Matched Betting ROI – Return on Investment

I’ve been away from home and have no profit report although there was a little from a risk free game, I will include it all next week when we will have a milestone report!

For now, I’ve been reading way too much again!

Stock markets collapse, savings accounts pay 1% if you’re lucky, other investments may promise 3-5% if you tie your money up, i.e. promise not to withdraw it..ever

I have to think about ROI (return on investment) in  most everything I do, most people do actually, time/management some may call it..but for some reason I didn’t actually apply it to this Matched betting lark, it’s a hobby!

You’ve all heard the stories about selling your worldly “useless” goods on eBay, and doing car-boots (sticks hand up!!) and cashing in.. well don’t get me wrong that is fab but has anyone ever asked you to “quantify” your time versus reward for either of these pursuits.. I didn’t think so

What I am doing is no different I can put in loads of time one week (equivalent to photoing, making ebay listings, packing cars, standing in a freezing car park for 5 hours..) versus 3-5 minutes the next (no equivalent) and both of those weeks I might make £50-£100 if I’m lucky.. what I do not have is listing fees, postage fees, or car boot rental space fees, no overheads. My profit is my own and my time is mostly my own too, and I get to follow sport!.. I can’t get to carboot sales on a Sunday right now because small child needs taxi-ing somewhere or another.

Also I’m not sure I could project the scary figure I have realised in the last 8 months from buying/selling goods?

I started this wee project on 11/07/12 with a “float” of £350 – I have since “repaid” that float back to whence it came and the figure I present to you today of £1915 is pure profit that is an ROI, in 8 months, of nearly 550%.. I mean OMG if someone, anyone, had promised me that 8 months ago.. “hand over £350 now and I’ll give you back £1915 in 8 months time”..  I would have laughed  my little socks off before walking away!! and I imagine you sane lot would have too..

but it’s true that is what has happened

ROI is and always has been subjective, it is a phrase that is banded around a lot , it’s a buzz word (maybe more a trendy acronym?)  The truth is that the context is more important than the phrase.. I read today that “successful bettors” should be lucky to make an ROI of 16% PA (per annum). Now that is quite likely true for a large fund – and is still way better than any savings institution will promise – and I have no doubts at all that I cannot compound the success I’ve had in the last 8 months, much less transfer it to an annual ROI figure of that size! – much to my disgust as I’m a numbers person, to me this is like the folding paper exercise.

No matter how big it is right now my ROI figure is not going to scale (like paper that won’t fold more than 7 or 8 times.. which btw is now somewhat debunked, but still won’t scale to infinity though.. ). The “16% P.A.  is the best smoothed ROI you can expect”. I agree on very investments.. Just like some financial funds will over perform and some will under.  I would like to think that this figure is already is being “debunked” by “sole traders”, and that these “smoothed” figures are from people/organizations who “raced” to the top, followed get rich quick schemes, employed, and managed, staff, in other words they gained “business” overheads and now they cannot make their large investments scale at the same pace as previous without very many different trading systems (a varied portfolio)… and when they were reporting superlative figures like mine above or just relating their experiences (or trying to sell some scam betting system) – they were not thinking about the whole picture from a “mere mortal handling their own investment decisions” perspective any more – They were just showing great returns that no-one quite knows how to interpret.. I know *individual* people who have survived stock market crashes and dot-com bubbles without having  hundreds/thousands wiped off their balances simply by having a varied portfolio, not relying on managers.. so until this all comes out the other side I remain skeptical that this will scale forever, it will however with a bit of work remain feasible as long as the investment institutions won’t pay interest.. for now I know my figures are not lying.

Basically, I’m thinking there is not enough enough money in the world stock or betting markets to ensure any person/fund turns over a consistently high profit all the time (unless you are already a politician of course!) and while I’m able to stake £50-£100 a time for now.. that will not scale to £500 or £10,000, there’s just not enough liquidity in the markets.. which is sad, but it is what’s happened in the global financial markets anyway.. no matter which way you look at this remember that the financial institutions over promised and then don’t make (or fall for) the same mistake!!

Lots of lessons.