What does a Diversified (NFL) Portfolio Look Like?

Some say it’s all about the bottom line results, and while I agree, how you get there matters.  Why?  Because we are looking for repeatable, winning strategies, not sporadic or one-time victories.  Case in point.  If you invest $100,000 with me, and I return to you $200,000 in 4 months, doubling your money, you would likely be quite happy.  Would you give me the money again next time there is an opportunity?  What if you learned that I took your funds and put it all, in one shot, on one game – say the Super Bowl – for the win.  Would you still give me the funds again next time around?  As an alternative, what if I told you that your winnings came through a diversified, multi-week allocation into over 600 “micro” plays, of relatively equal levels.

Here are several types of Diversification that the NFL Portfolio system employs, all of which spread and mitigate risk, while providing the opportunity for true prognostication skills to show through:

  1. 3 Different Play Types – Lines, Totals and Teasers are all consistently utilized.
  2. All Games – There are 267 games in an NFL season, and they all must be picked.  This gives us not only a huge number of investment opportunities (ie. games) but also spreads those opps over 21 weeks (17 of which, the regular season, are really meaty).
  3. Balancing Out Biases – It is proven fact that these opposite forces are equal over the long haul.  Therefore, consistent biases towards one or the other set us up for failure.  We watch our tendencies and encourage movement towards balanced picking between – Favorite/Underdog, Home/Away, and Over/Under.
  4. Inter-Week Adjustments are opportunities to rebalance the Portfolio based on different start times for the games, for which a typical week has 5 (Thursday Night Football, Sunday “early games”, Sunday “late games”, Sunday Night Football and the famed Monday Night Football).

None of these forms of diversification necessarily guarantee winning weeks.  In fact, we accept the reality that not all weeks can be winners.  It is over the long haul of a 21 week season that true skill shows its worth.  And with 7 straight seasons under our belt, this system has proven itself with a 55% Winning Percentage on 4,352 plays (2,347 – 1,903 – 102 in terms of W-L-T).  If that is not statistically significant, in this business, there is not much that is.