On February 7th Mike Piazza of Zilla Racing sent out an email with data for 25 partnerships for the years 2012 to 2017. I will not show the results because I am not sure if it was intended to be public information. If you are interested in this kind of information you should already be on the Zilla mailing list. Mike as many interesting things to say.
I cannot attest to the accuracy of the data. But I have no reason to suspect that Mr Piazza would send out incorrect information, he seems like an honorable guy. The data might not include some horse sales proceeds or claiming proceeds, but it also does not consider expenses or markups.
I think you can draw two conclusions from the data:
- The expected loss from an average investment in a horse racing partnership could be as high as 75%
- Less expensive partnerships provide better returns than more expensive partnerships (but have fewer graded stakes winners)
In all honesty I had hoped the numbers were better, but I always feared they could be this bad. I sincerely hope that making careful selections can improve your results. I am writing this blog to show what kind of results are possible.
I must also warn readers to use this kind of data with extreme caution. 40 years of investment experience have taught me that investment performance data must be used very carefully to draw conclusions about future results.
Investing in horses is very difficult. In the stock market you can just buy an index fund, I would not recommend that with horses.
It is entirely possible that horse racing is absolutely the worst investment you could possibly make. On the other hand horse racing is the only sport you can make a small investment and win the championship a year later. Try calling Jerry Jones and see if he will sell you 2% of the Cowboys (a bad example since they will never win another championship).
Buying A Race Horse 