Many people ask, “How much money can I make betting on horse racing?” While many people struggle to make a profit from horse racing and betting on horse races, few people have a realistic idea of what to expect and how much profit can actually be achieved. Horse players often talk about ROI or return on investment (ROI). Simply put, it’s the percentage return on top of your initial investment. So if you spend $100 on a winning bet and get $125, your ROI is 25%.
So how do you know what is a good ROI and what can you expect? First of all, when comparing investments, you should look at competing investments and also take into account the amount of risk and work involved. Running hurdles in horse racing is very time consuming and therefore you have to pay yourself for the time you put into the handicap. You can pay a professional like me to take care of some of the downsides, which means you’ll have to spend less time, but in the end, you’ll still have to spend some time researching and reflecting. like bets
If you buy stocks or make any other investment, you should also do some research. You can have a broker make recommendations or a financial planner or analyst, but in the end, just like the people who pay me to handicap races, the final decision rests with the investor. Many stock investors now consider 10% a reasonable return on their portfolio.
The amount you can earn on horses will vary from week to week, but your yearly average may be better than stock returns, but also much riskier. When it comes to horse handicappers, even the pros have their ups and downs and you have to look at the long term to get an accurate idea of what is reasonable. For example, on the weekend of June 11 (I work in 3-day weekend blocks and send out a newsletter with information for each 3-day block) my key horses made a profit of over 80% ROI. That is very high, but the following week the profit on the same type of bets was very low.
In the most recent weekend of June 25, 2010 to June 27, 2010, my top picks made a flat profit on win bets for Thoroughbred bettors with a ROI of 22%, while punters who played my top picks in harness racing at half mile and 5/8 mile tracks received an 11% ROI. There are no guarantees when betting on horse racing and it would be unwise of me to guarantee a profit or try to predict how much profit to expect due to market volatility.
In general, though, it’s safe to say that horse racing bettors can sometimes see a higher rate of return than bettors in other markets, but pay for that chance at much higher risk.