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. 

Bundesliga Lays Restored - Partially

In my previous blog post announcing the launch of the 2024-25 Sacred Manuscript, I mentioned that the Bundeslayga Systems had been removed. 

I also mentioned that I had asked subscribers for feedback, and was pleased to receive this comment from Peter who wrote:

I’m surprised to see you ditching the laying of Bundesliga 2 odds-on away favourites.

I keep my stats by calendar year and am showing +44% in 2024, +11.7% in 2023 and +5.4% in 2022.

At this stage, I see no good reason to ditch them.

Peter also suggested I put Page Numbers in the Contents section, which was actually a great suggestion, but one that led me to realise how unfamiliar I am (or was) about Microsoft Word. But I did get there in the end, and the document is all the better for it.

But back to the Bundeslyaga Systems, and the question of whether I should have killed these off, should have killed some of them off, or simply let them all run for a while longer.

There's no correct answer of course, but with the 2024-25 2. Bundesliga season kicking off today, the clock is ticking.

The facts are that we have 12 years of Pinnacle Closing price data, and the total P&L of the four systems (Home and Away Lays in 1. Bundesliga and .2 Bundesliga) is 155.70 units which, from 4,655 matches equates to an ROI of 3.3%.

Unfortunately, three of the past four seasons have seen losses (for a total of -8.12 units) and only a great 2019-20 season keeps the latest 5-year period in the green.  

However, as Peter noted, the results from laying qualifying Away teams in 2. Bundesliga haven't ben too bad - more on those later.

First the results from laying qualifying Home teams in 2. Bundesliga:

The first four seasons had an ROI of 8.7%; the second four of 2.3%; and the most recent four seasons a negative ROI of -1.9%. While I continue to track results, I'm not inclined to put anything other than small 'interest' bets at most on these selections for the time being. The trend isn't positive at all.

When we look at laying Away qualifiers in 2. Bundesliga, the results over the twelve seasons look like this:

The same four season periods here have ROIs of 13.2%, 43.8% and 16.6% respectively, and while the most recent four years is lower than the previous four , it would be hard for it not to be, and 16.6%, albeit from a low number of selections, is a very good return.

My conclusion is that Peter is absolutely right when he says that "at this stage, I see no good reason to ditch them", and the Sacred Manuscript has been updated to reflect this.

Version 1.02 is now at 77 pages with the feedback from Robert regarding one of the MLB systems receiving some care as well as the aforementioned page numbers being added.

Please keep the feedback coming.

Sacred Manuscript 2024-25 v1.0

My wife hasn't seen much of me for the past few days, but at 75 pages, and containing more than 40 systems, the 2024-25 version of the 'Sacred Manuscript' is finally complete.

I gave myself until the end of July to complete it, and I needed almost every hour.

The big changes from 2023-24 are that I have added systems for three new sports, removed German football (Bundeslayga), re-added MLB post the universal Designated Hitter rule, and tightened up the rather messy NHL system.  

Canadian Football (CFL) has been added, as have two basketball variations - the WNBA and College (NCAA) Basketball, the latter courtesy of Frédéric who found a very interesting angle, and you can follow him on Twitter (X) here: https://x.com/HkiBuzz

The NHL System has been improved upon. For the past few seasons, i.e. since the 2016 season, returns have been rather insipid, with the overall return of 5.3% since 2010 masking the fact that the last eight seasons have had an ROI of just 0.7%.

Not what the doctor ordered, and the improved system - fewer selections, but higher quality - will hopefully prove to be more profitable moving forward:

Markets do change, and I've covered the unusual situation which impacted the NBA Totals System last season. 

Fortunately subscribers kept 81% of the profits accrued before the disruptor came into play, but it's a great example of why it's important to keep records and monitor for anything unusual.

There are some new systems for MLB which had been asked for by some, and the 'Hot Favourites' have been removed after being suspended pending more data in the universal Designated Hitter era. 

The Bundeslayga Systems have also been removed. 

Two consecutive losing seasons, and three of the last four in the red, and it's clear this system is no longer profitable. It was also one of the more complicated to apply, so all in all, very hard to justify keeping it going.

I have kept the EPL Draws in the document, although they too had a second consecutive losing season. The low number of selections each season (last year was 28) means that returns can be quite volatile, but there are certain match profiles that continue to be a positive subset.  

