Picking stocks is a tricky game and so is sports betting. With the NFL and NCAA football seasons only a few months away, we can analyze the professional sports-betting industry to better understand the complexities behind making money in the stock market.
Anybody who has traveled to Las Vegas, and bet on a sporting event, understands that simply choosing a game winner is not enough for a casino to pay you winnings. You also need to forecast how many points you think a certain team will win or lose by (i.e., the so-called “spread”). In the world of stocks, winning/losing is not measured by spreads but rather equities are measured by valuation (e.g., Price/Earnings or P/E ratios).
To make my point, here is a sports betting example from some years back:
Florida Gators vs. Charleston Southern Buccaneers: Without knowing a lot about the powerhouse Southern Buccaneers squad from South Carolina, 99% of respondents polled before the game are likely to unanimously select the winner as Florida – a consistently dominant, nationally ranked powerhouse program.
The tougher question becomes trickier if football observers are asked, “Will the Florida Gators win by more than 63 points?”(see picture below). Needless to say, although the Buccs kept it close in the first half, and only trailed by 42-3 at halftime, the Gators still managed to squeak by with a 62-3 victory. Importantly, if you had bet on this game and placed money on the Florida Gators, the overwhelming pre-game favorite, the 59 point margin of victory would have resulted in a losing wager. In order for Gator fans to win money, they would have needed Florida to win by 64 points.
If investing and sports betting were easy, everybody would do it. The reason sports betting is so challenging is due to very intelligent statisticians and odds-makers that create very accurate point spreads. In the investing world, a broad swath of traders, market makers, speculators, investment bankers, and institutional/individual investors set equally efficient valuations over the long-term.
The goal in investing is very similar to sports betting. Successful professionals in both industries are able to consistently identify inefficiencies and then exploit them. Inefficiencies occur for a bettor when point spreads are too high or low, while investors identify inefficient prices in the marketplace by shorting expensive stocks and buying cheap stocks (i.e., undervalued or overvalued).
To illustrate my point, let’s take a look at Sidoxia’s “Magic Quadrant“:
What Sidoxia’s “Magic Quadrant” demonstrates is a framework for evaluating stocks. By devoting a short period of time reviewing the quadrants, it becomes apparent fairly quickly that Stock A is preferred over Stock B, which is preferred over Stock C, which is preferred over Stock D.
In each comparison, the former is preferred over the latter because the earlier letters all have higher growth, and lower (cheaper) valuations. The same relative attractive relationships cannot be applied to stocks #1, #2, #3, and #4. Each successive numbered stock has higher growth, but in order to obtain that higher growth, investors must pay a higher valuation. In other words, Stock #1 has an extremely low valuation with low growth, while Stock #4 has high growth, but an investor must pay an extremely high valuation to own it.
While debating the efficiency of the stock market can escalate into a religious argument, I would argue the majority of stocks fall in the camp of #1, #2, #3, or #4. Or stated differently, you get what you pay for.
For example, investors are paying a much higher valuation (high P/E) for Tesla Motors, Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) for its rapid electric car growth vs. paying a much lower valuation (low P/E) for Pitney Bowes Inc (NYSE:PBI) for its more mature mail equipment business.
The real opportunities occur for those investors capable of identifying companies in the upper-left quadrant (i.e., Stock A) and lower-right quadrant (i.e., Stock D). If the analysis is done correctly, investors will load up on the undervalued Stock A and aggressively short the expensive Stock D. Sidoxia has its own proprietary valuation model (Sidoxia Holy Grail Ranking – SHGR or a.k.a. “SUGAR”) designed specifically to identify these profitable opportunities.
The professions of investing and sports betting are extremely challenging, however establishing a framework like Sidoxia’s “Magic Quadrants” can help guide you to find inefficient and profitable investment opportunities.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients hold positions in certain exchange traded funds (ETFs) and TSLA, but at the time of publishing, SCM had no direct position in PBI, or any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is the information to be relied on in making an investment or other decision.