When he's not training on a basketball court with friends or coaching the kids at his school, Steven Young, a Philadelphia teacher, practices the only subject in which he considers himself a true pro: sports betting. Not big numbers, just a handful of dollars staked on NBA events, without disdaining baseball or football. For him, as for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of fans in the US and beyond (see the regulars of Sisal, It or William Hill) the lockdown meant an unwelcome Lent. Someone, in order not to lose the habit, has chased football in the most remote places on the planet or has bowed to virtual tournaments before the expected resumption of soccer.
But few, or at least not many, have so far followed the example of Steven Young who, waiting to be able to bet again on the champions of Golden State or Miami, discovered the charm of another league: the Wall Street league. The big news this year, in fact, was the boom of Robinhood, the zero commission online stock exchange site who has conquered an audience of investors/bettors who have overturned the forecasts of analysts and economists thanks to the action of tens of thousands of mister Young's followers: 30 years old, no financial experience behind him, a modest portfolio of 2.500 dollars, transferred from sports betting sites to the stock exchange. Ten million neophytes (as many as the subscribers to Robinhood.com and the like), the new pajama warriors who, armed with a free trading platform (Robinhood), gambled on the $1200 subsidy granted by the Treasury, in the face of declining employment. A flood of new investors which, as can be seen from reading the news, first turned to the most fashionable technologies, Amazon and Facebook in the lead, then expanded to cyclical and the most varied bets, in search of the big hit among the companies that entered receivership . With good results because the recklessness of the neophytes was combined with the expansive action of the central banks, determined to limit bankruptcies to a minimum.
"Hats off to the Robinhooders, who knew how to seize the moment better than the professionals who had to chase them and better than the Buffett who remained paralyzed at the window” wrote Alessandro Fugnoli predicting that the phenomenon is destined, like fireflies, to shine for just one night. But, reads a note from Goldman Sachs, “we are faced with a new segment of investors in both equities and derivatives that the rules are changing." “Sure – says James Bianco, old fox of the US market. They don't count like the institutional ones, but they have a certain weight in these months. Enough to be taken into account." Also because it is sufficient to move a part, even a modest one, of the sports betting, amounting to 13 billion dollars if you limit yourself to legal activities (ten times as much, calculates the New York Times, with clandestine gambling), to change the balance. The Robinhood boom goes along with the change of course for a large part of e-trading, which no longer asks for commissions, such as e-Trade which has collected three million new accounts since it was free.
In short, a phenomenon for unscrupulous neophytes who don't hesitate to ride the low, completely indifferent, like the lawyer Tran of Fort Collins in Colorado, to sell Ford to finance a foray into Korean baseball or the Russian ping pong championship. Sure, the pros will soon be taking the slack back. But it is probable that fashion will take hold here too.