I've also added a 'Technical Details' section where I calculate the probability that a system's results are from luck. Unashamedly stolen from Joseph Buchdahl's spreadsheet, it shows the p-value from which the 1-in-x number is derived.

The highest rated system is surprisingly from Serie A, with a 1 in 41,000 (actually 40,977) rating, while the lowest at 1 in 2 is from the CFL and is actually a secondary bet from a system that has a 1 in 132 rating. 

For the Spread / Totals markets, I assume a -110 line (1.909) for these calculations, though I usually use Pinnacle's -105 (1.952) line. 

For the Money Line I use Killer Sports' numbers, but these are typically to a higher overround than most people should usually be able to get.

Below are the systems where the p-value is less than 10%:

I've sent out the first version to the early-bird subscribers and re-subscribers with the request that any errors, however small, be made known to me. Along with any comments or feedback of course.

There are a lot of details, numbers and calculations in the document, so the p-value that I've not made a mistake is probably quite high!

Summer Highs

The knockout stages of both major summer international football tournaments - the 2024 Euros and Copa América - were extremely profitable for backers of the Draw with an ROI of 45% from the combined 22 matches. 

I know some of you were following, with the good Dr Tsouts (@drtsouts) reporting:

I started following from stage of 8 in Euro and Copa America 2024 and these are the numbers:

Euro 3 wins-4 losses, 7 units at risk, + 2.26 units
Copa 4 wins-3 losses , 7 units at risk, + 6.37 units

Stu_the_Hut (@progman68) also shared his numbers on Twitter, including the eight 'Round of 16' matches:

Here's my results :- 

Euro 5 wins, 9 losses, 14 units at risk, +3.78 units
Copa 4 wins, 2 losses, 6 units at risk, + 6.80 units

It looks like Stu may have skipped the Colombia v Panama game with the favourites a very short 1.34 at fair odds and winning 5:0, as well as the Spain v Georgia where the numbers were 1.23 and 4:1. 

Excluding matches where the fair priced favourite is shorter than 1.5 increases the overall ROI across all major tournaments from 25% to 30%. 

My 'official' numbers from the Quarter-Final stage are +2.25 and +6.09 units respectively, but these totals should be beatable as indeed Dr T and Stu have shown. The Round of 16 made another 1.59 units 'officially'. 

 

We now have data from 115 matches going back to 2004, and the overall ROI is a very solid 42%. Almost half the matches are quarter-finals, and the overall ROI on matches at this stage is now at 77%. 

There will be a UEFA Nations League tournament in June next year, although I'm not sure this young tournament is yet to be considered 'major' - and England won't be featuring given their relegation last time out - and in late December there is an Africa Cup of Nations to look forward to. 

The 2025 CONCACAF Gold Cup will be a dress rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup and looks likely to include teams from Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. The Gold Cup is the one international tournament where backing the Draw isn't profitable with several lopsided games with a hot favourite (usually Mexico or USA), but if you exclude these matches, the ROI is positive, albeit by 'only' 9%, a number that would usually be quite exciting but when it's compared to the other tournaments, perhaps not so much. If countries from other confederations do end up taking part, the results may be more typical. 

It will also be interesting to see how the proposed expanded FIFA Club World Cup competition fits in with all this, since the United States is also hosting that competition. It's all getting a little messy with only FIFA appearing to be enthusiastic about the club competition. 

I'll expand on these numbers more in the Sacred Manuscript as I finalise the 2024-25 version over the next few days but here are the updated high level numbers for the major international football competitions:

I've had a couple of people ask me about Baseball, which I've suggested might be a sport best left alone while data following the major rule changes of recent years can be accumulated, but I do see a possible edge in some games which I'll be including.

A few weeks ago I mentioned Wayward Lad and his Pension Builder blog which hadn't been updated for a while, but Ian is back with an update on his Self-Invested Personal Pension account including a plan to "position the portfolio into more of an income generator than a pure growth vehicle." 

On a personal note, I picked a good week to head up to Scotland and hike up Ben Nevis. The first morning there was perfect, and unlike last year in the Lake District when I had to wait out the rain for a couple of days to climb Scafell Pike, this time I was done on day one with the reserve days not needed. 

The round trip took a little under seven hours and a few new records were set with the 36,200 steps and 251 flights recorded by my iPhone new all-time daily 'highs':

With Snowdon checked off in 2022, that's now the National Three Peaks off my bucket list. I think I'll climb Helvellyn in 2025 though - it's a mountain I hiked up with some school friends when I was 16 but I don't remember too much about it, except that the weather wasn't terribly good and we were woefully unprepared. I'm a little more sensible now. 

