Contrarian Sports Investments

[hugh]

Hello my paceadvantage friends. I have posted my against the public plays here for years. I made a website detailing my contrarian sports investments.
This is what I posted 3/18/15 ...
The first four games have been played and the dogs have prevailed. It looks to be a very profitable tournament for the disciplined contrarian sports investor. All tournament games will be on television spread over a number of major networks. Men (mostly) will take days off from work to watch full days of basketball. Cinderellas will dance and the public will lose.TV, internet and mobile lives, and the explosive growth in social and collective tools available online for fantasy pools have all contributed to the three prong catalyst to flow your hard earned pay check into the accounts of the betting markets for major sports (we concentrate on basketball and football). The public bettor or social gambler typically reacts to the weekly news and action they catch on ESPN or some local sports station. Very similar to the financial markets you have your traders who react to the latest news and findings from a recent biotechnology firm report or mining operation with positive early test results; of course all paid and strategically positioned by their investor relations and PR firms for publicity and hype, which many traders buy into…and lose. Public money helps bookmakers drive their decisions on where and how to place the lines and odds. There is a lot of thought that goes into lines for March Madness. The games are littered with traps. Tournament officials are making it easy for us. Seedings. The betting public loves to bet higher seeds and flock to them in droves. We contrarian investors often get a multi point present every time we bet a dog. It's march madness baby. Let's Dance.
NBA Record for the week so far (March 16-18th) : 7-2
NCAA Tournament Record for the week: 2-0
NIT Tournament Record for the week: 8-3
MARKETS: Stocks were up over the last three days. After poor results in the prior week traders watched the markets rally. This week the SPY has risen over 5 points to close at 2010.46. The DIA rose over 4 points to end this week (the last three days) at 180.36.
After the harsh last week for against the public players the above results feel very very good. Across the board ATP plays came in big time. It's worth mentioning the miniscule amount of public favorites that covered in the NIT tourney. Definitely something to pay attention to next year. Both against the public plays in the first four were winners as well. Even the NBA paid off contrarian investors. Loving It.
NCAA Tournament plays for 3/19/15
Harvard +10 .... only getting 20% of the love.
Georgia State +9 ......27% of the public gives them a chance
LSU +2 ... 32% ... upset alert
Northeastern +21%
Butler +2 .. 33% ... Butler should be the favorite.
Cincy +1 ... 31%
UAB +14 ... 26%
UCLA +4 ... 29%
Texas Southern +23.5 ... 32%
That's a lot of action. We aren't going to bet all these games. Just pick our favorites of the bunch. In addition we'll do a couple of parlays.
Can't wait until tomorrow. The next few days are my favorite of the year. So much action and opportunity. So much money to be made.

If you didn't notice... every single against the grain pick Won. That's a 335-1 parlay. 10$ into 3350$
You can visit my blog.. it's free .. www.383billion.com

[hugh]

