I’m always annoyed when I hear somebody compare investing to gambling. The problem with that statement is that it implies than an investor has no control over their results. The reality of course is that investors can control their results in two ways:
• By investing in the right company
• By investing at the right valuation
If you pick the right company it almost doesn’t matter what the initial valuation is. And if you get a good enough valuation, just about any company can be a good investment.
Sports gamblers have lots in common with stock market investors. They both believe they can predict the future, and they sometimes fall into the trap of making decisions with their hearts instead of their brains.

THE WORLD BIGGEST SPORT BETTING WINS
• Billy Walters – a successful $3.5 Million bet
• Vegas Dave -- $2.5 million on a $140,000 bet
THE GREATEST & BIGGEST STOCK INVESTORS
• William H. Gross -- As the founder and managing director of the PIMCO family of bond funds, he and his team have more than $600 billion in fixed-income assets under management.
• Warren Buffett -- Referred to as the "Oracle of Omaha," Warren Buffett is viewed as one of the most successful investors in history. Following the principles set out by Benjamin Graham, he has amassed a multibillion dollar fortune mainly through buying stocks and companies through Berkshire Hathaway. Those who invested $10,000 in Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 are above the $50 million mark today. Buffett's investing style of discipline, patience, and value has consistently outperformed the market for decades.

GAMBLING
Gambling is defined as staking something on a contingency. Also known as betting or wagering, it means risking money on an event that has an uncertain outcome and heavily involves chance. Like investors, gamblers must also carefully weigh the amount of capital they want to put "in play." In some card games, pot odds are a way of assessing your risk capital versus your risk-reward the amount of money to call a bet compared to what is already in the pot. If the odds are favourable, the player is more likely to "call" the bet. The entire process of sports betting is simple, high-tech, and legitimate, and sites are engineered to provide top-notch experiences to clients. The global market capitalization for sports betting is estimated at just under $60 billion per year, conservatively. Sports betting generates billions in real, clean wealth for both employees of sportsbooks and millions of bettors around the globe. Sounds a lot like the stock market, doesn’t it? In casino gambling, the bettor is playing against "the house." In sports gambling, and in lotteries two of the most common "gambling" activities in which the average person engages bettors are in a sense betting against each other because the number of players helps determine the odds.
Generally, the odds are stacked against gamblers. The probability of losing an investment is usually higher than the probability of winning more than the investment. A gambler's chances of making a profit can also be reduced if they have to put up an additional amount of money beyond their bet, referred to as "points," which is kept by the house whether the bettor wins or loses. Points are comparable to the broker commission or trading fee an investor pays.

UNDERSTANDING ODDS IN BETTING
Odds are displayed in both American, Decimal, or Fractional formats, and serve two purposes:
• They signal the implied probability of the outcome they are attached to
• They indicate how much money you could win betting on that outcome
For the purpose of this articles I will focus on Decimal odds. Of the three types of odds you’ll encounter in your betting endeavours, decimal odds are the easiest to work with. Decimal odds are displayed like this:

Calculating Pay-outs with Decimal Odds.
Determining how much you will win with decimal odds is straightforward: simply multiply your wager by the odds associated with the team you are betting on. Let’s take a look:
If we bet $10 on Manchester United (1.20), our winnings are calculated like this
Winnings: $10 1.20 = $12
Conversely, if we bet $10 on Juventus, our winnings would be
Winnings: $10 2.60 = $26
Most People bet on sports with their hearts and not their heads. It’s a poor strategy, but it means that, for bettors willing to take a cautious approach, there are tremendous opportunities to exploit these marketplace inefficiencies.

