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!

October Summary

I am starting the long drive back to Blighty this afternoon so will have to keep this relatively brief - all the kids stuff to pack and house to tidy etc. Another losing month but not on the same scale, three services producing a profit, although one of those, Laurent Marty, did so from a very small sample. Two services pretty much broke even and two repeated their poor first month. The turnover for the month was £27k, down £1k from September, although that included August in it as well, with an overall loss of just over £800.

October
Rank	Tipster	Staked (pts)	P/L	ROI	ROC
1	Laurent Marty	14	7.8	55%	15%
2	Football Elite	17	3.3	20%	7%
3	Football Investor	95	6.1	6%	6%
4	Narrow Victories	21	-0.2	-1%	0%
5	Summer of Football	17	-0.3	-2%	-1%
6	Skeeve	18	-8.7	-48%	-9%
7	The Football Analyst	130	-21.7	-17%	-22%

Overall, Summer of Football maintains its lead from Narrow Victories, and bar the introduction of Laurent Marty, all the places remain the same. Probably the most worrying number is the ROC for TFA, with over 50% of the bank gone, but more of that in the Confidence Ratings. Total turnover is now £55k with nearly £3.4k lost at a -6% ROI, or about 8% of the bank in total

Overall
Rank		Tipster	Staked (pts)		P/L		ROI	ROC
1		Summer of Football	56		13.1		23%	26%
2		Narrow Victories	69		7.9		12%	16%
3		Laurent Marty	14		7.8		55%	15%
4		Football Investor	111		-2.2		-2%	-2%
5		Football Elite	28		-1.6		-6%	-3%
6		Skeeve	66		-26.1		-40%	-26%
7		The Football Analyst	275		-57		-21%	-57%

Sporting Value Confidence Rating (last months rating in brackets)

Laurent Marty – 3 (n/a)

Pretty well covered in the last blog post, a very strong start, but just a start.

Football Elite – 3 (3)

A profitable month, but not quite enough to push the service into profit overall. Hannover, I feel they are Matt’s standard bearer, twice failed to win at home although France seem to be leading the way this season.

Still happy to take on Vulnerable Home Favourites with Narrow Victories, while Football League bets (not official bets) have got off to an impressive start.

Football Investor – 3.5 (3.5)

Great start to the month and strong finish, terrible middle, although nearly all the profit can be put down to three big priced European matches in the last week: Reims at 6.92, Almeria at 8.04 and Getafe at 7.34. FI is also now fitting the remit of providing turnover to match TFA, although quite a lot of correlation in selections, especially in League 1 and 2. So far really pleased with the addition of 0.5pt bets on Top Flight Euro selections, over 4.00 and looking into whether it is worth adding Football Investor selections that are also over 4.00.    

Narrow Victories – 3 (3)

Break-even month summed up by the last week, 5 out of 6 at the weekend and 1 out of 4 midweek. Not often that you see a side score 3 and still lose by more than 1 or 2 goals, thanks Real Madrid. Still susceptible to amateurish moments, especially when I succumb to narratives such as Atletico Madrid being big scorers after losing a bet 4-0, and then realise they are still winning by 1-2 goals, and only place a bet in the match they win 5-0! That said I did back them last night away at Granada, and they got the job done.

Turnover was down this month, which I put down to the International break and the Champions League taking up a lot of the elite league’s time. Both these events could well be NV territories, but still in watching brief mode.

Summer of Football – 3.5 (3.5)

A poor start to the month was rectified to produce a solid, if a little flat break-even month. No problems with getting the bets on or the prices.

Skeeve – 2.5 (2.5)

Another poor month, especially in terms of ROI. ROC lower as it seems Skeeve is cutting bets to get through to the magical second half of the season. He had suggested that the service could become a January to May only service, admittedly at a lower price, and while this is obviously where the profit is, it slims the service down even more and relies on an incredible ROI to win the day.

While there has been a suggestion of holding fire until January I will continue to follow the bets that are recommended, although not with the greatest confidence for the next couple of months.

The Football Analyst – 3.5 (4)

The only downgrade this month, but faith is certainly not lost. Graeme made an incredible start to the month and the deficit of September was halved but October did not keep giving.

I mentioned in an earlier blog piece that I was cutting back my stakings on multiple selections to a maximum of 4 and this really helped the bottom line. My obvious fear was that it would slow down the recovery as the strongest selections would win with less money on them, but the opposite is true as I have saved over £1300 this month. If the full amounts had been bet, my bank would be close to 75% gone, and this week’s £2200 staked would be the full bank in play.

So why the faith, you may ask? Well negatives first, this is the first time my portfolio has lost two months in a row, and these two months would be two of the worst 3 on record. But 17 months out of the 64 (26%) on record have produced a profit of over 50 points, 41% had over 40 points and 50% over 30. All the Novembers on record are profitable with an average return of over 58 points. Admittedly this is with full 11 point staking when necessary, but I think this policy of restricting has already paid its way.

As a way of comparison, September 2011 was the previous worst on record, and averages 35 points profit for the month, while October has 2 losing months and an average of 34 points made.

Of course there is a chance that the ratings have lost their edge, but for now I am carrying on, almost all-in, but not quite!

Other options

I have mentioned that I am trialling two other services, Football Form Labs and Keith Elliott Golf. As I have not decided which way I am going to play them I am not including them in the official portfolio so far. To be honest the small profit on FFL is cancelling out the small loss on KE so far, so not much to report.

Right I need to get on my way, and find convenient stops on the way back to England to place all the Friday and Saturday bets. Good luck all this weekend.