“Where there’s a tip, there’s a tap” (investment adage)
“Where there’s a tip, there’s a tap” is an investment adage that means where there is a stock tip, for example, there is a “tap” (someone who hopes to make money off of the tip). The saying has been cited in print since at least 1929 and is popular on the London Stock Exchange.
Despite the simplicity of the financial saying and its age, “where there’s a tip, there’s a tap” is mostly unknown in the United States.
Google Books
The Technique of Speculation:
An analysis of the “speculative flair” or the art of anticipating the probable course of prices and of estimating the intrinsic values of stock exchange securities
By Percival Samuel Seward
London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons
1929
Pg. 99:
Where There’s a Tip There’s a Tap.
Google Books
The Bank Tree
By Martin John Turner
London: Printed at the University Press, Oxford, by J. Johnson
1937
Pg. 65:
Not for nothing is it said “where there’s a tip there’s a tap”.
Google News Archive
18 October 1967, Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, “Dangerous share market” by the Financial Editor, pg. 21, col. 4:
Seasoned speculators know their own business, but newcomers may be reminded of an old market saying, “Where there’s a tip, there’s a tap.”
Google News Archive
29 January 1970, Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, “A day in the life of Tasminex” by the Financial Editor, pg. 14, col. 7:
In this rampaging boom, there appear to be managed markets in some stocks, inspired markets and examples of the old stock exchange adage, “Where there’s a tip there’s a tap.”
Google Books
Investing for Dummies
By Tony Levene
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons
2010
Pg. 160:
Remember the old stock-market saying: ‘Where there’s a tip, there’s a tap.’ That means that people only give you information (the tip) if they see an advantage for them in your acting on their information (the tap).
Resource Investor
Gold building a base as evidence of physical shortage mounts
By Alasdair Macleod
July 19, 2013
(...)
There was an old saying in the London Stock exchange: “Where there’s a tip there’s a tap.” In other words, if someone tells you to buy or sell something he is promoting his own vested interest. It is a pretty good rule of thumb.