Well, why not?
A majority of idiots in Gen Z have moved money out of investments and into a sports betting account. Twenty-six percent of Gen Z say “they treat sports betting as a deliberate, ongoing component of their financial plans,” according to a Bloomberg report.
Nothing like “fair and balanced reporting”, is there? (I know, it’s Breitbart and not Fox News, but you get my drift.)
That 26 percent compares to 14 percent of Millennials, just six percent of Generation X, and one percent of Boomers.
“Sports betting is increasingly competing with traditional investing for younger Americans’ attention,” adds Bloomberg, “with more than a quarter of Gen Z investors saying they see gambling on sports as part of their long-term financial strategy.”
Gambling as a “long-term strategy.” The stupid; it hurts.
But let’s look at this whole thing from another angle.
The thing about sports betting is that if you take it seriously and look at the stats (as opposed to picking a horse because its name reminds you of yer Mum), there’s little difference between that and, say, playing the stock market. Oh wait, those are serious investment vehicles. [eyecross]
And let’s be honest: how many times have you seen one of those silly games where darts thrown into a random chart of stocks have yielded better results than those picked by analysts? (I would love to see some kind of comparison of long-term results from the darts vs. the analysts, played each day, week or month over a twenty-five year period.)
Pro tip: it’s all gambling. Whether it’s a horse crossing the line first (at 27-1 odds) or GlobalMegaCorp Inc.’s share price doubling over the next six months, who can say? Even better: who’s not going to make money over the result of the next Dallas Cowboys game by picking the other team?
The only way people are going to consistently lose money on sports betting is when they start playing the minutiae: points spreads, yardages, number of times Caitlin Clark is going to draw a flagrant foul for the rest of the WNBA season, etc. (In the stock market, those kinds of bets I mean investments are called “puts”, and while the rewards can be astonishing, mostly it’s just the old “dropping dollars down a drain” situation.)
Rule of thumb: the more complex the bet, the more likely you’re going to lose.
But I digress. I have no problem with a small segment of Da Yoot trying a different way to increase their moolah. I’m more interested in why they’re doing it, but not that interested, any more than I’m interested in why people still go to casinos, or why they bet on which raindrop reaches the bottom of the windowpane first.
Or whether Whizzbang Technologies’ IPO will yield 45% growth of stock value on the first day’s call.
I should point out that in my own yoot, I once got suckered into a golf game called “Yardbucks”, in which each yard of the golf course was worth a yard: lose a 375-yard hole, and you’re down $375. (There are typically more than 6,000 yards in an average golf course.)
I ended up losing only $15, and I only managed to lose that little because I won the last hole, a par-five 568-yard monster by fluking a 15-yard putt.
More to the point, I think I sweated out well over a gallon in those four hours, and I’m pretty sure I did lasting damage to my heart. I’ve never gambled on golf, or any other sport since.
With the stock market being as volatile and unpredictable as it is, I can almost understand why some people think it’s more stable to go gambling than buying stock.
Even more so if they’ve been pumped full of ideas about “big business is evil” and trust their ‘influencers’ more than their bank or pension fund.
Everything is working as intended by the far left cabal running the public education system for close to a century by now.
The difference is that if you bet on a horse, all you have is a bet. If you bet on a stock, you get the stock; a piece of the business that issued it.
And then some venture capitalist moves in, dismantles the business, and runs off with all the assets, leaving your stock completely valueless.
As for Casinos and gambling, my advice is just to look around at the over the top decoration art collection, entertainers salaries , show girls, staff and unneeded. Building on the Strip and think about who paid for all of that.
As for the stock market…. It’s been very good to me over the past 50 years I’ve been an investor. It’s a long term thing. Trying to “time the market’ by jumping in and out of stocks is a disaster waiting to happen. Stay with no load mutual funds unless you are an accredited investor ( 6 figure plus portfolio ) then you can look at individual stocks in a diversified mix of companies in industries you know something about. But yes if you take advice on the stock market from the idiots who read the news on TV you may be better off betting on sports. Case in point. — all the hype around the SpaceX IPO. . All t;he smart money is waiting for the final lock out period to end. SpaceX will make lots of money ……. Eventually in. 3 to 5 years. Can you wait that long?
GT3Ted:
I worked for MegaCorp for 27 years, initially with a defined-benefit pension plan, and then they switched that over to a cash-value pension (whatever you had at the time) and started a 401(k) program instead. From 1995 until I retired in 2018 I put in the maximum-allowed amount which I think was 17% of my pre-tax salary. Most important was to “snatch the match”, which was up to 3% of company matching contributions to the 401(k); basically free money (and it astonished me to see how many people passed it up).
Knowing absolutely nothing about investing I simply picked three funds and spread the money among them. Two of them were rather risky stock funds while the third was an extremely conservative mostly-bonds fund. I also got a minor amount in company stock. For 23 years I closed my eyes and shoveled money into that plan. There were good years, and bad years (2001 and 2008 come to mind) but mostly it just sat there and grew like crazy. The bond fund never lost money, but also never quite kept up with inflation. I believe that the concept of closing your eyes and just shoveling money into the same funds is referred to in the financial advice industry as “dollar averaging investing” or some such name, but if it’s a decent fund you don’t pay attention to the ups and downs, just the long-term.