And then back to Scotland for Ben Macdui in 2026 perhaps, assuming I'm still able to walk. It's good to have goals. In 2027 I hope to turn 70, so a physical challenge on that day would be nice. The Yorkshire Three Peaks Walk looks like a possible candidate, but I'm open to suggestions.

I didn't pick such a good day for my visit to the Oval on Friday 5th July with Surrey's T20 game against Middlesex abandoned without a ball being bowled, but a full refund softened the blow and a quiet day before a twelve hour wedding on the Saturday might have been a good idea anyway. 

Drawing Breath

So far so good for anyone applying the Elimination Match Draw System to the Euro 2024 tournament with two winners from the six games so far at 'official' odds of 4.33 (England v Slovakia) and 5.25 (Portugal v Slovenia) although as is often the case, these prices were easily beatable and were backed personally at 4.5 and 5.4 on Betfair (with the 2% commission rate making the odds an effective 4.43 and 5.312 respectively.)

Prior to these two results, no Draw priced at greater than 4.09 in Euros Knockout Stages had ever won, so these weren't the likeliest of matches to produce winners, but they all count.  

These tournaments have such a small sample size that although I suspect long-term the ROIs might be higher from the "more competitive" matches, so far there's not a lot of evidence for this. 

Going into the tournament, the ROI on Draws in ALL Euro elimination games was 40%, a number rising to 45% in only those games with no odds-on team, but after six more games this week, the numbers are now 42% and 36% respectively. 

For the Copa América, the numbers are 44% and 34% but to reiterate, when we're talking about such relatively small sample sizes, one or two results can change these numbers in a hurry. 

Unfortunately, I shall be away from my computer for the next two weeks so there will be no daily updates as the Euros and Copa América tournaments reach their conclusions but I'll be home on the 18th July, all being well, and there will be plenty to catch up on. 

Baseball will have had it's All-Star Break, so there will two and a half seasons worth of data with the universal Designated Hitter rule in place, which is a decent number of games given how many games a season are played. This rule was in place in 2020 too, but with a shortened season, an unusual fixture arrangement due to COVID, and the fact that it was at the time just a temporary change, I'm inclined to exclude these games from any analysis. 

I plan to work on the new version of the Sacred Manuscript through that first weekend back home and should have it available by Monday 22nd July. 

The England Quarter-Final will be kicking off in the middle of my niece's wedding reception, which wasn't the best planning on her part, but I suspect I won't be the only person with an interest in the game, and the Semi-Finals will be while I am in Fort William, with Thursday 11th July now looking the most likely day for my long anticipated hike up Ben Nevis with the current weather forecast not looking like it'll be all sunshine and blue skies. 

Enjoy the Summer. 

Splits, Hikes, and NHL 2023

It would normally be rather concerning that a stock closes at $3283 on a Tuesday and opens at around $64 the next day, but the long anticipated 50:1 split for Chipotle has finally arrived. 

As I wrote a few months back, I bought this stock ($CMG) in September 2020 with the expectation that a split would be coming much sooner, and like many Southern Californians my wife likes her Mexican food, ("your Indian food is my Mexican food") but it's performed well while I've been waiting. 

What hasn't been performing quite so well of late is Bitcoin with a 10%+ pullback in the last month providing an opportunity to "buy the dip"; or to throw good money after bad, depending on your point of view. 

More on my financial investments next month as we close out the first half of 2024, at least in months if not quite in days. I'll be away for a couple of weeks in early July, with a family wedding in Faversham followed by another long anticipated event, my hike up Ben Nevis. My sister will not be happy that the reception potentially clashes with an England Euros Quarter-Final game should we advance from the Round of 16, but I did warn her several months ago. 

As for Ben Nevis, the exact date will be weather dependent. I got lucky two years ago with Snowdon, and last year with Scafell Pike both days having clear skies and fantastic views, so I'm hoping for the hat-trick. Tuesday the 9th is my preference, but I have two, or at worst three, reserve days if necessary. 

As for sport, the NHL season is now over, with the Edmonton Oilers falling at the last hurdle with winning four consecutive games proving too much against the Florida Panthers. The wait for Canada goes on. 

