Caution

11:19

I’m going to pause the live blog here and work on another Value Hunt article – I’ll restart this when Football Index make their announcement later today.

11:17

Sporting wise, we’re still as we were with no matches expected until April 30th at the earliest. Latest talk is now more like June.

We’re still awaiting details from football authorities about exactly how any restart could work. 

And we have lockdowns in force in most countries, the UK’s announced last night. 

In the UK the lockdown will be re-evaluated in 3 weeks. It depends how under control or not the situation is as to whether it will be extended.

We have seen positive noises from Government sources acknowledging that during this period people are going to need entertainment. 

I think they will be sympathetic to sport and want it to continue but I think it is on football to come up with a formula that is considered safe and without putting an undue burden on already stretched emergency services.

I noted this line in last night’s guidance on business closures “Cinemas, Theatres and Concert Halls: Live streaming of a performance by a small group could be permissible with social distancing observed”. This is a small straw to grasp at but it does show that someone somewhere in Government is acknowledging the need for entertainment even during a lockdown.

This is not as frivolous as it may sound. People on extended lockdown will get bored and frustrated and start breaking the rules. Keeping them entertained is one way to prevent that and from a Government perspective having the national sport going again would be a clear win.

So I think we can expect Government to look on plans for a restart favourably. BUT it is on football to show how it will be safe (i.e testing of all participants) and secondly to demonstrate how it will not require too much policing etc.

Those aren’t insignificant challenges.

We need to hear more on that and we need to see a credible plan before we can start getting gung-ho on performance players again.

I think it will be weeks rather than days before we do.

That’s why overall, I think the best thing to do is to remain cautious and only consider buying where there is very obvious value appearing in the market.

I would consider covering some media players as per the discussion below IF I didn’t have any already as the short term outlook is much better here.

I think keep in mind though that even losing this season is not a total disaster. It was nearing an end anyway and I think Football Index can cope with that (though it might cause some more short term sales).

The disaster scenario is having next season on hold indefinitely and I think we are months away from that decision being necessary. 

So no panic. But caution warranted.

10:50

Ok that’ll do for speculation about the announcement, more on that when it happens.

I’m going to give my latest thoughts on the whole situation and then pause the Live Blog until the FI announcement. I’m working on another Value Hunting article today highlighting my favourite selections from the high profile transfer targets category.

10:35

Could we see anything else?

I doubt it. I’ve tried to think of any other viable options and just come up empty handed. Performance is just out of the picture with football out. Something artificial like simulating games? Maybe, but I don’t think we are that desperate yet.

FI seem to be assuming that football is going to get back on track in 1-3 months and really that’s the only working assumption they can adopt right now.

This is why I think it is reasonable to assume this is going to be all about media as the best evidence based guess.

10:14

Let’s speculate on what exactly FI may announce.

I expect a straight up continuation of the double media dividends from the 3rd April onwards, maybe for a month at least. Easy win.

The structure of the payouts may also be different, paying 5 places or more rather than just 3 potentially with a lower payout at the top to spread the money a bit further down the food chain.

This would be a smart move for a number of reasons. Firstly, it broadens the pool of players who can benefit beyond just the big hitters and gives hope for medium to lower priced choices. 

This is good for traders who probably find that more interesting, and it’s good for FI because it means the market won’t concentrate quite so much into a very small selection of players. A stale market is boring for traders and bad for business for FI as they won’t take much in commission. 

And it reduces the amount FI will have to relentlessly cough up for big dividend payouts for the same handful of stale players. If I was Adam Cole I’d want to avoid this and the guy ain’t stupid.

This would still benefit the big premiums and the transfer choices but it will widen the viable targets. If we do NOT see this measure and all we get is a continuation of the current double dividend a small number of big hitters should see heavy benefits, the rest of the market not so much.

A more innovative measure which would not surprise me would be “Super Media Points”. This is basically a reboot of “Super Match Day Points”. You’d get a small payout for every media point your player accrues over the month exactly like we got a small pay out for every performance point under Super Match Day Points.

This would be a smart move because it really pulls in a wide selection of players and spreads value much further down the market. I’d do this for sure.

This will still benefit big premiums and high profile transfer stories but we’ll also see some lower key value hunting in this scenario too.

10:09

If we feel we don’t have enough big media and higher profile transfer speculation players now and that’s worrying us – I’d be sorting that out now before the announcement not after when it is likely you’ll be paying more for these players.

There are a variety of reasons why people pile in after announcements ranging from fear to ignorance to overexcitement but they do. We don’t want to pay this premium when the announcement seems to be very predictable.

