Joe Peta
Raised in West Chester, PA by a first generation Italian-American father who adopted baseball as a symbol of his love of America, Joe Peta quickly learned the joy of following the sport --- and the pain of being a 1970s-era Phillies fan. Undaunted, by the time he was a teenager, Joe felt certain that his heroes Mike Schmidt, Larry Bowa, Steve Carlton, et al would one day be his co-workers. While his father instilled a love of baseball in him, sadly, Joe inherited his mother's throwing arm, so by the time he was in college at Virginia Tech he turned his career ambitions toward the glamorous and fast-paced life of a Certified Public Accountant. His new heroes were men like Bill James and Warren Buffett and Joe parlayed his love of numbers into an MBA from Stanford University. Even in business school, sports were never far from his mind. At Stanford, Joe penned columns in The Stanford Daily and The Reporter that earned him a following in spite of constant references to Melrose Place, and his turning down the opportunity to interview campus golfer Tiger Woods. His debut effort, Trading Bases, A Story About Wall Street, Gambling, and Baseball (Penguin Group) dropped in 2013 and topped best seller lists in both Baseball and Business categories. A Preview of the 2019 Masters published in 2019, contained a shockingly accurate preview of the event and was the #2 selling golf book of the year. Joe's latest effort, Moneyball for the Money Set was released in August, 2023. Joe lives in San Francisco with his wife and two daughters, who would very much like his next book to either be about ballet or Taylor Swift.
1 Books Written
Trading Bases: How a Wall Street Trader Made a Fortune Betting on Baseball
by Joe Peta
Rating: 4.1 ⭐
• 4 recommendations ❤️
An ex–Wall Street trader improved on Moneyball’s famed sabermetrics and beat the Vegas odds with his own betting methods. Here is the story of how Joe Peta turned fantasy baseball into a dream come true. Joe Peta turned his back on his Wall Street trading career to pursue an ingenious—and incredibly risky—dream. He would apply his risk-analysis skills to Major League Baseball, and treat the sport like the S&P 500. In Trading Bases, Peta takes us on his journey from the ballpark in San Francisco to the trading floors and baseball bars of New York and the sportsbooks of Las Vegas, telling the story of how he created a baseball “hedge fund” with an astounding 41 percent return in his first year. And he explains the unique methods he developed. Along the way, Peta provides insight into the Wall Street crisis he managed to escape: the fragility of the midnineties investment model; the disgraced former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who recruited Peta; and the high-adrenaline atmosphere where million-dollar sports-betting pools were common.