I'm doing DAILY BLog posts! I'll post them in this thread or you can visit my site. I'm trying to find the correlation between the financial markets and the sports betting markets!
What a day for contrarian sports investors. The ugliness of last week in a distant memory as we went a perfect 9 for 9 on day one of the round of 64. If you had parlayed the 9 games we picked you would have turned a 10$ investment into 3,350$. That's right... a 335/1 pay day according to Bovada and Five Dimes. Cinderellas didn't just dance today.. they sashayed into the win column and some very big names fell to the gritty upstarts. Major cable networks like ESPN, TBS, TNT, and TruTV herd the betting public into betting on big name favorites. When the general betting populace hears "experts" picking a team time and time again it's hard for them not to bet on that team. This creates a "herd mentality" at the betting windows (or on bookie cell phones). Herd behavior happens in the sports betting markets all the time. A person thinks that is everyone is doing something or picking one team it is the right thing to do or bet on. the common rationale that it's unlikely that such a large group could be wrong. After all, even if you are convinced that a particular idea or course or action is irrational or incorrect, you might still follow the herd, believing they know something that you don't. This is especially prevalent in situations in which an individual has very little experience. This is especially prevalent during March Madness. During no other time of the year does more dumb, herd following, money enter into the betting market. During my years trading the stock market I learned that dumb money is very good at buying at the top and panicking/selling at the bottom. Just like in the financial markets.. the general public consistently loses betting on sports.
NCAA Tournament Record for the Week: 11-0
NBA Record for the Week: 7-2
-------------------------------------------
Tournament Contrarian Investments for 3/20/15
All games are televised. All games are big. All games have significant public money thrown at them.
Georgia +6 ........getting 29% of public money
Valpo +4.5 ......... 33% .. I expect the public betting percentage to be closer to 25% by game time. The most obvious trap on the board tomorrow.
Coastal Carolina +20... 32% ..
Oklahoma ST. +2 ..... 32% love how they match up against the Ducks
Not as many investments as yesterday but still enough action to make it a fun and *profitable* day. Going to parlay everything too to see if lightning strikes twice.

[hugh]

Yesterday wasn't a good day for us, but it wasn't a disaster either. After the day we had on March 19th I am pretty happy with a 2-2 record on day two of the round of 64. The public went for the dogs yesterday and there really weren't many opportunities for us at the betting window. Today on day 1 of the round of 32 it's even worse. I only see one profitable opportunity to take advantage of. Ratings for this year's tournament are some of the highest in its history. Even though most brackets were destroyed on Thursday people (the general public) are still watching a wagering on the games. The amount of bets placed (as measured by sportsbookspy.com) is extremely high. Even the least popular games are being bet heavy. So far ESPN and the other networks have steered the general public and dumb money in the wrong direction. This is not a new thing. It happens each and every day and is how the 383 billion dollar game is. The general public are like aimless wanderers. There was a study done by researchers at Leeds University who performed a series of experiments where volunteers were told to randomly walk around a large hall without talking to each other. A select few were then given more detailed instructions on where to walk. The scientists discovered that people end up blindly following one or two people who appear to know where they’re going.The published results showed that it only takes 5% of what the scientists called “informed individuals” to influence the direction of a crowd of around 200 people. The remaining 95% follow without even realizing it. The general public is the 95%; the ones who aimlessly walk up to the betting window and put down that Duke -35 bet because an "expert on ESPN said "Duke is going to blow them out!" In the study and in the betting markets the participants didn’t/don't realize they were being led by others. Unfortunately, that “follow the herd” mentality isn’t always beneficial.
In this game of percentages the public always loses in the long run.
NCAA Tournament Bet Record 13-2
Play for 3/21/15
Butler +4 ... the only contrarian investment of the day.. getting 32% of public money
------------------------------------
NBA Weekly Record 7-2
Plays for 3/21
Pistons +3 .... 25%
Portland Trailblazers +3.5........30%
Utah Jazz +9...... 33%
--------------------------------
Markets
DIA ... +1.62 (.9%) to 180.96
SPY ...... +1.85 (.89%) to 210.41
VIX ... -1.05 (-7.46%) to 13.02
The markets rallied this week and the betting markets were kind to us. It seems like when the financial markets are green, public bettors are feeling green.

[hugh]

