Trading Bases: How a Wall Street Trader Made a Fortune Betting on Baseball

by Joe Peta

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101609651
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/07/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,000,363
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

After earning an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Joe Peta was a Wall Street market maker and hedge fund stock trader for fifteen years, but he was a sports bettor for even longer. A lifelong baseball fan, he lives in San Francisco with his wife and two daughters.

Table of Contents

Part 1 The Model

1 Manny Sanguillén Couldn't Find His Car Keys 3

2 How I Discovered Cluster Luck 15

3 Cluster Luck Quantified 33

4 Players' Performance Projected 47

5 "By October, I'm a Dinosaur-I Need to Know Today!" 67

6 Betting on Baseball: a Primer 81

Part 2 The Launch

7 Bettor Up! Opening Day for the Model 101

8 The Sanctity of Future Earnings 111

9 The Games Progress 137

10 The Sweet Sound of Familiar Voices 149

11 A Financial Field of Dreams 163

12 Taken Out to the Ball Game 177

13 First Quarter Results 187

14 The Mental Discomfort of Being Behind 195

15 June and the Vexing Minnesota Twins 211

16 What Las Vegas Can Learn from the Trading Floor 217

17 Pete's Tavern Revisited 233

18 Clinging to Profits in July 243

Part 3 Success

19 Focusing on the Wrong Data 253

20 "Markets Can Remain Irrational…" 271

21 The Weighting Is the Hardest Part 277

22 A Winning End to the Season 289

23 What Does Work in the Playoffs? 299

24 Launching a Fund 313

25 "Hey, Dad, Wanna Have a Catch?" 325

Epilogue: A Summer in Vegas 333

Acknowledgments 351

Index 359

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Fascinating…reads like a mash up of Liar’s Poker and Moneyball.”—Publishers Weekly

“[A] swaggering story from frantic stock trader to professional sports bettor....Even casual baseball fans could learn from it. Serious fans should slurp it up like ballpark beer.”—Los Angeles Times
 
“He reminds me of Nate Silver—he’s able to blend different worlds (in this case, baseball and finance) using his intense knowledge of each to give us a very entertaining read.”—Play-by-Play Announcer for the San Francisco Giants and ESPN National Sportscaster Dave Flemming

“Peta created a reliable system for beating Vegas odds throughout the 2011 Major League season…but it’s clear he loves the game as much as the winnings. Moreover, he asks a number of salient questions, such as: How can businesses on Wall Street and beyond apply thinking used by baseball sabermetricians to strengthen their own organizations? The answers, and how Peta arrived at them, make for great reading.”—Booklist
 

Editorial Reviews

Fascinating…reads like a mash up of Liar’s Poker and Moneyball.”—Publishers Weekly

“[A] swaggering story from frantic stock trader to professional sports bettor....Even casual baseball fans could learn from it. Serious fans should slurp it up like ballpark beer.”—Los Angeles Times
 
“He reminds me of Nate Silver—he’s able to blend different worlds (in this case, baseball and finance) using his intense knowledge of each to give us a very entertaining read.”—Play-by-Play Announcer for the San Francisco Giants and ESPN National Sportscaster Dave Flemming

“Peta created a reliable system for beating Vegas odds throughout the 2011 Major League season…but it’s clear he loves the game as much as the winnings. Moreover, he asks a number of salient questions, such as: How can businesses on Wall Street and beyond apply thinking used by baseball sabermetricians to strengthen their own organizations? The answers, and how Peta arrived at them, make for great reading.”—Booklist

From the Publisher