HOW STOCK MARKET WORKS
Investing is the act of allocating funds or committing capital to an asset like stocks with the expectation of generating an income or profit. The expectation of a return in the form of income or price appreciation is the core premise of investing. Risk and return go hand-in-hand in investing because low risk generally means low expected returns, while higher returns are usually accompanied by higher risk.
Investors must always decide how much money they want to risk. Some traders typically risk 2-5% of their capital base on any particular trade. Longer-term investors constantly hear the virtues of diversification across different asset classes. However, risk and return expectations can vary widely within the same asset class, especially if it's a large one, as the equities class is. For example, a blue-chip stock that trades on the New York Stock Exchange will have a very different risk-return profile from a micro-cap stock that trades on a small exchange.
In order to enhance their holdings' performance, some investors study trading patterns by interpreting stock charts. Stock market technicians try to leverage the charts to glean where the stock is going in the future. This area of study dedicated to analysing charts is commonly referred to as technical analysis. Investment returns can be affected by the amount of commission an investor must pay a broker to buy or sell stocks on his behalf.
When the stock goes public (sharp) investors can buy as many shares of the company as they want, so long as they believe the stock is undervalued. If the company was undervalued, they’d profit after the market inevitably corrected itself to reflect the true value of shares. Conversely, if they believed that the stock was significantly overvalued, investors would have the opportunity to short the stock. Mispricing IPOs doesn’t occur too often. There’s an army of business people making sure that they can get the price closest to “true” market value as possible.
It’s impossible to list them all the possible mitigating factors that can stand to affect the stock price. Geopolitics, local elections, consumer debt, and uncountable, unrelated events can significantly affect the prices of stocks.
In the stock market, these would be considered various “brokers fees.” Brokers are intermediaries who connect buyers and sellers in the stock market, and the fees they charge for their service are called brokers fees. These commissions that brokers charge are usually a percentage of every transaction and come with both a considerably large capital requirement (often charged in both flat fees and percentages). These rates vary widely and often depend on the complexity and nature of the financial operation the broker is facilitating. It can be difficult to overcome them as you maintain profitability, unless the capital you work with is substantial.

THE INEFFICIENCIES IN SPORT BETTING
In the investment world, “home bias” refers to investors being over 3x more likely to invest in local firms, despite the known and quantifiable benefits of diversifying their portfolio regionally. In sports betting, the manifestations of this are apparent. If the Real Madrid FC are playing the Liverpool FC, while Real Madrid is going to get significantly more money than the Liverpool, regardless of how enticing the odds price of these lines are. Simply put, sports bettors bet more money on their favorite teams, even if information clearly states it’s a poor choice.
What results is a disproportionately high percentage of wagers being placed on the Real Madrid. This forces bookmakers to adjust the odds (and prices attached to them), in the hopes of encouraging action on the Liverpool. This evens the amount of money coming in from either side. As sportsbooks artificially adjust their incentives to take one side or the other, they protect themselves from significant losses. This irrationality leaves room for intelligent bettors to employ rational, measured processes to determine the outcome of games.
In the days after the initial line comes out, bookmakers feel the pressures of supply and demand, and they adjust the lines as the market reacts to internal and external forces, as well as new information.

INVESTING VS GAMBLING: KEY DIFFERENCES
• RISK MANAGEMENT
In both gambling and investing, a key principle is to minimize risk while maximizing profits. But, when it comes to gambling, the house (the betting company) always has an edge a mathematical advantage over the player that increases the longer they play. In contrast, the stock market constantly appreciates over the long term. This doesn't mean that a gambler will never hit the jackpot, and it also doesn't mean that a stock investor will always enjoy a positive return. It is simply that over time, if you keep playing, the odds will be in your favour as an investor and not in your favour as a gambler.

• ALL OR NOTHING
Gambling on sports tends to be a zero-sum game. A bettor gambling on the Arsenal will instantly lose his or her entire $500 bet if Aubameyang and his teammates fail to win or cover the spread. However, someone sinking $500 into Apple stock has little risk of losing that entire initial investment, especially in the short term. The stock might go up and down some, but it typically doesn't go to zero.

• DIVERSIFYING RISKS
Investors also have the ability to spread their money out among many stocks. People often invest in funds that buy dozens or even hundreds of stocks, which helps reduce the risk. Investors have greater access to tools that can minimize the risk of losing money. For example, a stop-loss order instructs a broker to dump a stock when it tumbles below a specific price.

Such hedging tools are not as readily or even feasible to sports gamblers. At the same time, investing in stocks actually carries higher upside potential. While many stocks offer steady returns, investors sometimes hit the jackpot (think buying Apple back in early 2009 or Tesla in 2012).

