Originally Posted by
Jupiter333
All the stock market guys talk about making a trading journal, writing down their thoughts ahead of the result of why they made a particular trade. If they have a system in place, they can compare their system to those plays they made outside of their system to compare the success of right versus left brained plays. Usually they find that those plays they made off the cuff, or using their gut don't perform as well as trades they have ironclad rules for. If that is the case, they can decide to lower the monetary value of their gut picks or eliminate them all together.
The idea of making a line out of what they've observed and comparing it to what Vegas puts up is interesting, if that works it means you're pretty astute. Obviously Vegas is mostly about evening the action out and not quantifying the actual performance differential in two teams, especially in pro sports. I've had some guys mention that they make a line out for the games being played two games in advance because the most recent result will skew the line too much. I may attempt to do that this year.