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Is Wall St. Now Just A Form Of Legal Gambling?
It’s really hard to tell the difference when one looks at the markets today to see any real difference from that of the floor of any casino.
For all intents and purposes financial shows seem to be more concerned with showing great legs on-screen as much as some sports broadcasts are pushing to have their female equivalent commentating from the side lines. What’s next – a cheer-leading squad of scantily dressed talking heads waving pom-poms every-time the camera pans? Sorry, I forgot…That’s CNBC™.
I find it almost uncanny in just how the once bastions of free market capitalism are morphing into both the look and feel of today’s casino. If you look at the myriad of assorted slot machines on a casino floor one can’t help but notice that all the lights and sounds with their inner entangled games within games seem to have all the color pallets and changing graphics of most trading screens.
“Look! You got three gold bars, Oh so close to the winning combination, but wait – here comes the free bonus round where you can win a great second chance. Just watch the screen above to see if you get that winning combo!”
Is it really all that dissimilar from today’s day-trader locked in their basement or “trading room” in the dark with screens flashing multicolored candlesticks with “alerts” ringing and buzzing to alert one “the three gold bars” have just been hit. So look to your other screen and see if the 50 MA crosses the 100 MA and claim another prize!”
Whether it’s on the trading floor or in one’s own trading room there will be at any time from one to multiple television screens showing the “box scores” ticketing across the screens from multiple sources with pre/post game analysis, game players, handicappers, et al touting exactly when, where, and how the next big game is about to unfold or has ended.
Who needs football, or basketball and all the others when the stakes for handicapping the Federal Reserve Bowl is about to take center stage at any given time?
Whether you sit directly at a casino table, or you sit at your own virtual one. The same sort of rules apply: Sure your playing against other players, but you’re all playing against the house. And today that house is Wall Street where the actual bank is now solidly owned by Central Banks.
The equivalent of floor managers are the direct dealers of Treasuries with the keys to the “discount window.” Pit bosses are the regulatory agencies. And the croupier? Fill in you favorite discount brokerage firm ___________ here.
Nowadays more and more it seems everyone is only truly betting on one outcome or the other: Will the Fed. do this? Or will the Fed. do that?
Who cares about what it means to things like the economy, and more. All that’s cared about now is the “win.” i.e., Do they keep interest rates at near zero for another month or not?
Who needs to wait for a Super Duper Bowl-arama type event once a year when you have one you can bet on every month in the form of some kind of Fed. announcement.
Odds makers layout the spreads and more in detail via most option platforms that are available from near any discount brokerage house. These platforms now move with such swiftness as well as up to the near millisecond speed it brings a tear to the eye of book runners of yesteryear.
Banks themselves act as the “booking agents” where one can place their bet right directly into their own bookmaking brokerage platform. Just deduct it from the 401K account. Don’t worry about the vig – “you’re a valued customer when you use XYZ’s custom platform with low, low commission rates.”
Tongue in cheek? Sure, but in reality – just how far off is it really?
Nowadays the markets have far less to do with capital formation than they do with the A or B choice of what the Federal Reserve is going to do today vs tomorrow. All one needs to do is figure if, or how, they’ll play the alpha of the move, or the beta. Can, and will, the carry trade cover the spread if it all goes against one? Will the counter-party be there to pay up? (Remember the MFS™ debacle of not that long ago?)
The only discernible difference I see from the Wall Street version of a casino it’s now so prominently become, and the one we find on some island or strip is this:
At the least, when I have a great winning bet placed on Red or Black…
The odds that someone from the house bank coming down to floor and yelling “Fire” as the wheel is about to stop right on my stop is far, far less than a Central Banker coming out touting “Well maybe we should or shouldn’t do…..” the moment the true free hand of market is about to expose itself.
At least at a true casino – they do have some level of integrity.
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Yes, it is the biggest casino in the world. Legal of course, it should be a hotel in Vegas but it is the quintessential desert of the state of nevada in the comfort of our own homes and at our own leisure, no RV to plug in, to clean out or to pay to. The brilliant glare of money and the keyboard captains lonely lust, gone..... in the blink of an eye.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI7pPVJTeSY
The difference is the the casinos use clean odds and no rigging on the roulette wheel or slot machines but meanwhile everything about the markets are rigged to the max and the people who are supposed to be preventing it are completely controlled and supported by the riggers....
Really? Really? ....I thought I was logged in on Zero Hedge.......
I thought I was on a Movie Trivia Site:
Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.
[A casino worker gives Renault a wad of money.]
Casino Worker: Your winnings, sir.
It's not gambling when the central planning Fed bails you out of your losses and juices the markets to ensure you cashflow until the whole shebang blows up.
After which everyone will say "capitalism failed".
