Winner's Talk

Well, on Friday the 17th of November of 2014, and again on Friday the 13th of February 2015, I posted about an Australian racehorse called 'Chautauqua.'

This afternoon, Chautauqua beat the best sprinting racehorses in the world over 1200 metres and collected the main prize money for the TJ Smith Stakes - the top sprint race in Australasia -  a race worth 2.5 million dollars in total prize money and held at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney.

Chautauqua wins $2.5 million TJ Smith Stakes

It won, coming from last at the turn, and it won by what looked to me pretty much like a nostril - but it was a clear nostril.

It was not the favourite by any means at all and paid a very healthy dividend to those who backed the horse - about 5/1, and even 8/1 on track at moments.

So what makes it possible for someone like me to 'know' beforehand? 

It's easy for critics to say, oh well you could tip a lot of horses and then bang on when one of them wins.

But as those of you know who have been reading at this place for awhile, I don't do that kind of thing; Chautauqua was one of only two or three I have ever mentioned - and as you will know, all of them have won, and big money races too.

So what makes it possible? And are the techniques similar to or the same as what you will have to use to make more standard 'investments' in financial markets.

Race horse betting markets are financial markets. They just occur over a highly compacted time-frame on the day of the given race, or any given race, in question.

And what horses like Chautauqua prove time and time again, is that the 'market' and the apparent, and publicly-known professionals are regularly quite incorrect in their assessments and analysis.

Seafood cassolette,
good riverboat fare... 

I remember talking to a great Western Australian bookmaker a long time ago - Eddie McAppion - who asked me once: 'this race is impossible to sort out, no one knows what will win this one - if only I knew which horses to lay... What do you think?' (To lay means to attract more money for some horses as the bookmaker, in the belief those will lose the race, and thus win the bookmaker extra money).

And I told him that I thought the mare Bungling would win and moreover, she would win in a photo finish by a nose - the shortest possible official margin.

'Ridiculous!' He said. 'No one knows that kind of thing.'

Anyway, as you will have guessed Bungling did in fact win in a photo coming through along the inside rail and literally by a nose in a photo finish.

Afterwards, he questioned me as to whether this was luck or something else, and I said an experienced trainer had once told some kids arguing about the relevance of a 'parrot nose' on a racehorse, whether this had something to do with the line of breeding and indicated some bloodline - he'd said to them: 'no, but an extended front lip could help you in a photo finish.'

Now this all sounds completely ridiculous but I'll draw your attention to an old movie starring Cameron Diaz and Al Pacino 'On Any Given Sunday.' D'you remember the coach's speech about the difference between winning and losing being a matter of inches? But that the inches were all around you... In front of your face, between your fingers, at the ends of your arms, where your eyes were looking, everywhere.

Black Russian cocktails - after you win,
never before.

Eddie was so irritated at me, that even in the photo, where bookies were offering odds on which horse got up, he bet against me. And of course lost. And was irritated all the more.

I like to position myself in investing, in the role of the gambler, and not the 'house.' And I'll tell you why. Being the house is about an oligarchy. And oligarchies create fat, slow, envious, lazy, angry people at the tops of those systems. Their capacities to enjoy themselves is extremely constrained, and a lot of what they do is underscored with fear and jealousy and even a kind of rage. And often, they resort to cheating to 'win.'

And that's the best thing you can ever hope to have, as an investor, because it is when the so-called supremely powerful fuck up, and they do it big time.

I could tell you how it is possible to pick winning race horses from such a long way out. But seriously, that would involve some real serious talk!






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