con·trar·i·ankənˈtre(ə)rēən,kän-/nounnoun: contrarian; plural noun: contrarians1.1. a person who opposes or rejects popular opinion, especially in stock exchange dealing.
adjectiveadjective: contrarian1.1. opposing or rejecting popular opinion; going against current practice."the comment came more from a contrarian disposition than moral conviction"
After that banner day with us contrarians hitting 9 for 9 there haven't been too many opportunities. Of course we had the Butler win and then yesterday there may have been an opportunity with West Virginia, but for the most part the general public is playing the dogs. Whatever the public is doing we go the other way. We did very well for the week going 8-4 on the NBA and 14-2 betting on the NCAA tournament.
The stock market rose this week to go along with our stupendous record. The DJIA rose 378.41 points (1.71%) to close at 18,127.72. The S+P 500 rose 2.39% to close at 2108.07. The VIX lost around 3$ to close at 13.02. We should talk a bit about the VIX at this juncture. There is a pretty important pattern that has developed over the past couple years with the VIX and the DIA/SPY. When the markets rise, the VIX (S/P 500 Volatility Index) goes down. The opposite is also true. When stocks drop the VIX almost always pops. What does this have to do with the sports betting markets? The VIX is a measure of fear in the market, and when stocks are green traders start to feel confident and are more likely to take risks. When market volatility and fear is high traders are more likely to sit on there hands and be cautious. In poker they call playing with your heart and not your head "going on tilt." This also occurs in sports and in finance. On days when the markets are green and there is no fear/volatility , traders and bettors alike are more likely to go on tilt and play big public favorites. When traders and bettors are feeling the most confident they chase those sexy stocks just like they chase those sexy favorites at the betting window. This opens the door for profitable opportunities for the contrarian investor.
There are no NCAA tournament games until Thursday and Friday but that doesn't mean there aren't any basketball games to target. America has a basketball addiction right now and for the next three days the NIT tournament and NBA provides them with their fix. There are a couple of games we're going to target today.
NCAABB NIT
Tulsa -3 .... only grabbing 27% of public money (ESPN)
NBA
Washington +11.5 ...... 32%
Indiana +1 ..... 32%
Hoping to start the new week off right.

[hugh]

We're missing the NCAA Tournament. Our contrarian plays on the NIT and the NBA were nothing short of disastrous. We went 0-1 on the NIT betting on Tulsa and 0-3 on the NBA to begin our week. Don't get discouraged. Contrarian sports investing is a game is of runs. We'll have down days and then come roaring back. The only way to lose at being a contrarian investor is changing your strategy (ie going on tilt and start betting heavily bet favorites) . Stick with your guns and you will make money. Stay committed. One philosophy on why this works is that the public loves to bet on favorites and overs. After all, most people get into sports betting because they are sports fans. And what fans don’t like great teams and scoring? With this knowledge, sportsbooks can shade lines against favorites and overs, knowing that many bettors will play these sides anyway. Picks that are especially popular with the public will also move the line by a half-point or more, offering even more value to those fading the public. No trend lasts forever, and there is always the possibility that the market will adjust. But as the sports betting industry stands now, being on the side going against the public is the only consistently profitable place to be. I’ve yet to meet a sports investor and bettor who has not once in their lifetime made a sports bet on a bad line because of the amazing performance they say a team or player made in a game the night before. Most newbies take this unfortunately losing approach.
There aren't many opportunities for us today. The only televised game that looks like a good investment is Spurs-Mavs. The Mavericks are 3.5 point underdogs in this all Texas contest. They're pulling in around 30% of public money and are our only play of the day.

[hugh]

The fundamental principle that we contrarian investors carry with us on a daily basis is we go against the crowd. We are warriors of level headedness and are disciplined when we place our wagers. We don't get caught up in the crowd. We swim against the sea of popular opinion.
Crowd psychology, also known as mob psychology, is a branch of social psychology. Social psychologists have developed several theories for explaining the ways in which the psychology of a crowd differs from and interacts with that of the individuals within it.
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind is a book authored by Gustave Le Bon that was first published in 1895. In the book, Le Bon claims that there are several characteristics of crowd psychology: "impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of sentiments, and others..." Le Bon claimed "that an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd soon finds himself - either in consequence of magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from some other cause of which we are ignorant - in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer."
The hypnotizers are the talking heads on ESPN and the other major networks. The hypnotized are the ones who listen to their "advice" and act upon it. The ones who get caught up in emotion and play with their hearts; not their heads.
There is only one contrarian investment on today's docket. We're taking Old Dominion -1.5. ODU is only pulling in 19% of the general public's money. They have only lost once at home. We will be hitting this game hard.