Yeah, it was the market economy that failed not central planning of the money system controlled by the banks that profit.
I have been saying for years now that Wall Street is basically the casino for the rich Jews...with their information sharing and nepotism....
dahhhh. ... it always was a casino ... as Al Capone said when they approached him to invest in stawks ... you guys are bigger crooks then we are...
Freemium isn't free!
That episode of South Park satirically sums up Max Keiser's observation of the Casino-gulag economy
Wall St is a money making club and you got no membership
Real casinos are "provably fair". I'll take a roulette wheel over buying STAWKS any day.
What does a casino do? How does it operate? The key to its profitability is to ensure that enough money comes in the door, stays to play, keep the odds hidden, and that the house gets a small percentage of the money in play, whether the patrons win or lose.
Now let's look at Wall Street. To be profitable, Wall Street must convince people that:
Money management is very complicated. “Let us experts handle your money. We can do it better than you”, say Wall Street insiders. (Get money in the door.)
The stock market is the answer when it comes to retirement and financial freedom. (Essential to keeping money coming in the door.The only way to invest successfully is to invest for the long run. (Make sure the money stays to play.)
Wall Street experts know what they’re doing. (Complete investment track records are never shared = keep your odds hidden.)
Pay us a small percent of the money invested. (The house always wins, even if the client loses.)
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/1/prweb8064385.htm
the difference is casinos and state lotteries will tell you the exact odds against you but in the markets they tell you the opposite of the real odds......
So I was out in the desert the other day and an Apache Gunship decided to stop by and say hello. Not kidding...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgz6V0e-Vq0
Legal? Every goddamned trade out there rigged or fixed, as well as being settled in counterfeit currency.
Gambling?? It's not gambling when the Fed deals you 21 every hand
The problem is the gamblers just keep uping their bets and become complacent but because the market is rigged only those on the inside know when the rules are about to change.
Actually a high stakes poker game is more fair than Wall St., you have a better chance of winning as well.
If the entire economy is a fraud, it needs a fraudulent casino to throw up profits to keep the ponzi going.
Economists, or rather the few who haven’t sold their souls, know that the government’s economic data are pulled out of a magician’s hat and massaged to produce numbers contradicted by reality. Unemployment is measured according to methodologies designed to prevent its discovery. Inflation is measured according to methodologies designed to deny its existence. Jobs are reported that don’t exist, and GDP growth rates are announced that declines in real median family incomes and consumer credit make impossible.The poverty level income is set artificially low in order to minimize welfare spending.
The lies that Washington and the powerful private interest groups that control the US government tell us go unchallenged by the print and TV media and by NPR. The propaganda that Americans are fed is more extreme than the propaganda of Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/11/10/lies-government-latest-jobs-r...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI7pPVJTeSY
Is it now???? It always was. It has after burners on.
No, legal organized crime. Similar to "tax avoidance" by multi-national corporations,
which is legalized tax evasion.
One law for the peasants, another for the elites.
I do all of the legal tax avoidance that I possibly can. Do you send in extra money in taxes every year? There is nothing wrong with taking all legal deductions.
I also evade ("legalized evasion") vehicles about to run into me on the road. Should I not be doing this?
legal - a license to do something which is unlawful.
Black - equals white.
Please put down the hallucinogenic drugs and step away from the keyboard.
You don't seem to understand my point then follow that up with a Straw Man argument.
The chump change you save individually through tax avoidance is peanuts compared to the money
the Apple's, Google's, IBM's, etc, etc. save in corporation tax by gaming the system.
FFS!!! Gambling??? Casino doesn't RIG, I repeat, Casino doesn't RIG. Learn the bloody difference.
if they would do, at least they would not be so blatant about it
yes. it is a form of gambling. it is promoted like gambling. it is legislated like gambling. but the "good kind". which of course is... BS
have a look at this John Oliver "Last Week Tonight" on US State Lotteries, and you'll get the attitude about gambling in general, which is the very basis of the thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA
just rewrite the rules so it's not illegal anymore. problem fixed.
This is like asking if policing is now a form of occupation by violent thugs.
Of course it is - just open your eyes.
http://www.punkrocklibertarians.com/hero-cops-assault-arrest-two-marines...
I keep repeating over and over:
It is the law that is rigged.
Wall street is doing legal plundering.
Nobody will go to jail. World is simply quitting the system.
So, if its legal plundering and nobody goes to jail, why do you keep saying the bank lobby is finished?
You make no sense to me at times.
No. It is not gambling becasue the game is fixed by an infinite supply of money funneled to the big "investors." One can lose in gambling. The big players can't lose in the market. If they did "lose" they will be covered by the house (Fed).
I am shocked, SHOCKED...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME
Every once in a while the casino burns down... That's when you want to have some dry powder.
