forward a couple of days to avoid running into Hurricane Wilma.

Regular season neutral matches are historically good for Favourites (ATS) with a 64.7% win rate and for Unders with a 55.8% win rate from the small sample size of 52 matches.

August Wrap, Draws All Over

Another month in the books, with August seeing the return of football in Europe after an off-season break that seems to get shorter each year. 

In the US, the MLB season starts getting to the interesting stage, with the regular season concluding before the end of September, and the playoffs starting on October 1st. 

As readers will be aware, I've been keeping my powder dry in this league while the markets adjust to the significant rules changes in recent seasons, but I did dip my toes into the water in the Sacred Manuscript with a couple of systems. 

Or I tried to, but the river ran dry for one of them! 

In August, the first system generated the grand total of zero selections which was a little disappointing but the ROIs for the season remain at 27.6% when betting Straight Up, and 9.4% when betting on the Run Line. 

The Totals System didn't exactly generate a huge number of bets either, but 7 of the 11 were winners with one push, and for the season overall the record of 53-34-2 means a 61% strike rate.

The College Football season also got underway, and while this is probably not one of the most followed systems by subscribers, the basic systems combined for an 8-6 winning record, with the more selective ahead 6-2 after Week One.

The NFL season starts this week with a couple of Thursday Night games to kick things off. Autumn is almost here.

In the CFL (Canadian Football League) the newly added system went 3-3 for a small loss after we lost the Under/Over on one game by 1/2 point. It happens. 

Back to round-ball football and for the second consecutive year, we were off to a winning start with the Community Shield ending as a Draw at an 'official' 3.90. 

I was matched at 4.8 earlier in the day, and whether the steaming was due to Sacred Manuscript subscribers investing their life savings (sincerely hope this was not the case) or a reaction to the line-ups, I'm not quite sure, but at 4.8 it seemed there was only one direction the odds would move.

The updated numbers for the Community Shield matches and the totals including FA Cup and League Cup Finals are now:

As for the domestic leagues, I've received some ideas from a couple of subscribers, specifically around the EPL Draw System.

One subscriber wrote:

...but I find it hard to see the logic of backing draws in say the Premier League but not also the Championship, or La Liga 2 but not La Liga 1.

I fully agree. In a perfect world, the rationale for a Draw System in a top league should apply across other similar tier leagues as well as further down the league even if results weaken, as suggested in the examples above, but this wasn't the case when I last looked at other leagues in some detail maybe five or more years ago. 

Back then, I put it down to each league and division having it's own characteristics, and with other priorities in life, left it at that. In hindsight, this might have been a mistake. 

The first versions of the Sacred Manuscript contained the EPL Draw System, but then it was mentioned to me about this time two years ago that Spain's Segunda División showed similar results, and with a slightly different set of parameters, I verified this and added it to the Sacred Manuscript. It has been up by 26.46 units since then.

More recently, our old friend Dr Tsouts mentioned similar findings in the Greek Super League while very recently, in the past few days to be precise, another subscriber told me that he used the idea, again with the parameters modified, with success in La Liga and the Chinese Super League. 

My knowledge of Chinese football was non-existent, that of Greek football not much more, but data is data so I took a look and as a result the Greek and Chinese Leagues with the appropriate selection criteria are now added to the Sacred Manuscript - and before anyone complains about not receiving their update with the latter, the league is on a break for a couple of weeks so I'll be combining it with a few other updates - and am now turning my attention to La Liga.

I'm not giving too much away here, since it's been discussed on the blog previously, but in the EPL, in games between two closely matched teams, e.g. within 10% of each other, the Draw represents value. 

Since 2001, right up to this past weekend, there have been 640 such matches, 199 winners and a profit of 38.87 units or an ROI of 6.1%. 

The term "within 10%" actually means any match within a range of +10% (a positive number for matches where the Home team is the favourite) to -10% (a negative number for matches where the Away team is favourite). 

The mid-point here happens to be zero, and in a perfect market this is perhaps where you would expect it to be, but all markets are different. 

I think I've mentioned here before that results did vary depending on whether we were on the plus or minus side, but I clearly drifted off to another idea and never followed up. 

It summary, it appears that the basic rationale for the "close" idea carries over from the EPL to at least some of these other leagues, but there is a difference in both what "close" actually means, and in where the mid-point for the range should be. 

Of course if zero doesn't fall within the optimal range, I'd need an alternative term.  

With my new employment status, or lack thereof, and thus a little more free time, I plan to revisit these other big leagues and see if the Championship and La Liga are viable leagues too. 

La Liga certainly seems to be. Here are the preliminary results:

Obviously the 2024-25 numbers aren't anything to get excited about yet, and the 5 years and 10 years totals exclude them, but these are solid results. 

On a monthly basis, the profits do dry up a little in the first quarter of the calendar year, but overall they look pretty consistent. 

I'm pretty sure that subscribers can expect another update with this league included, and possibly others,  

The Draw isn't everyone's cup of tea, which is why there is value to be found. 

