With the current financial climate it can be hard to know where you should be investing your savings to get the best return on investment.
Interest rates have remained low for quite a number of years now and there are no signs of them rising anytime soon.
With typical investments paying out so little in interest more and more people are looking for alternative forms of investment to best put there money to work.
If that is you one of the best investments that I would recommend to you is following a decent tipster.
You may be thinking “Gambling as an investment?! Is this guy crazy?”
Yes, I am indeed talking about gambling as an investment.
Before we get into why I think following a decent tipster can be a great investment lets take a brief look at some of the more traditional ways of investing your hard earned cash.
Typical Investments
Savings Account – The best saving accounts at the moment are only paying out 5% interest. Depending what tax bracket you are in that means your actually only going to be getting around 4% or 3% for higher tax brackets. And that’s the best! Most of them only pay out around 1 or 2% interest at most and the interest rate doesn’t look like it’s going to rise anytime soon.
ISAs – This can involve locking your money up for a period of usually 1-5 years (although some allow you to withdraw at anytime). Currently paying out around 3% tax free interest a year.
Stock Market – Very similar to gambling except you have to pay taxes on your profits. Dollar cost averaging into a cheap ETF will give you average returns of roughly 5% per year.
Gambling as an investment
Now let’s look at some of the returns you could achieve instead get from following a good tipster. All the tipsters referred to below come highly recommended by me and I personally follow all of them.
Master Racing Tips
Return on Investment: 38.27%
Average Profit per Month: 19.6 points
Tom Nelson Racing Tips
Return on Investment: 16.69%
Average Profit per Month: 49.51 points
Big Race Bookie Buster
Return on Investment: 67.03%
Average Profit per Month: 49.94 points
Win Form Pro
Return on Investment: 28.66%
Average Profit per Month: 28.52 points
It doesn’t take a financial expert to see that you can get much bigger returns on your money by following the advice of a proven tipster who is consistently reliable and profitable than you would with any traditional form of investing.
So what’s the catch?
I know what you might be thinking. “If the returns from these tipsters really are so good then why isn’t everyone following them?”
Now that’s a good question. The main reason people do not choose to invest there money following a tipster is because of their perception of gambling.
When most people think of gambling they might think of some one sticking a tenner on a football accumulator every weekend and always losing.
They might think of old men spending all afternoon at the local bookies betting on the horse racing, most of them either losing money or barely breaking even.
They might even think of a miserable gambling addict who’s wasted all of his life savings playing the slots.
I am certainly not suggesting you go down any of those paths and that is not the kind of gambling I am talking about here.
Like any investment opportunity you have to be a bit smart about it and do all the necessary due diligence before making your investment.
This is where most gamblers go wrong. Most gamblers think of their gambling as entertainment and therefore don’t take it seriously enough wasting their time placing negative expectancy bets.
A negative expectancy bet is simply a bet where the chance of the bet winning is less than the odds being offered.
A simple example of this is a roulette table. If you bet on either red or black you will double your money if the ball lands on the correct colour.
For this bet to be a positive expectancy bet the chance of the ball landing on the correct colour would need to be greater than 50%.
But because there is a green zero on the wheel (or sometimes two) the chance of the ball landing on the right colour is less than 50% making the bet negative expectancy.
If you were to follow a good tipster such as the ones I recommend above you would be making positive expectancy bets.
How is this the case? you may ask.
It’s quite simple. A tipster provides betting advice on sports betting.
Now sports betting is not as black and white as a game of roulette. The chances of a certain selection winning can’t be easily calculated like the bets on a roulette table. There are just too many variables.
However, some people who are experts in a specific sport will be able to judge a rough idea of what the chance of any given selection winning is likely to be.
The bookies employ some of these experts to price their odds. The bookmakers will then adjust there odds based on how much money is being bet on each selection.
So humans are the ones who price odds for sporting events and humans are the ones who are betting on these events which also affects the odds.
Whenever humans get involved in anything so do errors.
The people who price the odds don’t always get it right and neither do the generally uninformed punters who are betting on these events.
