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By Nicole Sauer As has been previously discussed in MarketWatch, Comparable Index (CI) and Class Performance Index (CPI) are useful tools for breeders and buyers to estimate a stallion's level of mare support, but the figures can sometimes be misleading due to factors such as outliers and mare age. Shown below are the top 10 sires by 2004 CI and ...

By Ian Tapp Given that so much of our discussion and analysis goes to sires—leading sires, new sires, broodmare sires, undervalued sires—the March issue of MarketWatch is our opportunity to look more in depth at some of the top producers from the previous year. It's not that mares are any less important than stallions, but given the fact ...

When South Africa's Western Cape Breeders Club invited me to talk at their Thoroughbred & Equestrian seminar, I knew it meant one thing—an opportunity for another installment of Tapp's Travels, which I hadn't done since 2011 in Australia and New Zealand. The seminar coincided with the Cape Premier Yearling Sale in Cape Town Jan. 23-24. This ...

By Nicole Sauer With the sterling rebound of the yearling market, as exhibited by gains across the board in yearling sales statistics this year, one would naturally expect the breeding stock sales to rebound similarly. However, the broodmare and weanling markets have been considerably slower to regain their footing than has the yearling ...

By Nicole Sauer Since the first Keeneland yearling sale back on August 9, 1943, the yearling sale—particularly Keeneland September—has been a benchmark for the North American Thoroughbred breeding industry. Similarly, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) has been an important stock market index for almost 120 years. Looking at the past 15 ...

Complimentary TrueNicks Enhanced Reports are available below for the Oct. 6 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (Fr-I) at Longchamp. Click on a horse's name or rating to view the full report. TrueNicks ratings (A, B, C, etc.) describe the stakes winner strike rate of a particular sire/broodmare sire cross compared to the records of those sire lines when ...

Last year I interviewed American-born New Zealander Cecile Smith, breeder of Australian champion So You Think (NZ) (TrueNicks) and owner of his now 23-year-old dam, Triassic (read blog). At that time, Cecile was in the process of selecting a stallion for Triassic's 2012 mating, and she ultimately decided on top Waikato Stud stallion Savabeel (AUS) ...

By Ian Tapp Halfway through the 2013 Keeneland September sale we looked at the chart of sold yearlings by hip number (see blog). At that point the median was $120K. The updated chart below shows how second-half sales tempered that figure to a more reasonable $50K (+11% vs. 2012). The average price of $102,220 reflected a 17% gain compared to the ...

By Ian Tapp What does a brisk market look like?—probably something like the 2013 Keeneland September sale. The charts below plot prices of sold yearlings (up to $1 million) by hip number for the 2009-13 Keeneland September sales. Just a quick visual comparison of 2009 vs. the first half of 2013 suggests that the yearling market has rebounded ...

In the past few years, the number of stallions who are subscribed to TrueNicks has nearly doubled—in 2010 there were 425 mostly U.S.-based stallions; today there are 820 stallions representing some of the top stud farms internationally. A major growth catalyst was the TrueNicks Enhanced Report, a two-page report that includes detailed statistics ...