[hugh]

There were not any good contrarian investments on yesterday's docket, but there are a couple of fantastic opportunities today. Sometimes it's hard to go an entire day or two, three days ect... without placing a bet. However, only the disciplined win at this game. Those who do not succumb to the most addictive human emotion GREED are the ones who consistently make money. According to several academics greed, like love, has the power to send a chemical rush through our brains that forces us to put aside our common sense and self-control and thus provoke changes in our brains and body. Greed can make us irrational and in some cases down right insane. In this blog we are trying to find the correlation between greed and fear in the stock market and the sports betting market. One of the best available and accepted tools to measure stock market volatility is CBOE Volatiliy Index, In other words, VIX can be defined as a sentiment ratio of Wall Street’s fear or greed gauge. Market reversals are an inevitable result of excessively bullish or bearish sentiment (greed or fear) and it’s that “emotion” that causes the majority of traders to enter positions on the same side of a market at roughly the same point in time—which in turn leads to a price reversal (in financial markets). The sports betting markets work in the same way as the financial markets. If a significantly high percentage of the general public is betting on a team/spread ,a price reversal is going to take place. It's time to go the other way and not get caught up in greed. It's time to bet against the public.
There are two contrarian investments for us today! On the week our contrarian sports plays are about even. We're 1-2 on the NBA and 1-1 on NCAABB.
We're betting on two Sweet 16 games today.
Oklahoma +2 .... only getting 23% of public money!
Utah +5..... getting only 22% of public money.
These are two upsets in the making. Count on it.

[Dark Horse]

I never heard a contrarian use the word contrarian so many times. They usually just say thank you, and their attitude is FU. If I may be so contrarian, I'd say you have wannabe tout written all over you.

[tucker6]

pardon my contrarion post, but why why should I use your services when you are 1-2 on NBA and 1-3 on NCAA picks? I can fail just as easily without fees.

[Clocker]

I never heard a contrarian use the word contrarian so many times.

And I would think that the essence of being a contrarian would be not to let anyone else know what you are doing.

[hugh]

This Blog and the website in general will always be free. They were designed to help small and large bettors follow the sports betting markets from a contrarian perspective. There is no black box in this game, and patterns that are here one day may be gone the next. For now though the strategy of betting against the public has worked and is working. I didn't create this blog and website to toot my own horn. I don't want readers to think I'm some sort of tout. I've spent years in the financial markets and started day trading stocks and options in 1998. I went broke a couple of times and learned a couple of hard lessons along the way. The number one lesson: the public always loses. Take the popular show "Mad Money" hosted by legendary scammer Jim Cramer. Almost all of the stocks mentioned by him during his hour go down the next day. They experience a brief pop when moms and pops buy at the market's open and then fall. "Experts" from investment firms like Merrill and JP Morgan come on CNBC shows and give buy recommendations on stocks they are actively unloading. In the sports world shows like "Pardon the Interruption" and "Around the Horn" drive the public into the same kind of "investments." In truth the only person I'm writing these blog posts for is ME. I'm studying the correlation between the sports and financial markets. Every week I'll be keeping track of how the stock/VIX markets do and how that relates to the against the public plays I'm targeting. My hypothesis is that patterns will develop and profitable opportunities will arise. I've already begun noticing a certain seasonality in the sports game. In a year I'll be looking back at these posts (made permanent by my website) . I will be able to see clearly how contrarian plays went during a certain week; where to bet big and when to stay on the sidelines. This is an investment of my time... the future payoffs could be huge. Play along with me. Laugh at me. I don't care.
For the last week the plays detailed here didn't do very well. There weren't that many opportunities for us at the betting window. Since that first day during the round of 64, when we went 9-9, the public played most of the dogs. There simply weren't very many games on which the public backed a favorite more than 67%. We went 1-3 on college ball and 1-2 on the pros. Perhaps we'll be ready next year for day one of second round, and then go on a short vacation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index each fell every day this week before edging higher on Friday. The four-day sell-off marked the S&P 500's longest slide since mid-January. We've definitely noticed a trend here. When the market rises our betting strategy makes money. When the markets decline we either don't have many opportunities or the against the public or our doesn't pay off. That said, the VIX actually rose from 13--> 15 on the week.
A monthly recap will be done on Tuesday.