A good tipster is someone who can gauge what the real odds should be better than the bookies or the betting markets can. If they can do that they will be profitable.
All the tipsters which I recommend do just that. They beat the bookmakers and the betting markets consistently and this shows in there impressive results.
That is how following a tipster can be a positive expectancy investment.
Now I’ve eliminated the most common misconception why people don’t even consider following a tipster when they are looking to invest, let’s move on to some more practical reasons why following a tipster might not be right for you.
The Risk
Although following a proven tipster is positive expectancy gambling there is a degree of risk involved.
A tipster could have losing period that lasts for months at a time.
This is because a tipster may be able to gauge what chance a selection has of winning but they can not guarantee that selection will win.
In the long run the profit should outnumber the losses but there will be periods where losses can be quite frequent.
This means that you have to make sure you structure your bet sizes appropriately in relation to how much money you have so you can weather through the bad spell.
This is what I use and I find that this suits my risk tolerance. With this sort of number I know I can go through a very bad losing spell and not be stressing too much about the money lost over this period.
I’ll emphasize again. This is what works for me. This sort of staking plan and bankroll management may not suit you.
You might have a greater or lesser tolerance to risk than me. That is something you will have to get a feel for yourself.
Taking on more risk by staking larger amounts obviously has its rewards but its’ really not worth staking too much if it’s causing you to worry and stress about how your betting is going day to day.
You have to remember betting is a long term investment so if you are too worried about the results of any one day, week or even month then you are probably betting too much.
It is ultimately up to you how much risk you want to take on.
Betting is an active investment
Another reason you may not want to take on gambling as an investment is because it is an active investment.
This is as a pose to a passive investment such as a savings account or an ISA where you just deposit your money and collect interest on it each year.
When you are following a tipster you are going to be placing some bets every day. Although this will only take you at most 5 minutes per tipster you may have to place these bets at certain times.
For example if a tipster sends you an email at 9:00am advising some bets to place at certain bookmakers you will have to place those bets as soon as possible to ensure you get the current bookmakers odds.
As more money is placed on the tipped selection the bookmakers will cut their odds so you have to be quick or you will miss the bet.
There are some services where you don’t have to worry about this as much such as Win Form Pro. This service is profitable to the Betfair exchange starting price and all results are recorded at this price.
The Betfair exchange’s starting price or BSP for short is the price that is available on the betfair exchange when the sporting event starts. You can choose to bet at the BSP anytime before the event has actually started.
In the case of Win Form Pro this means you can place your bet anytime between the time the tips are advised (12:30pm each day) and before the race starts to get your bets on.
The first UK race of the day is usually sometime around 2pm so this gives you at least 1 and 1/2 hours to get your bets on. This means you could place your bets in 5 minutes during your lunch break and get the amazing returns that this service produces.
Following a tipster costs money
Yes, that is true but the tipsters I recommend are relatively inexpensive with a months worth of tips costing you around £30 and most offer cheaper deals when you subscribe for longer periods of time.
This is a relatively low cost compared to the results these services produce.
With all of the above services making at least an average of 19pts profit per month you would be making on average £95 per month if you were to follow one of these tipsters and bet at £5 stakes (£2000 total betting bank at 0.25% per selection).
That would leave you with a £65 profit for the month once the tipster fees were deducted.
Of course if you have a little more money and are betting at larger stakes your profits will be even bigger and the cost of the service will stay the exact same meaning more money for you.
Summary
Like all investments following a tipster requires you to do a fair amount of research before you go following there selections willy nilly.
You should check to see if they have been proofed and reviewed by an independent reviewer such as myself to confirm the results they claim are true and you should make sure the service will suit your needs.
This means checking when the tips are usually sent out each day so you know if you will be available to place the bet at that time, whether this tipster makes steady profits or if their results are constantly yoyoing up and down and if the bets a tipster advises will suit your tolerance to risk.
I hope you are now able to see how profitable an investment following a tipster can be and will at least consider it as an option when choosing where to invest your money.
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