Investment or Gambling?

Back in March, at one of his season’s lowest points, Graeme Dand tweeted that:

@SportingValueMB @stevemor I think I've just realised I'm gambling and no different to any other gambler. Harsh reality tbh.
— The Football Analyst (@TFAsystems) March 22, 2014

I think I have always been of the same thinking. It is not a surprise that I have always been a big fan of Rowan over at the Portfolio Investor, my favourite services have included Football Investor, The Football Analyst and Equine Investments. Being of a Mathematical bent, I have always appreciated the number based tipsters and have managed to last longer with them than other more picky style products.

Further discussions with my wife hinted at the arrogance of regarding this as investment, as investment requires some form of asset ownership, which this venture does not. This is not to say it can not be profitable but I think it has really helped me to rethink how I will continue.

As you can probably deduce from the big gap in postings, things haven't exactly carried on as before. The major reason for changing the way I followed my portfolio was initiated by a series of breaks, but most notably the family ski trip at the start of April. I had previously been on a short ski trip during Cheltenham week, and while I had managed to sneak the bets on, it was quite a stretch. Placing Gowi's bets as soon as possible from a chairlift when with adult friends is just about doable, but when with kids it becomes a tricky issue. So knowing that I was in France for about two and a half weeks I decided to stop following all time sensitive services and concentrate on big priced bets only.

Now given the portfolio I followed, quite a few services took a holiday too. Club Gowi was the biggest sacrifice but Skeeve, Summer of Football and Tennis Ratings also went on the back burner. Narrow Victories, my own selections also had to take a break and this turned out to be terminal as I no longer had the bookies to make this viable.

Football Form Labs also disappeared, which given it performance was not a surprise, but I did not have time or the inclination to check out the offerings as there did not seem to be a set time. I also mentioned on Twitter that I was considering joining Fidens. I had an encouraging meeting with Will Wilde, the head of trading there, but in the end I couldn't see the logic in giving over £20k for a likely 3% return. The trigger for pushing this angle was wanting more turnover but I now believe just chasing turnover, while more likely to be successful is not going to work for me in the long run.

The two ratings based services, Football Investor and The Football Analyst were followed in their usual manner, and in addition, any selections at prices over 4.00. I also followed the big priced selections from Football Elite, including those where the Weekend Punting Pack indicated value.

On returning from holidays, I did return to most of the services but my main focus has been on determining the direction of, lets call it, my speculative activities. In that day of discussions I commented how we'll my share dealing were doing and I felt I wanted to devote more time to this venture as well. 

@TFAsystems @stevemor ...portfolio is up 25% this year, my professionally managed funds are down 7%. Which one would people tell me to drop!
— Sporting Value (@SportingValueMB) March 22, 2014

The last couple of months have been spent trying to get the balance right between both portfolios, and the correct way for them to be made up. This post has taken an awfully long time to write, Stewboss enquired if I was still doing my blog about 3 weeks ago, and I said I was working on an article but I have struggled to get down all I want to say. 

@SportingValueMB Is your blog defunct now then?
— Football Investor (@FootyInvestor) May 29, 2014

With this in mind I have decided to split the post up into this sort of re-introduction, followed by three linked posts. Firstly I want to look at services I will definitely be following, especially how and why. Secondly the possibles, including past analysis and how they would fit in with my portfolio, or why they wouldn't. Thirdly I want to look at how financial markets fits in and what I expect out of the whole portfolio.

As a way of a taster, there are three services already "in", so to speak. In my response to Stewboss I already revealed two:

@FootyInvestor Still trying to decide on the future path but have already resubscribed to both of you
— Sporting Value (@SportingValueMB) May 29, 2014

Is it any surprise that Football Investor, with a near 80% ROC this year, and The Football Analyst, with a 35% ROC, made the cut? There is also one other service in, but I will keep that as a surprise, especially as I haven't talked about it in any previous posts.

The "possibles" post mainly focusses on Club Gowi and TennisRatings. I have spent a lot of time in Excel analysing both these and to be quite honest, I have still not decided how to go forward with these. 

Right I will leave it here for now and hope to have the next post published in less time than this one took!