How I Turned $1,000 into a Million Dollars in Real Estate ...

Just wanted to mention a few things about casino's--

It has been stated that odds don't change-
In blackjack they most definitely DO chage from hand to hand, depending on what cards are depleted.

The key is to know when the edge changes.
That is what card counting is all about.
It has been known from 1961 and was published by Professor Edward Thorpe in a book called Beat the Dealer.

There are many professional syndicates travelling around the world playing Blackjack fulltime, and it is well documented.

One of the most successful teams of all time was with Ken Uston--the Vice President of the San Francisco Stock Exchange in the 70's.

He chucked his job in after being taught by a high school drop out how to count cards. His 4.5 million dollars won in the 70's is documented in his book Million Dollar Blackjack. A film was made of his activities called the Big Player.

In roulette, there have been professional syndicates documented from the 1890'2 looking and playing biased roulette wheels.

Even jupiters casino on the Gold Coast has had biased wheel play against it.

Russell Barnhart has a fantasic book on the exploits of biased wheels in Beating the Wheel
and lists all the syndicates over the last hundred years that made a lot of money playing against biases.

Computers are also being used to predict the segment the ball will descend on....sort of like the orbiting descending formula's of Nasa.

Recently a Hungarian syndicate was expelled from the Sydney casino for computer play.

The first successful computers were used in the States by university physics students and is documented in The Eudaemonic Pie.

Poker is another game when the odds are changing depending on what has been played, and even linked poker machines/slot machines can give you an edge if the payout exceeds the odds as they can do if they are linked in a bank.

There are many ways to get an edge, and I havent revealed the mah jong syndicates that forced the Vegas casino's to stop offering the game.

Profit in uncertainty depends on odds AND payout.
Vaying either can provide a profitable situation if you know what you are looking for.

Going back to share markets--
I notice the best seller A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel has been reprinted and is available in bookshops at the moment.
The premise is that a blindfolded monkey throwing darts could pick a portfolio that would make the same as an expert fund because the stock market abides by the random walk scenario in statistics.

And in fact, the mass consesus of the public so closely prices a share correctly, that the experts cannot consistantly outperform the public.

The updated book shows that if you had bought shares in an INDEX FUND and held them, you would outperform by 50% most traders.
That is why indexed funds have become so popular--a basket of shares in the Dow or All Ordinaries or whatever is the norm in your country--outperforms virtually any other fund over the long term.
In other words, it is incredibly difficult to out perform the public.

This is a brilliant book and I highly recommend it.

The term used is an efficient /semi efficient market, and it states that most of the information is contained in the price.
This is also the case in horse racing.

In any country in the world, the probability of the horse winning is fairly accurately determined in its price. A 2-1 will win roughly that anywhere in the world, and has done that even 100 years ago.
In fact, many studies show the similarity of semi efficient markets of horse racing and shares.

Professor Ziemba http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/ziemba/
has written quite a few papers on this.

So I think it's fair to say, that for some people, there is always an edge if you can see it.
But it depends on price AND odds to give the Expected Value (ROI).

Cheers

Tom