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A Story About Wall Street, Gambling, and Baseball (Not Necessarily in That Order)
Dutton
March 2013
On Sale: March 7, 2013
368 pages ISBN: 0525953647 EAN: 9780525953647 Kindle: B008BM4NRK Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
An ex-Wall Street trader improved on Moneyball's
famed sabermetrics to place bets that would beat the Vegas
odds on Major League Baseball games--with a 41 percent
return in his first year. Trading Bases explains how
he did it.
After the fall of Lehman Brothers,
Joe Peta needed a new employer. He found a new job in New
York City but lost that, too, when an ambulance mowed him
down as he crossed the street on foot. In search of a way to
cheer himself up while he recuperated in a wheelchair, Peta
started watching baseball again, as he had growing up.
That's when inspiration hit: Why not apply his outstanding
risk-analysis skills to improve on sabermetrics, the method
made famous by Moneyball--and beat the only market in
town, the Vegas betting line? Why not treat MLB like the
S&P 500?
In Trading Bases, Peta shows how
to subtract luck--in particular "cluster luck," as he puts
it--from a team's statistics to best predict how it will
perform in the next game and over the whole season. His
baseball "hedge fund" returned an astounding 41 percent in
2011-- with daily volatility similar to funds he used to
trade for. Peta takes readers to the ballpark in San
Francisco, trading floors and baseball bars in New York, and
sports books in Vegas, all while tracing the progress of his
wagers. Far from
writing a dry, do-it-yourself guidebook, Peta weaves a story
that is often humorous, and occasionally touching; the topic
may be "Big Data" but it's as entertaining as a Bill Simmons
column. Trading Bases is all about the love of critical
reasoning, trading cultures, risk management, and baseball.
And not necessarily in that order.
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