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.