Investing in the stock market IS gambling by it's nature. Just like any other investment, with the exception of maybe precious metals. So I think the word "now" is redundant, but I guess better later than never.
they don't give a rats a$$ anymore what people may think about the rigging - they do it anyway. just look at the action in the SPY, VIX and the 10 yr bond right now, in grand short manipulation ahead of auction. enormous spikes on no news, algo trading with algo, based on a pre-arrangement made by a few criminals on either side.
How many casinos pay you to go in?
In Wall Street you get a handsome salary to play every day.
Now many casinos are there where you can't lose?
Bonuses are a one way street, there are no losses.
Bonuses may only be a percentage of the win, but just up the stake to compensate.
No losses and being paid to gamble - shut down Las Vegas, Wall Street is where it's at.
Zero trading day losses for GS, JPM etc...means this isn't even a casino...even the house loses from time to time at a casino.
There are high speed cameras that are able to take snapshots of the roulette wheel and the ball, calculating there the ball is going to land few seconds in advance.
Stock market, to some degree, has always been about getting premium access to information - from the old days when traders had their own couriers and spies, to today, when the chase has been shortened down to microseconds and half the trading is done through predictive algorithms scientists at CERN would envy.
It's never been a fair game and it's alwas been about timing. "When" is more important than "what".
In an ideal world, automation of trading would be amazing. All it would imply is that there in no longer a need for a human planner when it comes to allocation of capital resources. Machines make less mistakes, right? Will, the problem is that not only is there a bunch of actual ill-intentioned people behind every machine, the machines themselves are only as good as the weakest link programmer, capable of producing deadly feedbacks and flash crashes.
Computers responsible for life, are actually programmed to kill - to outperform and outcompete at all costs. Imagine a life support system at a hospital whose purpose it is to syphon oxygen from the poorest patients to the wealthiest ones.
Well, if someone can explain the NASDAQ's move today it might make up my mind one way or the other.
DavidC
This is a once in a lifetime Gift from the Fed IF you have risk money.
How long it lasts, who knows
So very, very true....
The real question is when to get out. Taking gains and shuffling into more downside-protected assets (land with reliable access to water, gold/metals, etc) seems pretty prudent.
The mid-October mini-collapse in credit (spilled into equities) was an eye-opener. There was almost NO liquidity in the meltdown. Highly-levered companies (especially in energy sector w/ oil also getting whacked) were thrown to the wolves and names melted down in a virtual vacuum of liquidity.
If there's a really good scare, it's going to get really fucking ugly really fucking fast. By that time, it'll be too late.
Its only rigged if you are to big to fail. Just ask KCG. Some trades are good some aren't.
The real winners are not gambling. It is more like fleecing. Or actually, more like skinning.
All gambling, no matter what the form requires "defined" risk tolerance and management. The biggest problem traders have is their unwillingness to cut losing trades, and stick to their defined risk tolerance profile.
Sure there's lots of shady things going on, so that leaves traders with one of (2) choices. Stay out of the game, or adhere to a strict defined risk plan and ride the ponzi like everyone else, while making sure you CYA if things turn south.
is it a rigged casino?
ah, well, take a look at todays rocket shaped v ramp up...
just like every other fucking day and then tell me what u think.
No booze, no buffet, no hookers...
The big difference:
The casinos are regulated by .gov.
.gov answers to no one.
You are right our current governtment answers only to unknown nefarious others which has the appearance of anwswering to no one. It has not always been this way. It has taken a little over 200 years but our "leaders" have now managed to completely undo the revolution which began in 1776 and the Constitution which was adopted in 1781. Perhaps it is time for another leveling.
...gotta say, I'm glad I've been ignoring ZH's Apple bashing....
cha-ching!
Bait off in private dickface
buy more - you asshole!
I just do the opposite of what ZH says, including AAPL (made 30% in 10 mos.) It looks like I sold too soon; I believed it was a double-top. The ZH rule applies to basically all of the major IPOs, as well--though, they are correct on price action, in the short-term. It's one of the best contrarian indicators there is, for longer-term trading.
No, even in a casino you have some small odds of winning
Actually, in a casino, provided you can do some basic math, you can easily figure out your odds of winning (except for slots). The fact few people do, explains why they get fleeced in Vegas and on Wall Street.
it is not gambling when you determine the outcome. Goldman 500 days of profits tell you that!
Wall St a casino?
Sure - if you want to sugarcoat it.
But Den Of Theives / Nest Of Vipers might be closer to the mark - nothwithstanding its depiction as a "House Of God" in the recently discovered (2008) Gospel According to Lloyd.
