America’s rapidly growing gambling crisis is poised to enter my “Top Ten Worrisome Factors.” It also underlies the largest stock market bubble of all time and fueled the earlier frenzy around NFTs, meme coins, and much of cryptocurrency. As I have argued for some time, Wall Street coined the term “speculation” to avoid calling it what it really is: GAMBLING!
The move to 24/7 stock market trading adds fuel to a society that would view even God’s rest on the seventh day as a wasted opportunity to gamble. Along with prediction markets, this excess has become one of my ten most worrisome factors. Yet I may need to call them my eleven bearish factors, because the original ten are as bad—or worse—than when I last wrote about them.
As I noted in my book, “Confessions of a Former Wall Street Whiz Kid,” my father was a gambler. Although he never lost everything—and no one named Bruno ever came to our door looking for him—I have no doubt that, if he were alive today, Bruno would be making far more collection “visits.”
It’s not exactly “Like Father, Like Son.” I long ago embraced the nickname “Riverboat Pete” because, in the stock market, I’m largely a gambler—or, excuse me, a “speculator.”
I don’t have a sports-betting or prediction-market account. I also can’t understand how anyone can play slots or other online casino games and believe software will help them win over time. Betting—or, excuse me, “speculating”—on junior resource stocks is risky enough.
