Random Musings

Hey guys, sorry I haven’t been around here much lately, but I’ve been pretty busy in real life. My Grandpa has been in the hospital. I’ve been busy with work, as well as preparing for the new job, which is taking much more time than I would have first thought. And to be honest with you guys, I kinda wanted a break from writing for a little while. Now I’m back, and treating you to this post of random thoughts about a paragraph long. You’re welcome.

***

BP cut the dividend today, to zero for the foreseeable future. I predicted this back when I wrote about BP back a week or so ago. This was basically a no-brainer for the folks over there. As for the 20 billion liability fund, I suspect the number will be even higher once all is said and done. Once again, I want nothing to do with BP for the next little while.

***

I’d just like to thank Nokia for issuing a profit warning just two days after I bought it. If I thought it was a buy at 9.55, it’s a screaming buy now. I still think Nokia will get its act together and be a nice returning stock. Other stocks I’m looking at are Theragenics, Alcoa, Menu Foods and Manulife. Stay tuned for analysis on each one of these.

***

I’m giving away a copy of Garth Turner’s new(ish) book soon, Money Road.  I’ve emailed Garth to see if he wants to plug the promotion on his blog as well, although I bet that isn’t very likely. After all, what author wants to encourage people to get a copy of their book for free?

***

I’m re-reading Alice Schroeder’s fantastic book on Warren Buffett. I also quite enjoyed Sh*t My Dad Says, which has absolutely nothing to do with business but is still worth your time.

***

Finally, I talked before about my quest to make money gambling on sports. Needless to say, thus far has been a giant failure with my imaginary bankroll down 15%. Although I’ve made some pretty foolish bets, I’ve come to the conclusion that the method I was using is crap. Instead, I’m trying the following strategies: (note, I use decimal odds because I find them much easier to figure out)

1. Betting on huge favorites in baseball. (odds of 1.4 and under) My strategy is if a crappy team that only wins 25-35% of their road games goes to play a good home team that wins 70-80% of their home games, then the home team is a huge favorite and would be expected to win at a higher rate than normal. You don’t get great odds, but who cares if you win 70% of the time.

2. Betting on huge favorites on just about anything. This experiment is where I bet on absolutely anything that has odds of 1.1 or less. These bets pay basically nothing, but if you can hit 19 out of 20, that’s profitable. So far this experiment has basically broken even.

3. Finding games (not prop bets) that pay odds of 1.25 and under for the winner. While there aren’t that many of these games, I believe that people bet too heavily on huge underdogs, leaving someone like me to try to win 80% of the games and eke out a small profit.

I’m not trying to make huge amounts of money. I just want to find an easy way to be a profitable gambler over time.

Be Sociable, Share!

•