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CSI Arbitrage’s CarbonA and Finding Arbs

Posted by Aegist on September 16th, 2007

Update to this article:

Since posting this article CSI have spoken to me again, and assure me that they do in fact have their own arbs feed. How CarbonA works, I am told, is that it can be interfaced with any other alert service, so that those arbs are displayed in CarbonA. As such, their clients are all provided with their own default feed, plus the option to supplement their feed with any other service they want. CSI then subscribes to that service as a user on behalf of the client and that clients CarbonA will now have arbs supplied from those alerts. So the fact that SportsPunter arbs was being used in CarbonA does not mean that it doesn’t have its own feed, but simply that it was only getting SportsPunter arbs at that time.

Original article follows:

Incredibly disappointed I am.

After a couple of weeks of quite thoroughly investing my time into this matter it seems like nothing is ever as it seems in the world of arbitrage. Shortly after writing an article about Cohen Strachan Investment’s CarbonA, where I basically say that having spoken to numerous people that work there for several hours that I think everyone seems completely sincere, I find out that there was one ’small fact’ which was never revealed to me, which I think would be quite obviously worth mentioning.

CarbonA doesn’t find it’s own arbs, it takes data from other arb services and uses them.

So when you buy CarbonA from CSI for $16,000, you are actually getting a software add-on to one of the other more commonly available alert services. It was taking arbs from SportsPunter, but when SportsPunter found out about this, they closed down all of the CSI associated accounts and stopped taking new membership for a brief period of time. Last I have heard, CSI are now looking at using a commercial licensing available from Tip-Ex. That is, they will pay Tip-Ex a larger than normal fee to gain the right to re-sell Tip-Ex’s arbs. SportsPunter costs $75 USD a month or $510 USD a year, while Tip-Ex costs €120 a month or €1000 a year.

In light of another article I recently wrote warning about the risks of paying for non-subscription based services, I think this perfectly highlights risk #3 in that article. That is, the risk that the arb feed suddenly and mysteriously stops. If CSI stop paying Tip Ex’s commercial license fee (or whatever arbs data feed they end up settling on), then what happens to the expensive CarbonA? It becomes a useless husk of a program.

Boy I hope that never happens, for the sake of all of their clients.

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