Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Do Your Betting With Your Broker

Gambling?

If you go on Robinhood you can bet on stocks. You can make as many bets as you want: You can just buy an index fund and hold it forever, but if you’d like more excitement you can buy a bunch of single-stock options every morning and sell them in the afternoon. If you make a lot of bets, you will win some and lose some: Even professional trading firms with very good records might win, you know, 53% of their bets. You’d be quite happy with 51%. If you make 1,000 trades a year, make $10,000 each on 510 ...