[hugh]

Last week we didn't have that much action. The action that we did have was not good and we had a losing record on college and professional basketball. Today is the start of a new weekly journey. Financial markets were weak last week, but today went off to the races. The DJIA rose 267 points (almost 1.5%) and the S&P 500 climbed 25.45 points (1.22%) to close at 2086.24. Why does this matter? There is a significant correlation between financial markets and the sports betting market. Both markets are trend driven and are aggregates of human emotion. When something happens in one market it often reflected in the other. In the past few years, against the public betting has been most profitable when the stock market was strong. Blame it on euphoria. Emotional investing and betting can occur in an individual stock/team just as well as it can permeate the entire stock/betting market. Euphoria is the emotion that drove the price of technology stock Apple higher by about 75 percent in a few months, so that its market cap neared a trillion dollars. Eventually, investors started paying more attention to the company's financial fundamentals than their feelings and Apple's stock began a sharp descent of about 10 percent. The Apple example is a micro example in a macro world. When large indexes (DJIA, S&P 500, Nasdaq) worth trillions of dollars move in a certain direction they tell a story; the collective emotional story of millions of traders/investors. The daily closing prices of the major averages tell us how traders and the world are feeling on a given day or week. We can use market data to help us navigate the sports betting world. Euphoria, or strength, in the world of finance usually means the public will bet heavily on favorites; opening the door for against the grain opportunities.
Most investors/bettors are intelligent people, neither irrational nor insane. But behavioral finance tells us we are also normal, with brains that are often full and emotions that are often overflowing. Human beings are full of emotion and attachment. The only way to abandon emotion and attachment is to think like a machine. No matter what happens. This is how the against the public betting strategy works. Never getting emotional. Never going on tilt. Never chasing favorites because PTI or other pundits say it's the right thing to do.
We might have down days and weeks but the only way to make money in the long run is stick to your guns. Never get emotional because a game is on TV, and you need a wager to make it more entertaining.
There is one ATP Play for the day...
A televised game on NBATV.... Pheonix Suns +8.5 ... getting 30% of the public betting money.

[Dave Schwartz]

Mr. Hugh,

Might I respectfully suggest that you locate the "Enter" key on your keyboard?

Your writing style is a bit daunting.


Regards,
Dave Schwartz

[Dark Horse]

And I would think that the essence of being a contrarian would be not to let anyone else know what you are doing.

If everybody did it, it wouldn't be very contrarian anymore, would it?

I guess some people think contrarian is nothing more than going against the public. While there are cases where this is profitable, I would prefer to see contrarians as those who have elevated their approach or thinking beyond that of the public. This enables them to see when the public is wrong, but in no way is that public a guiding force; positive or negative.

The fact that someone would actually describe himself in that fashion suggests he's taking the first steps on the path of independent thought.

[thaskalos]

If everybody did it, it wouldn't be very contrarian anymore, would it?

I guess some people think contrarian is nothing more than going against the public. While there are cases where this is profitable, I would prefer to see contrarians as those who have elevated their approach or thinking beyond that of the public. This enables them to see when the public is wrong, but in no way is that public a guiding force; positive or negative.

The fact that someone would actually describe himself in that fashion suggests he's taking the first steps on the path of independent thought.

Blindly betting against the public in sports is similar to betting on the "don't" at the craps table. Just because the majority of the crapshooters bet with the dice, and usually lose...doesn't mean that you'll fare any better by betting the opposite way. The juice cuts both sides down to size...

