Sport plays a significant role in the Australian psyche, and in an Olympic year that usually – COVID permitting in 2021 – goes up a notch on the international scale.
Australians are also partial to a punt on their favorite sport. You only have to watch a sports event and see the near-saturation level of online gambling advertising. Clearly, Australians enjoy taking a punt and similar trends emerged during last years’ COVID distribution with an uptick in both brokerage and online gambling account openings.
According to the Australian Gambling Research Centre, 30 percent of over two thousand Australians surveyed opened an online betting account in June-July 2020.
There was also a significant increase in how often people gambled during this period, with an 11 percent rise in those who placed bets more than four times a week.
Increasingly there are enough similarities in the way online share trading and online wagering apps appeal to the human psyche to encourage a blurring of behaviours. In the same way, COVID-19 incited a dramatic uptick in retail investor trading activity, the pandemic also spurred a boom in online gambling. Both are socially distanced activities that could be done from the comfort of one’s own home, with the added incentive that it could increase wealth while staving off boredom.
Just to be clear, having a punt on your favourite sports team is nothing like investing in the share market.
Rationally the odds are against you when you gamble. Everyone hopes to beat the odds based on skills or knowledge as a gambler, but clearly, most people don’t, which is why casinos and online gambling companies are profitable.
In contrast by investing in the share market, you are aiming to have odds work in your favour over the long-term and over the last 5 years, the Australian share market has returned almost 8% because you are riding the long-term growth of Australian business and the broader economy more generally.
Where gambling and share investing likely converge is through day trading. During the COVID-19 impact last year, the financial regulator ASIC observed an increase in trading frequency which led it to issue a cautionary report raising concerns about day trading amongst investors.
Nearly 5,000 new accounts were opened daily on retail brokerage platforms in February-April 2020, with investors on average holding on to securities for just 1 day, compared to the 4.5 days prior to the observed period and 80 per cent of them have lost money.
While it’s unfair to liken all trading activity to gambling, it is, however, accurate to say that trading based on short-term market movements shares more characteristics with sports betting than it does with investing. Namely, the greater likelihood for loss than not.
In many instances, engaging in speculation isn’t as brazen or as obvious as the recent Gamestop saga. It can be a lot more subtle, like mistaking news headlines as research and ‘taking a punt’, or by timing the market to execute day trades
Aside from the risk of financial loss, the one certainty about frequent trading are the fees that will make already uncertain profits even more so. Investing, on the other hand, does not depend as much on luck as speculating or gambling does. Instead, it depends on having a clear investment plan and the discipline to adhere to it over the long run even when there’s temptation to stray.
So, while there’s always risk involved in investing and it can never be a sure bet, it sure is more conducive to creating wealth than speculating.