Lay betting as an investment

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is "how much can I earn from laying horses?"

It is a difficult question to answer because it relies on so many factors like the size of your bank, how many winners, how many losers, your stake etc.

Anyway here is 1 possible answer to your question, I happen to think it is a good one!

We all earn money one way or another and many of us invest for the future by making regular savings and investments for later purchases, holidays or even retirement and many people see betting on horses and investment vehicle as well.

As investment it has to be the riskiest off all, and the warning "The value of your investment can go up or down" means even more here!

Laying horses as investment is not a bad thing as long as you treat it as such and prepare for the worse, just as you would for any risky investment.

If you invest on the stock market then you are certainly warned before, about the risks and the same applies here.

You can lose on shares (I know) just as easy as you can on a horse race, but there are two main differences

1. You are unlikely to lose all your money on stocks and shares, if you sell quick enough, although the same applies to horse racing if you use a proper staking plan.
2. You can choose another horse race quickly to get your money back where as picking good shares takes a lot of time and research.

Finding good long term shares can be very difficult as finding any long term high earning investment vehicle can be, where as everyday with horse racing you have at least 18 races to choose from and because the majority of all the horses in these races will lose, we have a good basis for making money.

Finally and this is the pinch point for me, how much can you earn off stocks and shares or investments?

Ok you may be lucky enough to invest in the next Microsoft, but the likelihood is very slim, so you are left with an investment that at best, will give you 10% a year.

I know a lot of people will laugh at that, knowing they will only be earning a couple of percent in their building societies and if they are earning a bit more from investments with professionals, a lot of this will be eaten away in charges.

Don't get me wrong here, I am not telling you to dump your saving schemes, certainly not, these are safe and good ways to build up your financial stability.

Actually if you want my advice then invest in an Index tracker see http://www.fool.co.uk/index.htm for more information.

What I am trying to point out is that if you have a bit of risk money, lay bets could be an alternative, let me explain how.

We have established that 10% a year is probably all you can expect from your investments in the current climate, so if you had £1000 this would be worth £1100 at the end of the year.

hat works out at about 27p a day interest on your money.

So as an investor you need to better than that, so here is a little sum for you.

Bank / 2 x 1%

So if we have £1000 it looks like this..

1000/2 = 500 x 1% = £5.00.

Ask anybody who bets, they will tell you this is a very, very, safe amount of money compared to your bank to bet with, in fact the majority of tipsters recommend anywhere between 2.5% and 10% of your bank!

But we have to see this as an investment and cut out as much as the risk as possible and I think this represents it.

Ok so let's just say you only manage to bet 5 days a week for 40 weeks of the year, 200 days all in all.

200 x 5 is £1000, so with a bit of work you could turn your £1000 into £2000 in 1 year!

Now there will be people screaming at me by now...

"What about charges?" What about when you lose?"

Betting exchanges charge you a maximum of 5% of your winnings so on £1000 that is £50. I bet that's less than you pay an investment professional for less profit, these guys not only charge you yearly, but also for setting up the whole deal in the first place.

When you lose is the biggest hurdle and another reason why I have chosen such a low amount as a stake.

This is an investment so whatever happens we want it to grow and this is where our biggest risk comes in.

Things are going well, when our 4/1 lay wins his race and we have just lost £20.00.

As I have already said this is an investment so we want to get back our £20.00 and we still want to make our £5.00. So we either choose another race (carefully) or wait for the next days tip and put our £20 we lost and the £5.00 we want to make, so our next bet is £25.00.

You really don't want to go more than 2 or 3 races doing this and I can show several of my own systems that never seem to go beyond 2 losers in a row.

There is a little more to this as well... Firstly we have only done the sums with 200 days a year when it is possible to bet over 300 days a year (£1500.00+).

Also we could do the stake calculation either everyday or once a week or even once a month.

So after one week you have won £20.00 your bank now stands at £1020 1020 /2 = 510 x 1% = 5.10.

Ok I know it is only another £20 a year but do that every week over your 40 weeks betting and that's going to add up to a lot more in your bank.

You don't even need to have all this money in your betting exchange account, have it somewhere that pays you some interest, but allows you to move it if you need to.

This investment vehicle can work for you but only if:

1. You don't get greedy and stick to the above staking plan. 2. You don't lose patience which normally leads to number 1. 3. You have a good supply of lay tips (see me).

I can not help you if you greedy and have no patience but I can certainly help you with the tips!

There is just one more thing that I want to cover and that is increasing your bank with your own funds.

Unless you are lucky enough to have a great deal of cash to invest at one time then you would probably top up your investments weekly monthly or even yearly, well there is no reason why you can not do the same with your betting bank, adding top ups gives you more money to bet with.

Conclusion: People have always cast a bad eye on gambling as an investment and I would agree if you relying on bookies, but now we have exchanges and we can lay horses I think this has become a unique opportunity for investers who have patience and use the right tips.

Update to this article 01/07/2005

After writing this article I have been contacted by a lot of people for a simple selction process they could use with it.

My first thought was just to point them in the direction of my Lay Betting System and although this suited many, some just wanted one reasonably priced system they could use quickly either the night before, or early in the morning. Laying as an Investment

After testing a system for several months I have come up with something that I think will suit the majority of people...

I won't lie the selection process is easy but it took a lot of testing to find it and my Lay Bet Service members were the ones who had to put up with trying it out.

Before I give you the results up to now let me just explain about them because I think it is important.

Firstly you may not get a tip everyday but on others you could get 2 or 3. When we first started testing this selection process we just took what we thought was the best of the day, so sometimes we got it wrong, but in June we decided to use all selections, which have proved what we new all along...that this is an excellent selection process with plenty of winners.

Please don't miss read me here, I am not saying this is a level staking winning system but it will work with the concept of this article and with average odds of 4.5 it is exactly what is needed.

Click Here to see the results so far (opens in popup).

I have put the selection process into a PDF (which can be used on all computers) and added my thoughts and observations of the trial.

By the way we haven't classed this as a test bet for some time, we just continue to make observations and improvemnets if we can.

So if you were intrigued about this article or just want a good lay system then you need to look no further it's here and I am only charging £19.99 for it, as always with my systems, good but low priced.