For the 'official' NHL System, the 2023 season's results were disappointing with Killer Sports showing a negative ROI from 416 selections of -1.0%. However, given that Killer Sports' odds are generally to an overround of 104% or greater, (it was 104.84% for the Stanley Cup Finals for example) that 1% loss doesn't look too bad. While there is much to admire about Killer Sports, it's fair to say that their numbers are generally beatable by shopping around or using the exchanges.

But there is always room for improvement, and I'll be taking a closer look at the numbers in the next few months. Certain matches between teams from different conferences (Eastern v Western) have long shown a bias, and a system with just four losing seasons out of the 18 for which we have data sounds good at first, but when three of these have come in the last four seasons well, not so good. Markets typically adjust unfortunately. 

Lost Bloggers Found

One of the blogs on my list to follow is Wayward Lad which has been going since 2010. Not quite as long as this one, but in the world of sports investing - Horse Racing in this case - 14 years of almost daily updates is a very good run, but no updates since the end of March had me wondering what had happened. 

Author Ian is of a similar age to myself, not quite as advanced, but in the same decade, and without being too morbid about these things, one never knows what lies around the corner. 

Ian also writes the Pension Builder blog, although by its nature, that was always only updated periodically, but the lack of updates since July 2022 was extreme even for Ian. 

With a little research, I was pleased to discover that Ian is still actively posting these days, albeit on Substack, a medium I know very little about, but may look into.

I also received an update from Steve, the legend from the daily25 blog, after asking out loud about him in this March post, and he is taking a year off to travel the world, although his initial plans have been disrupted. 

He did mention that he's not had a sports bet in three years due to challenges with being able to get a decent bet on (more than $20) at acceptable odds, but he's staying busy and waiting for the NFT markets to bounce back from "their deep bear market" - his words, not mine. I suspect he may be waiting for a while for that to happen, but I have been known to be wrong. 

I mentioned last month that "one subscriber had very generously donated a College Basketball System for my review, with the possibility of it being added to the Sacred Manuscript for next year."

Since the next College Basketball season is some months away, it took me a while to get around to reviewing it, but it's a very interesting idea and the data shows that it has some merit. I promised not to divulge details on the blog, but just to say that I like the fact that there is some rationale to it, and over the last ten seasons, with a logical adjustment to the types of games included, the system has a 1 in 2432 probability of not being this profitable from luck. 

I shall be adding it to the Sacred Manuscript because, as the contributor noted, "surely it is good to add another league to bet on".  I agree, and something to look forward too when conference games start up in January. 

The Stanley Cup has a Game Seven tonight, with the Edmonton Oilers recovering from a 0-3 deficit to tie the series with the Florida Panthers. With home advantage, the Panthers are slight favourites to win, but with 18 goals in the last three games, the Oilers have momentum. Not to mention that ice hockey is Canada's national sport and no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993. No pressure. 

NBA 2023

In NHL's Stanley Cup Finals, the Edmonton Oilers have so far survived two elimination games versus the Florida Panthers and trail by just one game with Game 6 upcoming this evening in Edmonton. A comeback from 0:3 down has been done once before in the Stanley Cup, 82 years ago during the Second World War when the Toronto Maple Leafs rallied to beat the Detroit Red Wings.

So the update on the 2023 season for this sport will have to wait, but the 2023 NBA season is over, with the pre-season favourite Boston Celtics defeating Dallas Mavericks 4 -1 in the final series and winning their 18th championship - a record.

For subscribers to the Sacred Manuscript, the six systems recommended a total of 939 bets, and generated 38.38 units of profit, an overall ROI of 4.1%:

After a losing 2022 season, these results were very welcome. I'm pretty sure that no one would have placed 939 bets, and there's probably an opportunity to reduce this number next season. 

System 3.0 is the Overs system, and while the Total varies from year to year (last season was 239.5 points),  about one bet a day through the season is a good number. Too many selections and a system becomes a pain to manage, but have too few (2.1 for example) and you risk missing out on selections because you lose interest in running the query each day. 

The Graduate

Of the 156 NBA teams that have trailed a best-of-7 series 0:3, and not a single one has been able to rally and win four straight. After last night's Game 3 loss at home to the Boston Celtics, the Dallas Mavericks find themselves the 157th team in this unenviable position. They are currently slight favourites to win game 4, but past history suggests the value is on the Celtics with teams in this position (3:0 ahead and small road 'dogs) 9-4-1 ATS.

