Stock vs Betting

Stocks Vs Betting

A usual question from numerous members of EBI-GROUP is the one that concerns stock markets and the possibility of putting some profits from gambling to stocks being considered as more “safe” investment.

The same question I had some years ago. I will just say my story and my experience from stock markets and in general what I believe is a safe investment and what it’s not.

My story and my experience from stock markets begin about a decade back. In 1999 the Greek stock market was the daily activity of a Greek aged 15 to 200… Even dead man have been resurrected and put money on companies trading rice to companies trading thin , thick or clean air. Everything on the market was then gold; all those companies have been huge opportunities for the great analysts that appeared on the market then. Then I was lucky, living in UK and having my mind on different stuff but also being on a strict budget of a University student, the possibility of buying stocks was null and I never took the risk. The end of the story was a stock market near to 7000 units that in less than a year was close to 1500 and most people lost their money.

Then , around 2005 and being happy that I was lucky not to be there and having some spare money to put into an investment I bought some shares. The first time, a guy considered specialist and inside the market (and dirt) advised a company. I put some thousands euro on this company and it looked very promising. Stocks on greens , and when I was near to go out I found out that company ceased operation and all the stocks worth less than toilet paper. I said that I was unlucky and I thought of a different approach. It was to buy companies considered serious. Banks, heavy industries, the biggest IT Company in the market. Then recession started and all my stocks also went down. Being “lucky” for the second time i decided just to play with small money but still small money are also money.

As you may understand. I’m a loser from stock markets. In general I have always been a loser and never made money from the considered “safe” investments. On the contrary the safer investment for me was and is betting.

You may say that I was dumb, I was idiot and really the same I say for myself being so idiot to buy shares using “insider info” or just my feelings.

My experience says that betting and stock market have some differences. The stock market is based on data that we have no idea about and we can’t even think about what may happen tomorrow in a company considered great on papers. Last year the price of the largest Greek bank was 22-24 Billion Euros today it’s 6.5 Billion. Last year Citibank was priced to 250 Billion, now the price is ten times less. What happened in 12 months and those giants became wharfs? It was that a World War happened? A plague? Or they just decided to give the real picture of their economics to the press? I believe it’s the latter. And if Citi have just done this, Greek National Bank published profits of around a billion in the last 9 months. Why the price lost 75% since last year? When somebody bought the stocks last years the profits of the Bank were same or even less than those today. What happened? A company makes more money and the price loses 75% in a year… the reality is that we don’t know… Stock markets have their own rules, their own aesthetics and at the end of the day, their own code of conduct. Also , accounts are relatively easy to be cooked in a way that we can’t be able to know the exact and true image of a company on the share market.
You are going to say that football is also the same. Yes it may be dirty , it may have hundreds of different variables that decide a match but at the end of the day what you see is what you get. And in reality in most of the cases you may find the good information yourself on a football game. Concerning a listed company only few now the real image of a company.
So my opinion is the following:

“Why if we make a good profit from betting we must change to other forms of investment that we have no idea about?”

Have a nice weekend…