The Tipster Industry - How Do You Actually Verify a Claimed Track Record?

[Klaus]

The incentive structure makes honest accounting impossible.

The tipster's income depends on subscription retention.

Subscription retention depends on subscriber hope.

Honest assessment of a bad period destroys hope and therefore retention and therefore income.

The tipster who tells subscribers to stop following them after a bad period is the tipster with integrity and no business.

The tipster with a business has a structural incentive to maintain hope regardless of what the record actually shows.

 

[oli_sussex]

The incentive structure Klaus describes is why independent verification matters in principle and fails in practice.

Even verified records don't solve the underlying problem.

The subscriber needs to know whether to continue following after a drawdown.

No verification service answers that question.

Because the answer requires predicting whether the edge still exists.

Which requires understanding the edge.

Which the subscriber doesn't have access to.

The subscriber is always making a decision about continuing with incomplete information structured specifically to encourage continuation.