HOWEVER.

There is always the chance something very unexpected happens which is a legitimate risk. But we cover that by sticking with players we would be happy to carry long term even without a short term media boost. That’s why I think Neymar or Werner is a better choice than Bellingham or Pogba for example as discussed yesterday.

The bigger risk is needlessly paying a premium for players we should have bought before an announcement that is probably 90%> likely to be media centric.

9:56

Which of these strategies do I think is best?

I think it depends on your starting position.

Ideally, I would prefer to use elements of both. See, if using Key Strategy (modified by all the latest State of the Market stuff) we’ll likely be holding 1-3 big premiums and a decent spread of high profile transfer players anyway. 

Importantly, they will be players who cover multiple bases – they have the media angle but they are also good performance players who should also benefit when football returns too. 

That might not help with this media announcement, but it will help later and also covers us in case FI does something unexpected that brings performance into play.

These big media and transfer speculation players will mean we should benefit in the event of the expected media heavy announcement later. Both short term, if the wait and see crowd pile in, but potentially in a sustained way as media dividends trickle in in the coming months (and hopefully boosted ones).

That’s the media angle covered, without going all in on it. I don’t think an “all in” strategy is particularly smart either – we are still living in some uncertain times and overall I remain cautious and fairly reluctant to commit new money unless really strong value turns up.

This is where the money saved in the balance can come in (if you have it).

I really like the “bait” strategy and would be content to see others pile in to media heavily after the announcement, and see them selling up some good performance players with long term value (hopefully not the ones I already have! we should have protected ourselves from the worst of this by sticking to desirable/quality players).

There is no rush on this. In a few days, or probably more like a week, we should spot some great value players that are worth pouncing on with the restart of football in mind. I’ll be running plenty of analysis on that.

9:51

The second viable strategy is using the obvious media players as bait.

I did this last year for the Share Split and it worked extremely well.

Basically, if there is a fairly straight forward media announcement it likely sends people flocking towards the obvious big premium and high profile transfer targets.

Instead of following into those players who will likely get overpriced quickly (and in many cases, already are) you look elsewhere, hoovering up performance, IPD, and longer term youth prospects in expectation of them coming back on trend once football restarts in 1-3 months.

These players may even drop further if people Instant Sell to free up funds for media if the FI announcement is very generous. That’s why you don’t do this straight away after the announcement, you give it at least a few days.

Here, you forgo any short term media wins but have the opportunity to pick up players very cheaply who could rise very strongly later if football returns in any kind of reasonable time frame (3-4 months?).

9:40

I can think of two effective strategies for this. 

The first is playing the media strategy, and involves holding some big premium players and some higher profile transfer players that are set to benefit from any expected boost to media before the announcement. 

If we’re going down this route, we should be holding these players already, given the likelihood of the announcement being media focused, and the relatively predictable players that media will benefit.

If this is the announcement and we are charging into media players soon after we are just doing this wrong. The only time a “wait and see” works (and it did last announcement) is when there is a big uncertainty in outcome.

Now, I could be wrong but the odds of the announcement not benefiting media players have to be very low. It’s just the only game in town right now. FI would have to do something very odd like hold some kind of performance eligible FIFA tournament (semi-joke) to bring other players into it.

And I don’t think they need to reach for these outlandish measures yet (they might if things get really bad). There is no reason why a good media package can’t cover for a couple of months so this is why I expect it.

9:24

Good morning all and welcome to the latest Live Blog. I’ll be keeping this open today as we wait to hear FI’s next announcement.

We already have double dividends in place until April 3. The £1,500 trading bonus until April 23rd. And today’s announcement should cover what happens from April 3rd onwards.

I am expecting a media heavy announcement that benefits premium big hitters (covered yesterday in the first Value Hunting article) and it would not surprise me at all if this was broadened out to cover a wider selection too, specifically medium to high profile transfer stories. 

This usually means into EPL transfers, or very big transfers abroad. Many of these are already listed in the transfers section, but in another Value Hunting article today I’ll be picking out my favourites specifically with shorter term media in mind.

I think this will be very media centric because we are actually expecting football to resume in just 1-3 months (on best current estimates). That means that media can cover that period quite comfortably (and indeed does every year). 

If we were currently expecting a longer lay off (4-8 months?) then I think FI would have to do something to prevent a relatively narrow group of media picks dominating the dividends. That’s fairly boring for traders, and expensive for FI to dish out those dividends constantly in a stale market.