I was astonished when my account hit seven figures…and post retirement that has now doubled. My wife and I have lived like church mice all our lives, having bought an 1,100 square foot house and paid off the 30-year mortgage in 11 years. We lived in that house for 27 years and only left to move out here to TinyTown™ in NW Wyoming.
Now that we no longer need the higher returns of the higher-risk funds we’ve moved about half of it into a much more stable-value (but lower return) fund. There’s still about a quarter of it in the bond fund, so even if the market suffers another Obama-style disaster we should be okay. I now have a financial advisor who says that my wife and I need to start spending money faster but so far we’re not spending enough even though we’re only using our SocSec and my pension fund for income. She says that if we don’t spend the money our heirs and assigns will be traveling first class instead of us. Once we hit age 73 we get the dubious privilege of the “Required Minimum Distribution” for our retirement funds…I can’t wait to see what the income tax will look like on that.
Trying to time the stock market is a recipe for disaster, since there are hundreds of thousands of experts trying to do just that. The problem is that they have more and better information than any amateur investor.
The term is “ Dollar Cost Averaging “. But yes did it correctly. Don’t worry about RMD’s. Just tell your advisors to set it up automatically. Yes it may bump you up a bracket. But the added income will more than cover the extra tax. The risk is in NOT taking the withdrawal Lost $. Plus penalty .
Now you are in the spending side of life. Buy that bigger Dually Pickup with all the bells. Upgrade to the best Steak.. treat yourself and wife. She deserves it.
I don’t know about the random dart method, but the one surefire right way to invest in stocks is to buy and sell exactly what Pelosi, Schumer, and a dozen other politicians buy and sell. Almost magical how they always seem to pick the winners.
You’re so cynical, Don…
The term is “ Dollar Cost Averaging “. But yes did it correctly. Don’t worry about RMD’s. Just tell your advisors to set it up automatically. Yes it may bump you up a bracket. But the added income will more than cover the extra tax. The risk is in NOT taking the withdrawal Lost $. Plus penalty .
Now you are in the spending side of life. Buy that bigger Dually Pickup with all the bells. Upgrade to the best Steak.. treat yourself and wife. She deserves it.
The problem with that is that by the time you learn about her insider trading it’s already too late and they were doing a VR lot of option trading which is partially time sensitive. You ‘ ll wind up on the wrong side of every trade.
There’s a way to get her to let you in on the deal.
I’d suggest pouring vodka on it before you give her the ‘ol JFK. 😛
BS, if you are trying to time the market, you will be screwed unless you have insider information.
If you are doing buy and hold or index investment, your average return will be steady (11.5% over last 40 years, 14.8% over last 10, 14.4% over last 5).
No one will “beat” the market consistently, but who cares. Invest for the long term, that is how it is supposed to work and that is how it works.
Correct. The only way for most people to invest is to bet on long term increase in stock prices, and I mean a decade or more, not minutes, hours, or days.
When I did construction management work, I did some projects at a local casino. The casinos are built by losers. There must be a lot of losers in order to build tall skyscrapers for hotel rooms, elaborate architecture and decoration, pools, spas, entertainment areas, restaurants etc.
Is there that much difference between gambling and investing in the stock market? I dunno. Where is it easier to lose $1000, stocks or gambling? I think it is easier and faster to lose $1000 gambling. You can put $1k on a throw of the dice, pull of a slot machine, a game, a hand of cards, a spin of the wheel etc and you either win or lose. $1k in the stock market might take a while to increase or lose I suppose.
“The only way people are going to consistently lose money on sports betting is when they start sports betting. Fixed it for you, Kim.
The betting companies win, in the long run. Always. Gambling is simply throwing your money away while “enjoying” the experience. In the long run, you will always lose. Always. That’s the game. You’re betting you’re right; they’re betting you’re wrong. And the house is always betting with more information than you have; they have an advantage. Same is true in the casino. At least there, you may have some hot girl to look at while you’re getting fleeced.
Why the sports leagues got in bed with gambling, I have no idea. Then they wonder why they have gambling scandals. What did you think would happen? You kicked Pete Rose out of baseball entirely for this, for God’s sake.
Walk away from gambling. Period. All of it. I’ve bought one lottery ticket in my life, long ago. I would vote against the lottery tomorrow if it came up for a vote. I’ve watched too many throw away their meager incomes on a pipe dream. Never placed a single nickel in a casino. Never will.
And no, Kim, investing in the stock market is not gambling. It’s the opposite of gambling. A broad index fund or mutual fund, over nearly any 20 year average, will beat inflation, and generally by a LOT, especially when counting the time value of money – i.e., you’re now investing the return on investment to get even more return on investment. PLAYING the stock market by picking individual stocks, especially on a daily or weekly basis, to try to time short-term gains, well that’s a fool’s errand, and really is gambling. Don’t do that. Do what GT3Ted did: put the money in a decent fund, either a competent index fund or a managed broad mutual fund, make regular investments in that fund, and LEAVE IT ALONE. It will do the work for you.
