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

(Paperback)

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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.

Reviews

Fascinatingreads like a mash up of Liars 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 Silverhes 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 seasonbut its 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

Author Bio

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.