[Hoofless_Wonder]

...According to several academics greed, like love, has the power to send a chemical rush through our brains that forces us to put aside our common sense and self-control and thus provoke changes in our brains and body. Greed can make us irrational and in some cases down right insane....

This seems pretty truthful.

As for "contrarian" investing, the principle is simple enough and can be a powerful factor when handicapping or making a trade. The catch is that it's difficult to make it the only and complete basis for all decisions - especially considering that determining the "public's" fancy is often as much art as science. Simply fading the stats posted by some of the online books and sports-betting sites ain't gonna cut it.

[hugh]

For the past two weeks we've been monitoring the sports betting markets. There have been little to no opportunities for our betting strategy of betting against the public.Going on a vacation for the two weeks after the NCAABB championship game to the start of the NBA playoffs seems like the way to go. For us, the only game in town for the past two weeks was the NBA. Betting on this market was made difficult to impossible due to the fact we didn't know what team was going to show up. Some teams rested their players, and game time decisions was plentiful. It was just too unpredictable to grind out a decent profit. That is why we here at 383billion.com have been on the sidelines. We're back however and ready to go to battle on the NBA playoffs. Every game is on TV and for the past 4 days ratings have been through the roof. There is huge interest in these games and most are ripe for contrarian investing.
The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. This is almost a cliche now, but every word is true. Studies have shown that the closer a casino is to a poor population the poorer that population becomes. Lower classes love to gamble! A research team from the University at Buffalo and SUNY Buffalo State has conducted studies that offer new evidence of the exploitative effects of casino gambling on lower-income Americans. A large-scale survey of adults, conducted by the Buffalo group in 2000, found that lower socioeconomic and minority groups who visited casinos had more gambling-related problems, including financial difficulties. Researchers have come to a striking conclusion: Casino gambling had by far the most harmful effects on people at the lower end of the income ladder. There is no betting market more exploitative on the lower class than sports betting.
Every day Joes like to drink, watch sports, and bet on those sports. It almost becomes a release or a reward after a tough day at work. Getting into the betting market is easier than ever now. Online sports books are ubiquitous and anybody can be a bookie! It's easy to set up your very own local sports book using readily available software. Companies charge small time (or large time) bookies around 10$ as "pay per head" for each person they take wagers from. There have never been so many idiots in the betting marketplace.
We :ThmbUp: love to drink, gamble, and bet on sports, but we don't bet with our hearts like the majority of bettors out there. We don't have favorite teams, or if we do we don't let that dictate our moves/bets. We talk a lot about the similarities between investing in the stock markets and gambling on sports. Just like in wagering on sports, most people lose when they enter the stock market.
Dictionary.com:
Gamble: "To bet on an uncertain outcome, as of a contest. To take a risk in the hope of gaining an advantage or a benefit."
Invest: "To commit money or capital in order to gain a financial return."
The distinction isn't clear. In investing, are you not betting on an uncertain outcome? Are you not taking a risk in the hope of gaining an advantage or benefit? In gambling, are you not committing money? Are you not doing it in order to gain a financial return?
In reality, thereis no real difference between gambling and investing. There are hundreds of systems out there for trading/investing in stocks, but there are not as many systems for investing in the sports marketplace. We believe that the "high tech" algorithms that are dominating the financial markets are akin to contrarian sports investing. There is no better way to grind out regular and consistent profits.
Love this quote: "Gambling is a form of a stupidity tax - it takes money away from people too dumb to deserve it, and transfers it to folks who are smarter than they are."
NBA Playoffs wagering:
Saturday 4/18: 1-0
Sunday 4/19: 1-1
Monday 4/20: 1-1
Tuesday Plays:
Boston +11.5 @ 32%
We don't bet on NHL or the MLB. Just College Football, NBA, NCAABB, and the NFL.