In the NHL Finals, the Florida Panthers won the first two games of their series at home to the Edmonton Oilers, and game three is tonight. Historically Western teams returning home as favourites after losing the opening two road games of a Final series are undervalued with seven wins out of eight (small sample size of course, as is always the case with playoffs).

I'll post a review of these two sports once their seasons end, which could be very soon in the case of the NBA with Game 4 on Friday.

The adjustment to retirement continues, and apologies in advance if I waffle on about this too much but it is a significant milestone in life.

I'm sure some of you will have seen it already, but Roger Federer's commencement address at Dartmouth a few days ago is worth checking out. 

I know the word is “retire.” “Roger Federer retired from tennis.” Retired... The word is awful.

You wouldn’t say you retired from college, right? Sounds terrible.

Like you, I’ve finished one big thing and I’m moving on to the next.

Like you, I’m figuring out what that is.

Graduates, I feel your pain.

I know what it’s like when people keep asking what your plan is for the rest of your life.

They ask me: “Now that you are not a professional tennis player, what do you do?”

I don’t know… and it’s OK not to know.

So what do I do with my time?

That's a very good question! Training for the Ben Nevis hike next month is ongoing, although I had another fall last Friday on a local hill which wasn't too clever. No broken legs this time though, but I left some skin at the scene and my coccyx doesn't feel great. Sit ups are on hold for now. Fortunately it doesn't seem to affect me when cycling, and I've been out of the road bike a couple of times a week getting in some miles. 

There was another part of Federer's speech which has received some attention, and that was where he contrasts the percentage of matches he won during his career (almost 80% of his 1,526 games) with the percentage of points he won in those games - "only 54%."

"Only"... Such a small word, but it's a similar situation in sports betting. If you can hit winners betting the dime line at just 51.23%, then with compounding you can be very profitable over time. Of course, no one wants to get rich slowly, so very few people actually have the mindset to achieve this, but as I wrote in 2019 here:

Given that my grandmother would be expected to pick winners at a rate of around 50%, and she's been dead for over 30 years, this didn't seem to be a hugely impossible task.

Most systems can be fairly easily improved and just by eliminating a couple of losing propositions from every 100 bets, you're in profit. 

 

I updated my profile a few days ago. Since day one of this blog, my profile ended with my saying that "retirement wasn't too far off and that anything made from sports investing would bring that day forward." 

Well, it didn't play out like that - it almost made my Chipotle stock split prediction look timely. In March of 2008 I turned 51, so while it was good that I was thinking about, and planning for, retirement, in hindsight the "not too far off" prediction wasn't too accurate. Maybe at that time I was still thinking early retirement was a goal, but as my career progressed it became clear that retirement wasn't the goal I once thought it was. 

Besides, profits from sports investing exceeded my net salary for a couple of years, but didn't result in any change to my retirement date, and work became less like work in recent years - working from home with a little travel was very comfortable and what was there to retire from, or more importantly, to retire to? However, the clock was, still is, ticking, and it's certainly possible to work too long and limit the good years of retirement when you are still physically active and able to travel before the body and / or brain start to give you problems. 

With my redundancy payment now in the bank, my spreadsheet has been updated and projections for the next few years are in place. The markets have been kind to me so far, with Tesla on fire the past couple of days pending the outcome of the vote regarding Elon Musk's pay package. Per the latter:

With the vote still in progress, this statement had better be accurate or there will be another sizeable fine coming. 

Transitions, Bitcoin, Errors, Euros and Copas

Time flies, and even faster in retirement than before it seems. The early retirement days have been taken up with a few administrative tasks. The most important was having my redundancy agreement reviewed by an expert in these things, and as expected for a large company, all was in order and the advice, given the fact that I'm not looking to take my skills to a rival employer, was to accept and sign, which I duly did, although the final payout hasn't yet been received. 

I also met with my financial advisor and all was good there, with no changes required to the balance of my investments at this time, much to the chagrin of Signora Cassini who is a little more risk averse than myself. I received some welcome support that it would be crazy to pay off the outstanding mortgage - which is at a very low interest rate - and, in the advisor's words, "let the bank off the hook", but I probably shouldn't have told her that I'd (literally) doubled down on Bitcoin, this time via BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust ($IBIT) - but so far so good with Bitcoin on a strong run right now. 

