Does the past always repeat itself? I guess if the exact same steps are taken and the same information is used to make decisions, then it probably does to some extent. But there are many outside influences that can’t be controlled and can affect the outcome in a way you weren’t expecting.
Trying to figure out what is going to happen today by using what happened yesterday seems like a reasonable thing to do. But is it really? If it was as easy as analyzing results from the past, then it should be easy to predict what will happen in the future.
But it isn’t. It never is. If it was, then sports betting and playing the stock market and investing in real estate would all be 100% guaranteed money-makers.
They are until they aren’t. Things have been going so well for so many years now that it’s easy to forget what it was like when interest rates were at 20% and if you were in debt or mortgaged to the hilt you were in big trouble.
When the bottom falls out, most of us are unprepared for it. Some people do adjust and make money even when others are losing everything. What’s the difference between the two?
Being able to adapt and to know that the only thing that is certain is that everything will change is a good start. Not expecting things to unfold the way they have before is vital. If you are always looking for things to be the same, you won’t notice when they begin to be different.
Following trends can be smart for a while, but sticking to them religiously is dangerous. It’s true in life, and it’s very true in sports.
Once a trend is identified, the market absorbs the information and any edge that may have existed is gone. It almost can be profitable playing against the trends because the probability of the opposite happening increases as time goes on.
If you start flipping a coin, and it lands on heads 8 times out of 10, do you want to bet real money on heads on flip number 11?
It’s what happens in sports all of the time. One team is 20-10 against the spread and seems like an automatic play. But that isn’t how the sports books operate. If you look at enough results over a long enough time, it is uncanny how these trends tend to revert to the mean. The likelihood of the percentages ending up closer to 50% means that somewhere along the way, that 20-10 is going to turn into 10-20.
Trends are somewhat useful when trying to figure out if you have an edge or not. Like anything else though, they shouldn’t be used as a single factor to make a decision. Trying to quantify betting down to one or two solo factors will never work in the long run.
The way to be successful is to find when the odds are in your favour. When the edge is there, make the play.
When you use all of the information that is available to you from the past, and you put it together and analyze the chances of the past repeating itself or not, then you can move ahead with some confidence that you are on the right side.