'Den of Thieves' by James B. Stewart is a damn fine book:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?22933-1/book-discussion-den-thieves
It's about the Milken/Boesky/Siegel/Levine era.
I love it when you play texas hold'em at your freinds house and after a few hours you build a huge chip lead on everyone and the person in last place who is hosting the game shit face drunk decides that everybody gets more chips because the game is just so much fun. House rules bra! lets do shots!
Sound familiar?
Both Wall Street and Las Vegas casinos are run by "the mob."
But, only one is an "honest" crook, meaning one who risks incarceration and confiscation of assets. Of course, some banksters and minion enforcers in gubmint do face the risk of getting "suicided" these days...
Same goes for thieving gubbermints and "honest" armed robbers.
Unfortunately, not true anymore. Vegas used to be run by the mob. Now it's run by Wall Street types. Much more fun and lucrative in the old days, provided you didn't get too greedy and piss them off.
Wall Street is like a casino that looks at all of the bets then places its own bet and chooses the winning number.
Then what it does is tell all of the people that didn't win that it was their fault because they are stupid and only Wall Street is smart.
Yes, the last part is true. If you get to see the placement of bets, bet against them then choose the outcome you are smart, very crooked and unethical, but smart for being able to create and sell a rigged game.
It also makes the others placing bets stupid for not recognizing a rigged game and refusing to participate.
... oh, and they buy off the cops so that they have no trouble from the law.
"Is Wall St. Now Just A Form Of Legalized Fraud?"
There, fixed it for you.
Financialtainment.
I've always thought it was a casino...at it's best the House waits until the maximum amount of money is on the table to roll the double 00's...your choices are to walk away or rather consistently bet on the opposite of what common sense tells you should happen...
Another entertaining article republished on Zero Hedge which grossly understates the situation, which understatement therefore extremely underestimates the seriousness of that situation, and thus too, the magnitude of what better resolutions of those problems would be. The entire economy is based on ENFORCED FRAUDS, which were the result of the best gangsters, the banksters, being able to capture control over the powers of governments, in order to legalize crimes, such as counterfeiting the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts. Furthermore, that has been on an exponential growth curve of profits from frauds reinvested in more frauds, throughout every social institution. Hence, it became possible for the biggest banksters to not only have their own crimes mostly legalized, but also to make sure that the few laws which still existed, on paper, to restrain them would not be effectively enforced.
The deeper issues here are that money is measurement backed by murder, and therefore, no realistic solutions can exist outside of that context. There are no ways to fix the problems that we are living inside of rigged casino, which is orders of magnitude worse than any of the places that actually admit that they are casinos, unless we could operate better death controls to back up better debt controls. Of course, the extreme practical difficulties revolving around the task of actually operating better death controls is why we continue to default to those established systems which were historically developed to be based on the maximum possible deceits, whose successes enabled building a political economy whose foundation is enforced frauds. The overall magnitude of that legal gambling with money made out of nothing is now at least a couple of orders of magnitude BIGGER than ALL the rest of the economy existing in the physical world!
OF COURSE, "Wall St. IS Now Just A Form Of Legal Gambling," which was built on the basis of the best gangsters, the banksters, capturing control over the political processes, in order to effectively PRIVATIZE the powers of government, which are "Just A Form of Legal Robbery and Murder."
Furthermore, if one does not collapse back to the bullshit based on false fundamental dichotomies, and their related impossible ideals, as the notions upon which to base bogus solutions to those problems, then THE CENTRAL ISSUE IS HOW TO DEVELOP BETTER SYSTEMS OF ARTIFICIAL SELECTION WHICH WORK WITH NATURAL SELECTION, AFTER THE ACTUALLY EXISTING SYSTEMS OF ARTIFICIAL SELECTION ALREADY BECAME BASED ON THEIR SOCIAL SUCCESSES THROUGH DECEITS AND FRAUDS!
To understand the actual "money" system takes understanding the actual murder systems that were combined through historical processes to drive those forward together. Therefore, the only genuinely better resolutions to those problems would take better murder systems, to back up better money systems, which were based on facing the facts that governments were necessarily the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals ... Meanwhile, the most significant difference between the government enforced frauds in the banksters' casinos, versus all other casinos, is that ONE WAS BORN INTO THEM, and there is NO WAY OUT, especially since the banksters' casinos have been almost totally globalized. Those continue to get worse, faster, at an exponential rate, while the only thing that results from learning more about them is that the more one knows, the worse it gets!
Much worse than a casino. A casino, for instance, doesn't know a split second before you place your bet how you will bet and then change the odds accordingly. Wall street can do that, and does, skimming billions in profits every day.
Do you even have to ask? Woah, I finally see a single piece of truth among all the Ayan rand worshipping fantasies! zerohedge, there might be hope for you yet!