I'm not a crypto expert, but I feel now that Bitcoin is maturing, is becoming accepted as an asset, and has a certain future. Whereas my initial investment in Bitcoin (via $GBTC) was driven by FOMO, this latest one was made based on at least a basic understanding of the Bitcoin Power Law Theory. Anyway, I BIT - hopefully not more off than I can chew.

The redundancy money should see me through to next year at which time we (financial advisor and me, maybe the wife if she behaves) will meet again and see where we're at. 

Hopefully that will be at, or close to, an all-time high which would certainly be psychologically much more positive than starting retirement with a market downturn. Sequence-of-Returns Risk moves from theory to practice very rapidly once that steady income stream is turned off.

Onto sports investing, and there's a new, and much improved, look to Killer Sports these days. The original site with results displayed in the old format is still available for now as the site transitions to its new look, but the updates look great and include some new features. 

Old: 

New:

The new features include ROI, Profit and P-Value calculations, which will make my life a little easier as I update the Sacred Manuscript this summer.
 

The European club football season is over, and the NBA and NHL competitions are both down to their final (best-of-7) series. 

I did notice that I had inadvertently posted some incorrect numbers for the Regular Seasons of these latter two sports. I'll put the errors down as due to jet lag rather than from any post-retirement senility creeping in.

I wrote that:

In the NBA, the regular season finished last month with ROIs of 2.4% (from 476 selections), 10.2% (171), 10.3% (69) for the primary systems, -0.5% (55) for the Rested Team System, and 4.2% (164) for the Totals System, a total profit of 42.38 units for the season.

Unfortunately the NHL Systems lost a combined 14.64 units this season, but ahead overall in the US for these two sports.

After taking a second look, this is what I should have written:

In the NBA, the regular season finished last month with ROIs of 2.1% (from 464 selections), 8.8% (166), 5.1% (65) for the primary systems, 4% (77) for the Rested Team System, and 4.2% (164) for the Totals System, a total profit of 37.48 units for the season.

Unfortunately the NHL Systems lost a combined 17.15 units in the regular season, but ahead overall in the US for these two sports.

The error I made was to include the playoff games in these calculations, so apologies to anyone who is validating these numbers for themselves and noticed the discrepancies. 

I'll update the English Domestic and European Competitions in the next few days, and then it's a bonanza of international tournaments with the Euros in Germany and an expanded Copa_América tournament running simultaneously in the United States. The latter tournament features ten teams from South America's CONMEBOL federation plus six teams from Central and North America's CONCACAF. 

For those of who enjoy backing the Draw in the elimination games for these tournaments, the results historically are:

It's worth mentioning that CONCACAF's Gold Cup tournament tends not to follow this pattern, as I have pointed out before.  How the presence of any of these (CONCACAF) teams making it out of the group stage affects results will be interesting to see, but with only the USA and Mexico expected to advance, I suspect the tournament will play out as it would for a Copa or a World Cup. Argentina and Brazil are joint favourites to win this tournament, while for the Euros it's England in this position - no doubt due to the presence of no fewer than FOUR Crystal Palace players in the squad. 

New Chapter, Mindset, Addiction and Target

It's been a while, with the world being denied a post here for a full calendar month for the first time in more than 16 years. I ended my previous post with these words:

All being well, I shall be back on May 8th after my third Total Solar Eclipse, either employed or retired. How boring life would be if we didn't have such uncertainties in front of us. Stay safe and stay lucky.

In the end, I extended my trip by a few days due to the fact that my long awaited retirement finally became official midway through the trip. 

I've mentioned 'severance' a few times here, and while I'd like to say that I expertly negotiated a good 'voluntary' severance package for myself, the truth is that I ultimately had little say in the matter. 

For quite a while now, I've been telling anyone who's interested - in other words, basically talking to myself - that a year's salary would be great, but that I'd be happy with six months', and so the 39 weeks 'involuntary' severance package awarded, which also allowed to keep all my stock options, was more than satisfactory.

While I've been planning for this day for a few years now, it's one of those moments in life when you don't really know for sure how you'd feel until it happens but, so far at least, there have been no moments of panic or doubt. The transition to retirement will be an adjustment of course, - going from being responsible for a team of 60+ people to not even being the CEO of my own house - and will likely take a while to fully process, but at the age of 67 and after almost 49 years of working - my first job was with the NatWest Bank in Oxted in August 1975 - it's time.

