Euro 2008 season

Fabio Capello impresses me. He's not the best speaker of English (although some would say better than the vast majority of Englishmen), but it always amazes me how charismatic he is in a language which is essentially his second language, as well as how quickly he was able to pick it up. He puts himself about too, giving interviews although they aren't the most comfortable for him or the interviewer. I guess there are universal football jokes like jokes about 9-1 formations and playing only 4-4-2.

I've been messing about on betfair.com, although I've recently stopped because I know that the inevitable forces of randomness will bring me down to banker's ruin, so I had to withdraw while I was ahead. The ability to bet as well as lay was very useful, and I like the way they had good reserves of data. I managed to make a few trades which covered themselves regardless of the outcome, but later i learnt that this was not exactly arbitrage, but subject to market timing risk. Basically, on Asian Handicap, a bet on the outcome is like a binary option which goes into the money, while a lay is a put option. So if you were to bet for odds of £2.14, and 12 hours later the odds have fallen to £2.00, then you could lay at that price and lock in your profit before the event. Of course, there's always the risk that the odds will rise further from £2.14, leaving you with an unhedged bet (which is still worth it's expected value). So, you still need to identify fair value. Arbitrage is also difficult to find across markets (e.g. a bet on the no goals market and correct score 0-0 is almost always identical, as is arbitrage between -0.5 AH and straight win markets.) To find arbitrage which clears the 5% commission is even harder.

Interestingly, there has been a jump in expectatations that the Fed will raise interest rates next month.


This is the Fed Funds implied probability chart lipjin sent me 2 weeks ago? Notice how there wasn't even a probability for an increase priced in. Ridiculous. You would have got a very good price.