Salty Gibbon said:
So, is there such a thing as a really good value for money tipster ?
Yes, Salty. There are tipsters whose tips have been making steady level-stake profits for years with almost never a losing month, all independently monitored and corroborated. It's as with "trading tipsters" in that 99% of the claims they make are untrue, and 99% of services lose money. The difference is that the mechanisms whereby they are independently monitored and corroborated are much better established in the case of horse-race tipsters than they are with trading services. The fx-review website and forum have the right idea, but they are very new and (with all respect to David, its proprietor) therefore still have some way to go before firmly establishing their credibility.
Salty Gibbon said:
Henry Rix sounds good if you listen to Andy but you don't seem to think he's particularly good , Roberto.
I happily concede that he may be having a tremendous run at the moment. There are so many tipsters (although not exactly hundreds as established as Henry Rix, I admit) that at any one time there are _always_ a handful having a tremendous run. I'm not so impressed by Henry Rix's long-term record, myself.
I used to get a lot of information from a friend from university who works for one of the newspapers as a racing writer, and this friend spends at least 20 minutes a day on the phone to Henry Rix every day (usually very early in the morning) and I was given a lot of "Henry's best private tips" over a 2-year period, and I did not find them profitable, myself. It's like so many other things we discuss on these boards: everyone has their own experience, and there are nearly as many opinions as punters, perhaps.
TheBramble said:
Is there any reason to suppose someone 'gifted' in the prediction of Horse Racing results is more likely to be 'a good bet' than one who claims to be able to offer a similar facility in the matter of Trading the Financial Markets?
No, there's no good reason for supposing that, Tony. But the reality is that it's a bit easier to find out if you know how to do it and if you're willing to put in the effort and spend the money - and it's not at all a cheap thing to do! The requisite information from ultra-reliable resources is pretty expensive and not readily shared.
TheBramble said:
For the same reason we (generally) suspect anyone claiming to offer a sure-fire trading system and why they're not just trading it rather than selling it; why would it be any different to a racing tipster? If you could predict the winner of the next 5 races at Kempton - would you sell the information or would you use it?
I would sell it for sure. I'd also use it as much as I could, but that would be a pretty limited source of income.
Here's the point: one of the key differences between racing tips and trading tips (and especially Forex tips) relates to the impact that the widespread use of the information has on the underlying market. I'll try to explain a little more ...
I've spoken admiringly on these boards before of a service called Isiris run by a chap called Kevin Booth, and I'm still a subscriber to that service myself. The way they operate is that when they have a really strong tip, they give subscribers a time to call back (usually either 2 or 3 minutes before the race in question) so that the information can't be circulated much, can't be sold on to other people, and therefore can't affect the odds much. They want their own small number of paying clients to get the information (for about £2,500 a year, if memory serves) and to profit from it (which we certainly do) but they don't want everyone to have it, because that would stop it from being profitable.
The same is not true of "information" about the EUR/USD because the size of the market is so different. So Epiphany Trade (whose tips are every bit as profitable as those of Isiris) probably don't mind so much if their subscribers circulate the trading information a bit, illicitly of course, on the quiet.
(And with "share tips", the more widely they're circulated, the better, I think?)
Regarding horse-racing, I know of two other services which are as reliable and consistent and profitable as Isiris (and actually nowhere near as expensive, although not exactly cheap either) but I'm not giving their names and contact details on a public board like this, because it took me a huge amount of effort (and expense) to discover who they are and to subscribe to their services! But if you're asking "Is there such a thing as a really reliable long-term tipster?", I promise you the answer is "yes".