Don’t play the market. USE the market.
And yes, politicians should be barred from any stock/bond investing other than publicly available mutual/index funds.
And BTW, I intend to buy stock in SpaceX. Not because I expect to get rich on it. Because I want to be a part of a project like going to Mars, even though MY chances of going t mars are zero.
Plus, I don’t see the upside in betting against Elon Musk.
And BTW, I intend to buy stock in SpaceX. Not because I expect to get rich on it. Because I want to be a part of a project like going to Mars, even though MY chances of going t mars are zero.
Plus, I don’t see the upside in betting against Elon Musk.
My stepsons have bought into this; every week they pick a half dozen parlays in basketball, golf and starting next month, football. They claim they’re big winners, but when I ask them how much of their gambling winnings got reported to the IRS, the talk shifts to another subject.
I am not a gambler, per se. I have been my own financial planner since 1979 and have averaged a little over 14% annually since. Nothing to get excited about, but I did have a couple of good years in the early 80’s when I had back to back 100%+ years. It all evens out. Now that I’m old (69 next month), I have a 60/40 mix of high yield dividend ETF and corporate AA or better bonds. Again, nothing to get excited about. My Dad always sad, if you try to get rich in a hurry, you’ll get poor even faster.
I do fancy a game of cards though. Whilst stationed in Bahrain, I got in a regular poker game with some pilots and doctors and it was a license to print money. I didn’t drink at all then, and they did (lots) and the drunker they got, the stupider they became. I made enough in that tour to buy my wife a new Lexus when I got home.
My lone time in a casino was in the military hotel lobby in Seoul, Korea when I was there for a conference. My boss, an Army General, kept me waiting outside the slots room for about an hour. I wasn’t interested in wasting money OR standing in a smoke-filled room. He saw me waiting, threw me a roll of quarters and said “Get in here and get some!” I shoved the whole roll of quarters in the machine, spun twice, won $4300 and cashed out.
I did beat my Dad out of $400 playing blackjack on a fishing trip to Canada. He paid me, but I suspect it was only because there were witnesses. Otherwise he would have claimed to “deduct it from the cost of raising you.” As they do…
There is investing, speculating and gambling. They are all very different.
Gaming/Wagering is best left to someone else.
True story: (no one cares but I’ll type it anyway)
I grew up on a working Cattle Ranch, and was around horses my entire life. And studied them. Once a year we’d have the County Fair, and they had the Horse Races, you could bet on. As a yoot I’d sit in the grandstands with my Grandparents, and even though I was too young to bet, I’d walk to the paddock with my Grandpa, look with him at the form sheet, pick the horses I thought were going to win, learned to look at the odds, etc. Then we’d go back to the stands, Grandparents would write down our kids’ picks, “And they’re off!”
Surprisingly I did well at the above. Of the 15 races held I never picked less than show in at least 10 of them, One year I picked the Quinella. Grandparents would spice it up by buying us a ticket in the last race of the day, and it was rural kid fun. Did this for about 5 or 6 years until I was old enough to be unsupervised then ran off to chase girls. But I saw something in the paddock that I knew was a winner.
In our state you could bet on horses at 19. So when I came of age, I took a fistful of my earnings from two weeks of my minimum wage job, and headed to the County Fair again (I think it was about $120 total, minimum wage was lower then). Now was when my system was about to cash in.
Three races in, I was down to my last $20, and I watched two weeks of busting my ass moving furniture disappear in two hours, and decided, “this is the dumbest thing I have ever done.” It was until my first marriage, but I was never an enthusiastic wagerer after that. If I was going to bet, I was going to bet on myself, not someone else’s game.
I’m in the market with my 401k but I’m not stupid enough to think I can juggle it. Wagering for me is in the same categories as tattoo’s, if I’m going to spend $500 I’d rather have a gun, or a tool, at the end of the transaction.
Preuss,
” if I’m going to spend $500 I’d rather have a gun, or a tool, at the end of the transaction.” is the wisest thing on the internet today
I’ve never owned a Lotto ticket or spent a dollar in a casino.
My wife and I are long term investors.
We use a professional wealth manager.
We have been reasonably successful.
My dad worked at a horse race track and drummed into me early; the state gets theirs first, the house second and the suckers get whats left.
Probably a question that needs asked. When the above betting strategy fall on its ass and the practitioners have pissed away their Retirement savings, who is going to be expected to bail them out?
Sort of like Student Loans.
The current round of bookies are getting notorious for cutting accounts off if you win enough. So you either pay them or get off the site.
Baseball is addicted to cash, and they’re going to have to get another Black Sox scandal to make them remember why they banned the gamblers. I’m having trouble being interested in the entire lot.
The only game I would trust the house with is Poker, because you pay to play. They don’t have to cheat, they are just eventually going to win.