It's definitely helped psychologically that the markets have been on a good run in recent weeks - my net worth spreadsheet hit a new high this week and that's not counting the package since I've yet to meet with my financial advisor and confirm that I should sign the agreement - but it will be interesting, and possibly quite challenging, switching my mindset after almost half a century from one of accumulation to decumulation, if that is even a word. 

That's the personal news almost out of the way, other than to say that the Total Eclipse was awesome, with totality lasting for 4 minutes and 11 seconds and clear skies in our viewing location (Russellville in Arkansas) and that I gained almost 11 pounds on the trip, a number which could have been worse given that my wife and I were unfortunately introduced to the previously ignored (I'm not a fan of yellow custard) world of Frozen Custard by friends, and developed an unhealthy addiction to the product with twice daily visits occurring more than once. I can resist anything but temptation.

Moving on to sports and there's a lot to catch up on. The club football season is almost over, with the lower leagues in the midst of their playoff games and the Premier League wrapping up in less than a week. The European club competitions have their finalists all set, with no English clubs involved for the first time since 2019-20.

In the US, the playoffs for both the NBA and NHL are in progress, while MLB is into its second month.

Starting with the National League playoffs, and the strategy for these games detailed in the Sacred Manuscript produced a profit for the sixth time in the seven seasons under the current format. The total profit increased to 15.68 units from 38 matches.

The National League playoff final (played on a neutral ground) finished as a Draw for the fourth consecutive season, and the ROI on backing this result over the last 21 seasons is now 38%.

The Regional Finals for each of the North and South Divisions are hosted by the highest seeded club, but as is often the case with Finals, the Draw is value nevertheless, and the ROI on this results over the 30 matches climbed to 39% with the South's Worthing v Braintree Town Final delivering.

Wrapping up the non-league season was the FA Trophy Final, and again the Draw delivered with the ROI on 20 finals now at 36% and the ROI on all English Domestic Finals (including play-offs) close to 20%:

If we include the Community Shield matches, the ROI does climb to 21.6% and while I see the match as more of a glorified pre-season friendly than a competitive fixture, the data suggests it's more the latter.

In Championship play-off Semi-Final First leg matches, the ROI on laying the Home team is now at 16%, and in Second Leg matches where the first leg was a Draw, the value is in backing the Away team (ROI of 62%) although the sample size of 12 is small. The more conservative approach of laying the Home side has an ROI of 4%.

For the European Competitions, the basic strategy for the Champions League knockout rounds made a profit with an ROI of 8% and 19% for matches between clubs from the Big 5 Leagues.

Results from the Europa League were very poor, with the ROI from 25 selections -9%. Rubbing salt into the wound, the selection process for this tournament is somewhat convoluted, so I'll be revisiting this system in the summer.

The Europa Conference League, which is still in its infancy as a competition, but for which I expect results similar to the Europa League, also had a losing season with an ROI of -5% from the 22 selections.

I'll review the other leagues in Europe as well as the Premier League once the season is over.

In the NBA, the regular season finished last month with ROIs of 2.4% (from 476 selections), 10.2% (171), 10.3% (69) for the primary systems, -0.5% (55) for the Rested Team System, and 4.2% (164) for the Totals System, a total profit of 42.38 units for the season.

Unfortunately the NHL Systems lost a combined 14.64 units this season, but ahead overall in the US for these two sports.

I'll look at the MLB later, but a quick review shows that both the Hot Favourite and T-Bone Systems may be cooking again, at least in the National League, but for now I'm just observing this sport following the significant rule changes. 

I did attend my first College Baseball game in Arkansas last month with the then number one ranked Razorbacks beating Florida in game one of a double-header, and speaking of College Sports, and one subscriber has very generously donated a College Basketball System for my review, with the possibility of it being added to the Sacred Manuscript for next year. 

IF you find it has value and you would like to add it or a version of it to the Manuscript, as surely it is good to add another league to bet on, please go ahead, but do not divulge details on the blog

It would indeed be good to have another sport included and I'll be taking a look in the next few days while, of course, remaining respectful of the request not to give anything away. I think I've mentioned that I'll be working on the 2024-25 manuscript over the summer with a view to having it completed by the end of July following the Euros, and if anyone subscribes today, they will automatically get the updated document for free at that time. 

Finally, Jim Simons "The Man Who Solved the Market" - as his biography by Gregory Zuckerman was titled - has passed away at the age of 86. Many of you reading this probably know his story, but he was a gifted mathematician who turned his talents to the financial markets with huge success.

