Wednesday, March 29, 2017

An Effective Statistic: Defensive Rating

No one ever likes their fantasy players to match up against the Spurs. They have such a good defensive team under Gregg Popovich and always do not perform well against their defensive stars. However, most players go insane in their stats when playing against bad defensive teams, such as the young Lakers team. From a fantasy standpoint, it is always good to look out who to pick up based on the teams they are playing against.

The Spurs and Lakers are on the opposite sides of the spectrum and are well known for how good or bad they are defensively, but how about the other teams? How would a fantasy team owner know if it a good idea to pick up someone playing against the Orlando Magic? Well, using the DRtg (Defensive Rating), fantasy owners will have an easier time determining which players to pick up playing against which team. This statistic has become an absolutely key tool for any type of fantasy basketball research because it summarizes so much info that we never could have garnered beforehand.

The DRtg calculates the points allowed per 100 possessions, developed by Dean Oliver. Fantasy players when drafting on any format, whether on daily fantasy leagues for DraftKings of FanDuel, or in other forms of fantasy, such as weekly categories or fantasy points, have an easy tool to figure out who could potentially go off on each game. Looking at these small statistics could give each fantasy owner a calculated guess on which player may be hot rather than randomly picking up players blindly.

This does not guarantee players to automatically do well, but based on their DRtg, these players have an increased probability of being able to take advantage offensively, which increases their fantasy value as opposed to playing against teams like the Spurs or the newly built New Orleans Pelicans with the new acquisition of Demarcus Cousins. The point is to use this tool to help score easy NBA fantasy points on waiver wire pickups by simply looking at the opposing team DRtg and judging if they will perform well or not.

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

2017 trends for venture capital firms

2017 is going to be an exciting time for venture capital firms, based on the patterns for financing activity in the past years and the continued public interest in the private equity market in general.

This article lists the trends and predictions for this domain for this year.

Decreased funding. In an article published by Venture Beat, Ernst & Young’s venture capital (VC) chief Jeffrey Grabow predicted that funding by VCs will continue to decline, as it had from 2015 to 2016. He explains the phenomenon in the same article: The world has yet to see the impact of the scores of billions of capital that have since been deployed, and so it is time for the market to absorb these investments. Venture capitalists will then be more on observation mode, looking at the actual market performance of VC-backed endeavors rather than actively searching for new enterprises or ideas to fund.

Fewer mergers and acquisitions. Related to the first point, there may be fewer mergers and acquisitions this year, which entail huge investment of resources. Many acquisitions, for example, require complete overhaul of the organization’s infrastructure, as well as the conduct of rigorous improvements and procurement of tools and recruitment of talent. Because of this, 2017 will instead be marked more by buyers standing by to wait for the proverbial unicorns, and will tend to be very selective when it comes to opting to acquire startups and small enterprises.

Growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI) innovations. Startups based on artificial intelligence innovations are likely to draw the most interest among venture capitalists. In Silicon Valley, Venture Beat reports that leading VCs in the tech industry are on the lookout for AI-based innovations that they can support, which are also linked to many other products that will emerge in other industries, such as retail, financial services, and healthcare.

Greater reliance on outsourced services. With the amount of work needed to ensure the continued good performance of acquisitions, venture capital firms need all the help they can get especially in maintaining their day-to-day operations. The assistance offered by asset servicing firms comes in handy, particularly in the area of middle and back office. More third party providers are now being tapped to handle such tasks as accounting, tax reporting, data management, risk management, fund administration, and compliance management – functions made easier to accomplish with better tools, well-trained staff, and access to expertise.