2023 In Review, 2024 In View

Happy New Year! It would appear that my opening post of 2023 could essentially be re-posted this year since not too much has changed. 

Here's what I wrote then:

The India work trip never materialised, with my employer keeping an even closer eye on the bottom line than previously, and travel budgets severely cut, but otherwise my comments from a year ago can be recycled. 

I still have absolutely no incentive to pull the retirement trigger. My responsibilities did increase in 2023 with a new team moving under me which almost doubled the size of my staff, and while there was no adjustment in compensation at the time, I'm hopeful that during the annual performance review in February this will be remedied. If not, or there's not a sizeable increase in bonus / stock options / RSUs, then that might be the catalyst for the much anticipated severance conversation.

Sports Investing

Overall for the year, my betting bankroll increased by 5.9%, with the NFL leading the way for the 7th time in the past 11 calendar years. The Cricket and Rugby World Cups were also nice bonuses, with baseball, NBA, NHL and Tennis also positive. Football wasn't so good with a small loss overall on this sport, which is proving challenging these days, especially the league games. Let's start there.

European Club Football

EPL Draws

In December, we had nine selections with only the all-Big6 clash between Liverpool and Arsenal finishing level. With a little over half of the season complete, the percentage of matches finishing as Draws in the Premier League is currently at its lowest since 1931-32 which is clearly not a good scenario for the Draw System. So far we've had just 28 selections (also a new low), and with only five wins the system is down 10.41 units, and the current ROI of -37% is also the worst on record for the Close Matches. The broader 'no-odds-on' method of selecting qualifiers has a -12% ROI. 

Bundeslayga

December generated 7.41 units but again overall for the season so far, it's similar in total to the EPL Draws with a loss to date of 10.91 units, although with a far higher number of selections (197) the ROI is much lower at -5.5%. Laying the Bundesliga.2 teams is actually in profit with an ROI of 6.2%, with all the losses in the top division.  

Segunda Draws

A 1.75 unit loss in December from 17 selections means that the season to date is down 6.98 units, an ROI of -7.8%. At one point we were down almost 15 points, so in a way we end the year on a positive note! 

Serie A

All very depressing reading so far, but at least Serie A is positive with December +1.36 units and overall for the season in profit by 4.71 units, an ROI of 19%. 

American Football

The reason this end of year update is a little late is because I wanted to wait for the NFL Regular Season to conclude, which it did this past weekend. The basic Small Road 'Dog System had a rare losing season for only the third time since 2005, down 5.39 units with a 29-33-5 record, but the Divisional System was in profit by 2.09 units. This system may finally be the victim of its own success with a lot of chatter on social media about home-field advantage being overrated which has been the case for many seasons as long time readers will know.

Fortunately the Totals systems did very well this season, with the basic 'Prime Time' system having a 33-23 record, +8.42 units, and the more selective Conference record up 6.47 units with an 11-4 record so for the NFL we enter the playoffs 11.59 units ahead overall.

With the College results adding another 21.63 units, this sport continues to be extremely profitable. The College finale was last night with Michigan beating Washington for the National Championship, and the NFL playoffs start this weekend with the Wild Card games.

NBA

We're not yet halfway through the current season but at the end of the year the two basic systems I follow (away teams and totals) were up 2.82 units and 10.27 units respectively. As I've mentioned, there was a new in-season tournament inaugurated this year, the NBA Cup which was won by the Los Angeles lakers, and early signs are that these games are best not included in the Away System, but we'll have to see where we stand once we have more data. 

NHL

At a similar stage in the season to the NBA, we're down 3.37 units as of year's end, although to end the sports piece on a positive, January has turned this red into green.  

Summary 

Not the first half of the season we were hoping for in football, but saved by the US sports. The situation is worsened in real terms by the imbalance between the time it takes to determine some of the football bets versus the US ones, and it may be time to focus on the big international tournaments (Africa Cup of Nations is here again with the Euros not too far away) and the big club matches both in European competition and the domestic cups and play-offs. 

Financial Investments

As I've mentioned before, betting comprises a very small percentage of my investing portfolio these days, and overall the more traditional financial investments were up 15.6% for 2023. 

Another 1.76% and the high of April 2022 would be surpassed, but with a recovery of more than 30% required at one time, 1.76% seems like a win although it has to be said that 2024 hasn't started off very positively. 

With 16% of my net worth in, or related to, my company stock, it wasn't helpful that the share price declined for the first year since 2008, though by less than 1%. 

The big individual winner in percentage terms was Bitcoin which was up over 300%, followed by Tesla which more than doubled finishing up 101.7%. In August 2021 I mentioned Chipotle saying that:

One company I've not mentioned before is $CMG (Chipotle Mexican Grill) which I bought last September, primarily because I suspected a stock split might be imminent.

Three plus years later and I'm still waiting for the split, but with the stock up 64.8% this year, my rationale might be wrong but I'll take those returns any day. 

Boeing shares were up nearly 37% and those were the only individual stocks in my play account (+32.6%) that outperformed the S&P 500 Index which was up 24.2%. By way of comparison, the FTSE 100 was up 3.8%, but as long time readers will know, I favour the US Indexes.

I'm also focusing more on increasing my dividend income this year as I transition into old age. I got rather excited when I looked at my December statements in detail and saw that the month had brought in £6,901.09 in dividends. Annualised, I was thinking, this is quite a lot of cash, but unfortunately upon closer examination, a lot of the larger sums in that total are annual payments rather than monthly or quarterly. 

More work to do in this area, starting with trawling back over the year to see exactly what is coming in since most are automatically re-invested, and it's probably something I should have looked at earlier. If anyone has any advice in this area, please leave a comment. 

Health and Fitness

Gains are not always good however, and in the category of weight (or at least fat), I was quite happy to see decent losses over the year. In December I hit my lowest weight since June 2011, and I'm just about in the "Normal" category now based on BMI. Perhaps not that great an achievement since I shouldn't have ever moved out of that category, but I'll call it an achievement. 

A Dry January should see me reach the goal of being "Normal", (my wife begs to differ), and the challenge then becomes maintaining it which will require a mental reset. 

As I close in on 67, my son is encouraging a shift from aerobic exercise (I averaged a little over 7 miles a day on foot last year - 2,561 miles / 5.3m steps in total) to resistance training. That will likely mean an increase in overall weight since muscle is heavy, but I'm preparing myself mentally for it. 

He's also suggested walking backwards would be good and while looking stupid isn't something new for me, I'm not sure I'm quite ready for this activity, but my wife wants to join a gym too so once the January rush is over, we'll be signing up on February 1st and see how it goes. 

I'm also planning to ride my bike more in 2024, which shouldn't be difficult given my total miles in 2023 was a very round number. A climb up Ben Nevis (hopefully to the top) in July will be my main hiking goal this year as that will complete the Snowdon, Scafell Pike, Ben Nevis treble. 

While the benefits of getting out each day and walking a couple of miles are clear, I'm not convinced there's a huge benefit in walking 7 miles versus say 3 or 4 miles, especially of most of those miles are flat. Maybe if I ran a larger percentage, but then after two right knee surgeries and the triple leg break of January 2021, I'm lucky to be walking at all! 

Books

I mentioned the goal of reading more in 2024 and so far I have finished "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson audiobook and just started "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, which is long overdue. 

Best of luck in 2024 and thank you for following this blog.