How A Former Wall Street Trader Cracked The World Of Betting On Baseball

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:16)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hey Tracy, remember our episode from a few weeks ago with Phil Hellmuth?

Tracy Alloway (0:24)

Yes, yes I do. Gosh, it seems like so long ago.

Joe Weisenthal (0:28)

Yeah, but I don't think it was. I think it was just like a month ago or something.

Anyway, not to pat ourselves on the shoulder, but you know that was one of the most popular episodes in Bloomberg podcast history.

Tracy Alloway (0:40)

You're definitely patting yourself on the shoulder there, Joe, given that you're interested in poker, right? That's why we had them on.

Joe Weisenthal (0:47)

Yeah, but that's not why I'm not bringing that up to congratulate ourselves or anything like that. There's actually a serious point behind that, behind its popularity, which is that a lot of the finance crowd that we ostensibly target and which we do target at Bloomberg is really into stuff about gambling and games and games of chance.

Tracy Alloway (1:11)

Well, that's true. And I mean, there's clearly an overlap there as well, right?

Joe Weisenthal (1:16)

Yeah, there's definitely an overlap, definitely lessons that could be applied from finance to gambling, lessons from gambling and betting that could be applied back to finance.

And I think from a personality standpoint, you get a lot of people obviously in the financial industry who just sort of also are very interested in the gambling side. And of course, the history of finance and gambling are deeply intertwined.

Tracy Alloway (1:41)

Are you telling me that we're going to talk about poker again?

Joe Weisenthal (1:43)

No, good news. We are not talking about poker on this episode. Although actually, I think maybe our guest likes poker, but I'm not sure.

But we are going to be talking about someone who has been active in both sides of the finance and gambling divide.

Tracy Alloway (2:04)

But gambling on what, exactly?

Joe Weisenthal (2:07)

This time, gambling not on cards, but on sports.

Tracy Alloway (2:13)

Oh, Joe. Joe, if it's not chess or poker, then it's sports.

Joe Weisenthal (2:19)

Yes, it's sports.

So, let's jump right into it. The guest on our episode today is Joe Peta. He was a trader at Lehman for many years, was involved in various things, including hedge funds there. He's at a hedge fund now, but in between those two things, he was also figured out a way to bet on baseball, and he wrote a book about betting on baseball called Trading Bases. So, I think a perfect guest to talk about the two worlds.

Tracy Alloway (2:51)

I'm going to caveat this with my usual thing, which is I know nothing about baseball or sports betting. So, I look forward to learning about it, Joe.

Joe Weisenthal (3:01)

You know what, Tracy? It's never, you know, you always say that, but it never proves to be a problem because you always ask fantastic questions. And so, I'm confident that this discussion will be no different.

Tracy Alloway (3:12)

Oh, okay. That's very sweet.

Let's have them on.

Joe Weisenthal (3:23)

Joe Peta, thank you very much for joining us.

Joe Peta (3:26)

Joe and Tracy, it's a pleasure to be on. It's, you know, I'm on a lot of, because of the topic of the book, I end up on a lot of, you know, Vegas-based podcasts, et cetera.

And it is a pleasure to be on a podcast that I know has such a high intellectual content. I will try my best to only lower it a little bit.

Joe Weisenthal (3:47)

No need to flatter us, but we do appreciate it. Would you say that the intro was a fair characterization of your background from banking to bedding and then now at a hedge fund?

Joe Peta (4:01)

Absolutely. The book and the book itself came about literally by accident. I was still working on Wall Street in lower Manhattan when I got run over by an ambulance in New York City.

And while I was laid up and in a wheelchair and I couldn't travel back to my home in San Francisco with my family, while I was laid up, I had this idea to write a book that more or less examined the critical reasoning overlap between asset management, the moneyballization of baseball, and sports betting. It was clearly a write what you know book for me, but you definitely touched on those in the intro. I can tell you when the book was being passed around publishers' houses, one of the editors that very much wanted to work on it was Phil Hellmuth's editor. He had written play poker like the pros.