Wednesday 3 January 2018

Year Eleven

In my opening post of 2017, I predicted that blogging would take up less time than previously, but although December was rather unproductive, overall the annual total of 213 posts exceed the totals for 2015 and 2016. 

The average number of hits per day increased from 437 to 635 which suggests that I might be doing something right.

2018 is the eleventh calendar year for this blog, with the tenth anniversary party to be held in March. 

The year's Top Three posts were:

Skeeve Achieves which started with a look at the League Two Aways System, praised Skeeve to the heavens on his winning the Secret Betting Club's "outstanding contribution to tipping" award, and ended with some good advice about betting on horse racing, i.e. don't.


In second place was The Pee Wee Experiance (not a typo), a look at reviews of Peter Webb's trading courses from attendees (not delegates, as he sometimes erroneously refers to his victims). Not surprisingly they were overwhelmingly tales of disappointment. 

Third place went to the Vanishing Pool post, which took a "lifestyles of the rich and famous" look at the world of Caan Berry. The usual mansions, yachts and fast cars were strangely absent.

2017 saw the loss to the betting community of James "Betfair Pro Trader" Butler who wound up his blog after several years, but Steve at Daily25 is in his eighth year of betting and shows no signs of slowing down.

As for betting, the College Football season concluded with Iowa State winning at Memphis, a selection I'd mentioned here, and the final ROI on the season was 14.1%. This means that this has now been a profitable system in 13 of the last 14 seasons. 
The NFL version didn't fare quite so well, with a 5-17 collapse in December resulting in a final record of 26-37-3 and a losing ROI of 18.6%.

Perhaps the play-offs will see the fortunes of road teams pick up again. Since 2002, they have the edge in Wild Card and Divisional matches (63-51-3), but not in Championship games. Road teams in the +3 to -3 range are 25-14-3 overall, and 17-7-3 in Wild Card games. 

The NBA Beast System finished 2017 with an 87-66-4 record, and a decent ROI of 10.7%. I predicted that the totals would be higher this season, and backing the Over when 219 or above has an even better 60.9% record.
In more traditional financial markets, once again the main US benchmark index outperformed the UK's FTSE100. Only 4 times in the last 24 years has the FTSE prevailed, and the disaster that is Brexit means the US and Overseas markets are where most of my investments will again be in 2018.

Happy New Year and good luck.  

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