Trading Bases: How a Wall Street Trader Made a Fortune Betting on Baseball Author: Joe Peta | Language: English | ISBN:
B008BM4NRK | Format: EPUB
Trading Bases: How a Wall Street Trader Made a Fortune Betting on Baseball Description
An ex–Wall Street trader improved on Moneyball’s famed sabermetrics and beat the Vegas odds with his own betting methods. Here is the story of how Joe Peta turned fantasy baseball into a dream come true. Joe Peta turned his back on his Wall Street trading career to pursue an ingenious—and incredibly risky—dream. He would apply his risk-analysis skills to Major League Baseball, and treat the sport like the S&P 500.
In
Trading Bases, Peta takes us on his journey from the ballpark in San Francisco to the trading floors and baseball bars of New York and the sportsbooks of Las Vegas, telling the story of how he created a baseball “hedge fund” with an astounding 41 percent return in his first year.
And he explains the unique methods he developed.
Along the way, Peta provides insight into the Wall Street crisis he managed to escape: the fragility of the midnineties investment model; the disgraced former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who recruited Peta; and the high-adrenaline atmosphere where million-dollar sports-betting pools were common.
- File Size: 1379 KB
- Print Length: 385 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0525953647
- Publisher: NAL (March 7, 2013)
- Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B008BM4NRK
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #26,970 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #2
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Puzzles & Games > Gambling > Sports - #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Baseball > Statistics - #12
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Investing > Stocks
- #2
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Puzzles & Games > Gambling > Sports - #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Baseball > Statistics - #12
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Investing > Stocks
Trading Bases is an appealing mix of memoir, baseball stats, and gambling strategy. By combining the elements, author Joe Peta has managed to make a book that could have been too detailed for anyone but the most dedicated baseball fan or gamblers, into a narrative that reaches beyond those groups. Peta's amiable style is also a real plus -- this could easily have been another ego-driven story about the wonderfulness of a former Wall Street insider and his financial brilliance. Instead, Peta manages to convey his success and chops without coming across as what Michael Lewis called a BSD in
Liar's Poker.
Be warned however, that if you are hoping for a black box method to riches or a sure-fire formula to instant wealth, you won't find it here. Peta is a huge baseball fan, and doesn't mind spending hours every day poring over statistics and crunching numbers. He also is deeply into odds and probabilities. If you are too, then there are enough graphs and charts in the book to make your mouth water. Peta has found a way not to beat the odds, but to make sure you only bet when the odds are in your favor. It takes a lot of time and math, and if you aren't seriously interested in baseball and numbers, this isn't the plan for you.
As a fun read though, if you just zip past the charts and formulas, there's an engaging story here by an author that knows his stuff and still seems like a nice guy.
TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE VOICE
Joe Peta seemed to have it made, landing a very lucrative job with a Japanese investment bank on Wall Street. Unfortunately, fate dealt him a bad hand - or in this case, a badly injured leg - after an out-of-control ambulance put the pedestrian in a wheel chair for an extended period of time, and ultimately out of that very lucrative job; just like that.
As Peta was recuperating, he would immerse himself in the latest Baseball Prospectus for hours on end, to take his mind off his plight; at least for a while. One day he had a brainstorm - he would apply his analytical knowledge of baseball, crunch the numbers, and develop a model for predicting with a relatively high level of probability, how the games themselves would play out. He was going to beat Las Vegas; not an easy proposition, but one that ultimately paid a very nice annual return - 41% to be exact.
As Peta's engaging tale unfolds, he walks the reader through the various formulas for predicting certain outcomes in MLB, and how luck - good or bad -sometimes comes into play in making things unpredictable. The baseball sabermetric community will love this book, as will anyone who likes to gamble a bit, or figure out what's going to happen on Wall Street.
Of course, the usual disclaimer applies here: *The results were attained by a trained professional. Your results may vary.
By Larry Underwood
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