Medallion, the largest of these funds, earned more than $100 billion in trading profits in the 30 years following its inception in 1988. It generated an unheard-of 66 percent average annual return during that period.

While hedge funds typically charge 2 and 20 (2% fixed fee and 20% of profits), Simons' fund was able to charge 5 and 44! An inspiration to us all and with more time available to me now, I need to up my game, although beating that 66% average could be a challenge.

Daniel Kahneman RIP

I've often mentioned here the importance of psychology in investing, and probably the top expert in "the field of psychology of judgment and decision-making" passed away yesterday.

I've mentioned Daniel Kahneman him several times over the years, and if you haven't read his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, you should.

It’s a book that will take some effort to read because the ideas are dense, and even though they are well-presented, they’re not cloaked in the clothes of story. If you’re willing to do the work, though, Thinking Fast and Slow may be one of the most important books you ever read.

His Prospect Theory explains why investors typically consider the loss of a specific amount twice as painful as the pleasure received from a gain of the same amount.

When they made decisions, people did not seek to maximize utility. They sought to minimize regret.

Michael Lewis wrote a great book about Kahneman's relationship with Amos Tversky, called "The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World" which I also recommend. 

Some light reading for you while I am away for six weeks as I mentioned a few days ago. 

Although I have yet to receive a response to my mentioning that I might be open to a voluntary severance agreement should one be on offer, I have been immersing myself in the topic of retirement finances by listening to podcasts on my daily walks and reading while less active and I suspect much of my time away will be spent on this topic. 

One of the more interesting papers I've come across on the topic of how retirement funds should be invested (many experts say that one should move from stocks to bonds as you get older) is a recent one (October 2023) titled "Beyond the Status Quo: A Critical Assessment of Lifecycle Investment Advice" by Aizhan Anarkulova, Scott Cederburg and Michael S. O’Doherty which suggests that a 100% equity allocation may be the safest asset allocation even in retirement.

I've always been of this mindset myself, although my more risk averse wife is not, but fortunately I make the financial decisions. Yes, the 38% expected drawdown would be emotionally challenging, but I've been through a few of these in my time, with the lessons of Black Monday (October 18th) 1987 coming at a very good time in my life. More recently, on March 23rd, 2020, I was down 23.4% but never sold a single share and markets have bounced back as they always have done.

The odds that my next post will be penned as a retiree have moved to slightly odds-on, with an announcement coming on April 18th if rumours are to be believed, but once I've got my head around the sequence of return risk, the 4% rule and switching my mindset from accumulation to decumulation, I should be good to go. With Bitcoin halving around that date, it could be an interesting week.  

Enjoy Spring. All being well, I shall be back on May 8th after my third Total Solar Eclipse, either employed or retired. How boring life would be if we didn't have such uncertainties in front of us. Stay safe and stay lucky. 

Towel Throwing

Back in November, I mentioned a fairly well known tipster who, during a poor run of results, suggested that increasing stakes might be a good idea.

We're currently a few points down for the season with both official and unofficial picks, so if you've been thinking about upping the stakes at some point, this should prove to be a great time to do that.

I pushed back on this idea for what I hope are obvious reasons, but if anyone did actually follow this poor advice, they would be seriously regretting that decision. Hopefully many took a 'good money after bad' approach and scaled down the size of their investments. 

The ill-advised recommendation was made after 10 bets and a manageable loss of 4.02 units, while the subsequent 27 selections have now resulted in further losses of 14.76 units, a total ROI for the season of -50.8%.  

These are the 'official' bets with the towel having been thrown in this week on the 'unofficial' bets after 82 selections and a -24% ROI.  

All this is to point out that chasing losses is not a smart strategy rather than anything else, but with the National League less than four weeks from concluding, a losing season is now guaranteed.  With the acknowledgment that the edge has gone for unofficial picks, I'm sure some subscribers must be licking their rather deep wounds and wondering whether the edge has gone for official picks also. 

It happens. Markets are Darwinian - rather than Newtonian - in nature, and they evolve, and it's quite likely that the increased interest in the National League has sped this process up. We'll see how the remaining weeks go, but end of season games can be tricky with the motivation for teams ranging from nothing to play for to must-win for a play-off spot or to avoid relegation. Chesterfield have now won the League and promotion, but eight teams are realistically in with a chance of making the six club playoffs, while at the bottom Oxford City have gone with a tight battle between several clubs to avoid filling one of the other three relegation places.