Bloodstock Agent: Your Partner for the Long Haul
When you think about what qualities make a great bloodstock agent, words like honesty, intelligence, and curiosity might come to mind. While these are definitely important traits any quality bloodstock agent needs to have, you also want your bloodstock agent to live and work with integrity as well as success. It’s important for thoroughbred racehorse owners to be prudent when trusting their horse, their investment, and their time in an honest, experienced bloodstock agent with a successful performance history.
Bloodstock Agents and You
Your bloodstock agent is someone you need to trust completely. From buying your first thoroughbred racehorse to building a racehorse portfolio, your bloodstock agent will be your partner for the long haul. As you grow your thoroughbred racehorse portfolio, your racing goals may evolve. At first, you might want to start with one racehorse to get your foot in the door.
However, as you learn more about the racing industry and get some wins under your belt, you may decide you want to invest in other types of thoroughbreds, such as broodmares. Your bloodstock agent can help you and your racing industry goals evolve with a keen eye for thoroughbred qualities, breeding, and pedigrees to help you have the best chances for success over time.
You want to look for these two things the most: integrity and success. All of the other qualities you want in a bloodstock agent will fall under those two main characteristics. Bloodstock agents have a unique job because they use their deep industry knowledge and experience along with keeping the best for you and your horses in mind to help you get the most out of your investment.
Your bloodstock agent can help you know when to buy or sell horses, how to get the most out of your horses, which broodmare and stallion pairings have the best chances for providing successful offspring, and more. You are trusting your bloodstock agent with your most valuable investment and with your money. You want to do your research to ensure you are working with someone you trust 100 percent.
The Risk Spectrum and How Your Bloodstock Agent Can Help
Simply put, the younger the thoroughbred is, the riskier the investment. However, that is not to say you shouldn’t ever buy a young thoroughbred. A quality bloodstock agent can help you spread out your investment over multiple horses to mitigate risk and optimize your chances for success. Here is how a bloodstock agent sees the risk spectrum in thoroughbred horses:
Young horses – They present the highest risk and highest possibility for return in investment. You don’t want to get caught up in whether or not the horse is the offspring of a champion. Some offspring of champions will go on to also be champions, but others may not. Your bloodstock agent can help you identify which young horses to go for and which to stay away from based on pedigree and more. Keep in mind, all young horses have lots of growing up to do before going to the racetrack for the first time. Some horses may not have good conformation, and others might not enjoy racing. There are a lot of unknowns when investing in young horses, so the investment traffic is generally low.
Weanlings – Bloodstock agents think of these horses as the middle schoolers. They have been weaned from their mothers and are learning about being a horse out in the pasture. They will play, run, and rough house with each other. During this time, bloodstock agents are able to see which weanlings are the most athletic of the group. Just like a middle schooler with athletic talent going to high school, more eyes will be on them as coaches will want to recruit the top talent. The same goes for bloodstock agents searching for the right weanling for their clients. One great perk to purchasing a horse at this stage or earlier is that you have the ability to choose where the horse will be raised and trained.
Yearlings – These are the horses that are in high school. Now that the thoroughbreds are a year old, their conformation is nearly complete. At this time, bloodstock agents can truly assess the quality of the horse’s knees, joints, feet, body, and intelligence. At this stage, you will find a lot of investment traffic and interest. While they haven’t started racing yet, they have started learning about being a racehorse. However, once they start racing, it will cost 10x as much to invest in the same horse because they are starting to prove themselves as successful.
Two-year-olds – Think of these racehorses as collegiate athletes. Once the horses are two years old, bloodstock agents and other racing industry professionals will be able to see the beginnings of the horses’ elite racing abilities. Because two-year-olds are starting to show their abilities, the investment traffic is high. Even though a horse can have all the pieces and still not win on the track. But there are fewer unknowns for this stage of thoroughbreds.
Beyond two years old – These horses have started racing and proving themselves on the track. At this point, the bloodstock agents and other racing industry professionals know how talented the horses are and there are very few unknowns. This makes this type of racehorse less risky of an investment, but they will cost more money to buy.
Broodmares – Investing in broodmares provides racehorse owners with an investment option that has repeat value. This is because mares can continue to birth more horses, giving you more opportunities for success over time. Bloodstock agents can help you find the best stallion and mare pairings, and the mare owner gets a cut from selling the offspring.
Avoiding Trends for Better Investments
Mill Ridge’s bloodstock agents like to say, “A good bloodstock agent buys the rumor and sells the news.” When a horse wins the Kentucky Derby, everybody wants that horse’s offspring. During the first year after winning a big race, the winning horse gets to breed with the highest pedigree mares available, and the offspring sell for a premium. Then, the next year, the horse gets the next-highest pedigree mares, and that goes on for a couple years. Each year that goes by, the mare selection is diminished. While there is a chance that breeding your mare to a winning horse could produce successful offspring, there is no guarantee.
It takes more than two years for a horse to be born and reach racing age, so that means the horse will be unproven for a long time. This is a trend that many people in the racing industry get distracted by. However, a good quality bloodstock agent will keep their eyes on the bloodlines to predict where the next champion might come from and not get distracted by the trendy stallion at the time. This means your money and your investment is kept safe from risky trends that may not work out.
Mill Ridge Bloodstock Agents Go the Extra Mile
Headley Bell is one of the talented bloodstock agents at Mill Ridge Farm in Lexington, KY. He has been in the racing and bloodstock agent business for a long time. He has worked with racing industry groups, mentored the next generation of bloodstock agents, and has a deep love for the sport and the horses. Because of his keen eye and deep pedigree knowledge, his hit rate is really strong and many of the horses he and his team at Mill Ridge find become very successful on the track. He helped create the Bloodstock Agent Code of Ethics to ensure racehorse owners of all kinds get the best experience possible and the horses have the best chance to reach their elite racing goals.
If you’d like to begin a conversation with a bloodstock agent at Nicoma Bloodstock about potentially owning your own piece of thoroughbred racing history, contact us today at (859) 224-1000 or learn more here.