MAFL 2010 : Round 27 Results (GF 2.0)

If MARS Ratings are to be believed, the right team won on Saturday.

In winning so emphatically, Collingwood lifted its MARS Rating by 3.7 points to finish the season rated 1,055.4, which rates it above the Geelong of 2009 (1,044.5) but below the Geelongs of 2008 (1,065.9) and 2007 (1,058.3). Prior to that, the only teams with a higher end-of-season MARS Rating since 1999 were the Lions of 2002 (1,056.2) and the Dons of 2000 (1,072.7).

The following graphic shows the end-of-season ratings for every team over the seasons 1999 to 2010.

The Pies' victory more than recompensed all still-active Investors for what they lost last weekend. The Recommended Portfolio rose by 1.9% and finished the season down by just 5.1%, while MIN #017's Portfolio rose by 5.3% to end the season down by 40.1%. MIN #002's Portfolio, which was 100% weighted to the Shadow Fund, lost 28%.

(A final reconciliation of Fund performance uncovered a discrepancy of 0.7% in favour of the Recommended Portfolio. This has been reflected in the figure above.)

Both the Portfolios that were active during the Finals made money over these 5 weeks, as you can see in the following graphic.

Another couple of weeks of Finals and you have to wonder if the Recommended Portfolio might finally have broken through into profitability. If any of you are stock markets chartists you might have a view on this - please let me know.

A look at the round-by-round view for each Portfolio shows that it was Rounds 8 and 13 that did much of the damage to all Portfolios, though Round 20 also wasn't kind to MIN #002's Portfolio and MIN #017 could have done without Round 7.

Here's the final dashboard for 2010.

Four of the six MAFL Funds wound up making a profit this year,with ELO the best of them making almost 28%, followed by Heuristic-Based making a little over 21%. Then came Prudence, which returned almost 16%, and Hope, which made 2.5%. The two losing Funds were Shadow, which lost 28%, and New Heritage, which lost just over 40%.

We can decompose those performances in a number of ways, firstly by team wagered on.

Alternatively, we could look at Fund performance by team wagered against.

Averaging these two views gives us a way to estimate the contribution that each team has made to Fund (and Portfolio) performance across the season, whether we were hoping for the team to win or to lose.

New Heritage made money, in aggregate, on the games involving only six of the teams, losing money on the other 10. Games involving St Kilda caused the greatest losses, while games involving Hawthorn generated the greatest profit.

Prudence lost on 6 teams and won on 10, losing most heavily when West Coast was playing and winning most handsomely when Hawthorn were on the field. Hope also made most when Hawthorn were playing, but lost most heavily when the Cats took part.

Shadow lost most on Carlton and won most on Adelaide, while the Heuristic-Based Fund made most on Melbourne and lost most on West Coast. ELO-Line lost most on Geelong and won most on Melbourne.

In total, the Recommended Portfolio lost money on games involving any of 9 teams and won on games involving any of the other 7. St Kilda's contests were the most costly for this Portfolio, and Adelaide's were the most profitable.

Next, we turn to Margin Tipper performance. BKB recorded the season's best Mean Average Prediction Error (MAPE), finishing on 29.57 points per game, ahead of LAMP on 29.98 and HAMP on 30.10. Best Median APE was turned in by LAMP with 26.0 followed by BKB and ELO on 26.5.

Across the season's entire 186 games, ELO correctly predicted 121.5 or 65.3% of them, BKB and LAMP managed 118.5 (63.7%), HAMP scored 117.5 (63.2%), and Chi lumbered to 111.5 (59.9%).

Well, that's it for another season. I think I've run more analyses, written more blogs, and learned more about the patterns in footy data and how to display them this season than in any of the previous five. And yet, we still made a loss, which is my lone regret.

I'll almost certainly be going around again in 2011, though there's much work to be done in the off-season with the entry of a 17th team next year and the introduction of the bye. Work is well-progressed on moving MAFL to a website format next year; more on this in future months.

(If you want a sneak peek, it's here [Actually - it's not any more ...]).

Any blogs I write during the off-season will be written on the new site. Hope to see you there.

Investors: please e-mail me with details of what you want done with your Funds.