The Sacred Manuscript is now up to 100 pages, and with new systems added at the suggestion of subscribers now making it more than 50 long-term profitable systems, is now ridiculously underpriced. 

We now have systems for the College Basketball end of season Tournaments, an NFL System based on Bye weeks, NBA Systems based on travel and Time Zones, as well as the previously mentioned Greek Super League and Chinese Super League Draw systems. And soon, La Liga and who knows what other leagues from around the globe.

East v West MNF

One of the podcasts I listen to on a regular basis on my daily walk is Steven Bartlett's The Diary Of A CEO and his latest episode is a conversation with Dr Cheri Mah, who is "a sleep scientist and Professor at the Stanford Sleep Medicine Centre, specialising in the relationship between sleep and performance in elite athletes."

As readers of this blog and subscribers to "the document" will know, the impact of teams crossing time zones has long been an interest of mine, since markets tend to be inefficient in certain scenarios, and one of my systems does take advantage of this.

At the 14:50 mark of the episode, Dr Mah claimed that over 25 seasons, if you had bet on a West Coast team when playing an East Coast team in a Monday Night Football (NFL) game, you would have covered the spread 68% of the time. 

On returning home, I took a look at Killer Sports data which goes all the way back to 1989, and found that when a West Coast team (there are only five of them) hosts an East Coast team (there are 17 of these), the Western team has covered the spread 60.6% of the time with 20 wins, 13 losses and 1 push. 

For the games where an East Coast team hosts a West Coast team, the numbers are slightly better, at 23 wins, 13 losses and 2 pushes, a win rate of 63.9% and overall an impressive 62.3%. 

Given that I'm not sure what 25 year period she was referring to, or where the spreads were sourced, that claim wasn't as far off as I thought it might be. 

72 matches over 35 seasons isn't a lot, but the upcoming 2024 season actually has six such matchups.  

There's also an interesting inefficiency on the Totals market for these games, and additional qualifier that takes this 62.3% win percentage to over 70%, but reduces the number of qualifiers from an already low 72 to an even lower 29. I'm going to add this system to the Sacred Manuscript with a few additional details. 

Even though the system doesn't generate a lot of bets, it's a great example of how certain markets are affected by biases, and of the kinds of angles people should be looking at. 

Just Another Manic Monday

It was brought to my attention by the ever vigilant Frédéric that the gimmethedog site - an important resource for the Sacred Manuscript's newly added CFL system since Killer Sports don't cover this sport - wasn't working correctly.

To their credit, the site admin did respond to my email within minutes, but of course the selection that was now, but wasn't previously, showing up went on to lose. Ain't that always the way? And by one point after leading by 17 at the end of the third quarter. A tough loss, but we had a winner on Saturday which eased the pain. 

The 2024-25 document seems to have been well received, with more than two-thirds of subscribers previous members returning, which means I must be doing something right. 

It's especially gratifying when someone finds an interesting market inefficiency to look at, and all the more so when there is a solid rationale to justify it. 

Ivica did this at the weekend, and while College Basketball isn't for everyone, and the season is still a few months away, it looks like I will be adding a new system to the document.

At a conservative -110 line, the system has a p-value of 2.15%, which equates to a 1-in-47 probability the results are from luck.  Many thanks Ivica. 

I had no time for a July end of month updates, but it was a good month with new highs reached, and I'm not just talking about Ben Nevis.

August not so much, or at least not yet anyway.  There is still time. 

Thankfully my exposure to the Nikkei 225 Index is limited:

TOKYO -- Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock index plunged more than 12% on Monday as investors worried that the U.S. economy may be in worse shape than had been expected and dumped a wide range of shares.

The Nikkei index fell 4,451.28 points to 31,458.42. It dropped 5.8% on Friday and has now logged its worst two-day decline ever, dropping 18.2% in the last two trading sessions.

At its lowest, the Nikkei plunged as much as 13.4% on Monday. Its biggest single-day rout was a drop of 3,836 points, or 14.9%, on the day dubbed “Black Monday” in October 1987. It suffered an 11.4% drop in October 2008 during the global financial crisis and fell 10.6% in the aftermath of a massive earthquake and nuclear meltdowns in northeastern Japan in March 2011.

Monday's decline was the second largest percentage loss in a single day and the largest ever loss in terms of points.

Black Monday is a day I remember very well as I have mentioned before in this post while talking about memorable stock market crashes.

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.

I wasn't too thrilled at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, learning that lesson at that time was a blessing in disguise.

Keep calm and carry on buying, although now that I'm no longer working and investing every fortnight by default, that probably isn't so applicable these days.

If the past is anything to go by, and it usually is, then we're in for some volatility for a few days before the market finds equilibrium and we go back to slow and steady gains. 

With just a 2.0% loss, the FTSE 100 actually had a relatively good day, but the S&P 500 in the US was down 3.0%.  

As I write this post, the markets in Japan are open and the Nikkei is currently up a little over 8.5%, which isn't a bad recovery.  Tesla and Bitcoin both had very red days yesterday, and a similar recovery there would be appreciated.