• THE MITIGATING LOSS
Another key difference between investing and gambling: You have no way to limit your losses. If you pony up $10 a week for the betting companies and you don't win, you're out all of your capital. When betting on any pure gambling activity, there are no loss-mitigation strategies. In contrast, stock investors and traders have a variety of options to prevent total loss of risked capital. Setting stop losses on your stock investment is a simple way to avoid undue risk. If your stock drops 10% below its purchase price, you have the opportunity to sell that stock to someone else and still retain 90% of your risk capital.

• THE TIME FACTOR
Gamblers and investors also have far different time horizons. A stock can theoretically be held onto for an infinite amount of time, but a sports bet can end in the blink of an eye. Even the unlucky investors who jumped into the market at its peak in October 2007 eventually made their money back when stocks reclaimed their pre-recession levels in 2013. The same can't be said for those who bet big on the Denver Broncos last Super Bowl. "You can hold onto your betting tickets all your life, but you're not going to get squat," said Stovall.

But gambling is typically a short-lived activity, while equities investing can last a lifetime. Also, there is a negative expected return to gamblers, on average and over the long run. On the other hand, investing in the stock market typically carries with it a positive expected return on average over the long run.

• MINIMIZING RISKS
Gambling on sports may be more fun, but it's definitely a more risky use of money than putting it in the stock market. In the long run, investors have the chance to make more money because there are fewer downside risks.

That's the percentage of time that Stovall's research shows the S&P 500 -- the gold standard in the stock market -- has increased in value during the years since 1926. Those are pretty good odds. Americans bet an estimated $380 billion each year on sports. It's easy to see why fans may be tempted to gamble on their favourite teams and athletes. Gambling on football star Cristiano Ronaldo to win might seem like a safe bet, especially compared with picking winners in the stock market, you're making a wager based on some facts and some intuitions. And in neither instance can you be guaranteed to be correct. When you gamble, you own nothing, but when you invest in a stock, you own a share of the underlying company; in fact, some companies actually reimburse you for your ownership, in the form of stock dividends.

• DIVIDENDS
Stock investing, on the other hand, can be time-rewarding. Investors who purchase shares in companies that pay dividends are actually rewarded for their risked dollars. Companies pay you money regardless of what happens to your risk capital, as long as you hold onto their stock. Savvy investors realize that returns from dividends are a key component to making money in stocks over the long term.

• GETTING INFORMATION
Both stock investors and gamblers look to the past, studying historical performance and current behaviour to improve their chances of making a winning move. Information is a valuable commodity in the world of gambling as well as stock investing. But there's a difference in the availability of information.

Stock and company information is readily available for public use. Company earnings, financial ratios, and management teams can be researched and studied, either directly or via research analyst reports, before committing capital. Stock traders who make hundreds of transactions a day can use the day's activities to help with future decisions.




BENEFITS OF STOCK INVESTMENT

As the economy grows, so do corporate earnings. That's because economic growth creates jobs, which creates income, which creates sales. The fatter the pay check, the greater the boost to consumer demand, which drives more revenues into companies' cash registers. It helps to understand the phases of the business cycle expansion, peak, contraction, and trough.
• It is the best way to stay ahead of inflation. Historically, stocks have averaged an annualized return of 10%. That's better than the average annualized inflation rate of 2.9%. It does mean you must have a longer time horizon. That way, you can buy and hold even if the value temporarily drops.

• It is easy to buy because the stock market makes it easy to buy shares of companies. You can purchase them through a broker, a financial planner, or online. Once you've set up an account, you can buy stocks in minutes. Some online brokers such as Robin Hood let you buy and sell stocks commission-free.

• You can make money in two ways because most investors intend to buy low and then sell high. They invest in fast-growing companies that appreciate in value. That's attractive to both day traders and buy-and-hold investors. It is easy to sell because the stock market allows you to sell your stock at any time. That's important if you suddenly need your money in a hurry. Since prices are volatile, you run the risk of being forced to take a loss.

CONCLUSION
Investing and gambling both involve risking capital in the hopes of making a profit. In both gambling and investing, a key principle is to minimize risk while maximizing reward. Gamblers have fewer ways to mitigate losses than investors do. Investors have more sources of relevant information than gamblers do. Over time, the odds will be in your favour as an investor and not in your favour as a gambler.





By Israel Ogunniran, Esq.

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