Risk is the New Normal

As the world becomes more interconnected and globalized, people are looking for new and innovative ways to make a profit. Two areas that have seen a significant increase in popularity and investment over the years are casinos and the stock market.

Both have become popular venues for people looking to take risks to reap outsized rewards. Despite their vastly different approaches to generating wealth, the underlying motivations for why people are drawn to these areas are surprisingly similar.

We’ve seen comparisons between the “markets” and the casino, and it appears we are getting closer to the truth.

We’ll drop these charts below and let you be the judge.

Charting Risky Territory

First, short-dated $SPX options have accelerated in volumes. These products were built for short-term speculation.

Projected growth for the US Sports Betting market is estimated to be 10.4% through 2030 … we guess something had to outpace inflation.

State lottery tickets us almost 2x over the last decade.

We think the trends mean more than just people having an itch. “Affordable” risk has been getting easier and easier to access (see entire cryptocurrency market), and purchasing power has been getting out of control. The mentality of “I only need to win once” has become the escapism retail investors were looking for.