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Americans Invest, Europeans Gamble

3 points by Hedgemaster ↗ HN
Historically, Americans are much more active on financial markets compared to the inhabitants of Europe. At one point in time more than 70% of American households were owners of publicly traded companies, while for European households that number would come in a single digit(!).

So it’s not surprising that most pronounced advances in retail stock and option brokerage took place in the US rather than Europe. For example, as of 2020 Robinhood had 13m retail traders, while Flatex-Degiro (major EU retail brokerage firm) in 2020 had only 1.2m users.

On the other hand, when we talk about sports betting Europe is well ahead of the United States. For 2019 sports trading revenue in the US is 0.9b USD. Below there is a table with revenue numbers per state from June, 2018 till February, 2021. As can be seen, sports betting in some states is even illegal.

Jurisdiction Revenue

Arkansas $5,642,181

Colorado $75,841,206

Delaware $52,298,447

Illinois $101,621,640

Indiana $209,366,110

Iowa $72,256,247

Michigan $22,339,974

Mississippi $103,368,568

Montana $ -

Nevada $786,308,000

New Hampshire $23,682,372

New Jersey $791,869,724

New Mexico $ -

New York $18,552,162

Oregon $26,869,312

Pennsylvania $384,151,235

Rhode Island $42,905,081

Tennessee $27,144,908

Washington DC $14,461,585

West Virginia $58,188,453

Total $2,816,867,205

European Union (including the UK) sports betting revenue came in 2019 at 10b EUR, which is much higher than in the US even after adjusting for the population difference. United Kingdom contributed 30.1%, Germany 11.4% and France 9.2%.

8 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 26.7 ms ] thread
PaulHoule
Legal sports betting is new in the US except for Las Vegas, where it never really caught on.

I know Sinclair Broadcasting is pumped to transition to ATSC 3 because they can send a package of HTML & Javascript to make a "video player" a lot like the interface for Youtube.

They see the "killer app" being sports betting on TV during the game.

Hedgemaster
Thanks for such an insightful comment, wasn't aware of that!!
moistly
Given the bullshit unveiled this past half-year re: the behind-the-scenes trading and manipulation in the US market, I’d be hard-pressed to believe that the US market is anything less than gambling.
Hedgemaster
Thanks for your comment, but could you pls elaborate what you mean? Do you have any evidence of market manipulation or it's more like feeding into conspiracy theories?

I do agree that Fed should probably be more careful with money printing, that might indeed contribute to a bubble formation.. but market manipulation is a punishable offense in the US. And what did you mean by "behind-the-scenes trading"? Dark pools??

moistly
I’ve been keeping half an eye on the GME/AMC/etc debacle. It’s plainly obvious that the market makers are playing all sorts of sketchy and illegal games.
Hedgemaster
I have been trading options professionally and am aware how market makers operate. Would appreciate if you could share with me the concerns you have.

Just in case, GME & AMC experienced a short squeeze in the beginning of the year and some short-selling hedge funds indeed lost a fortune because of that. But market makers themselves do not get any exposure (they stay delta-neutral in our language). Yet, I would appreciate to know if I'm missing smth

moistly
> Would appreciate if you could share with me the concerns you have.

That is a big ask. I’d have to dedicate a lot more time to reviewing and collating the six months of shit I’ve seen posted in r/<whatevers>. Citadel engaged in scammy dark market manipulation, penalties for misbehaviour that are a fraction of the gains achieved, collusion between the various big players, etc. I don’t really care to do that to satisfy your curiosity.

Feel free to hit up r/superstonks, r/wallstreetbets, r/gme or r/GameStop, whichever it is, etc, January thru now. The “apes” have dug up a ton of stuff that indicates that the US market is fundamentally dishonest.

[dead] Blozvez
I do not agree with the fact that europeans are engaged in gambling. Gambling is the lot of such poor countries as the russian federation. Normal educated adequate countries do not play in casinos. Residents of really good countries are engaged in serious earning money. On the website https://www.fxgiants.com/fxg/ you can read a lot of information on the subject of brokers.