Casinos vs. Lottery vs. Stocks

Casinos vs. Lottery vs. Stocks

Which is a better way to win money? Best odds are horse betting. Small number of horses means better odds; if 12 horses race, you have 1:12 odds of your horse winning.

Sports betting is also good. In finals either team A or B wins; so it's 50/50. Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, have only 2 teams in finals.

Stocks go up and down, and you might make a lot, or lose everything. It is said that stocks are a long term investment; not a way to make money quickly. In the long term (25-50 years) you win.
Real estate is also a huge gamble. Consider what happened in Miami and Vegas.

Lottery. Well, with PB now up to $255m, it's a lot of dough for just a few bucks. Odds are against you, but someone has to win. Ifcourse, MM went up to $650m because no one did win for a long time. But then there
were 3 winning tickets, so it's $215m each. I dont play PB nor MM, but do play NY Lotto, Take5, Sweet Million, Numbers. Lower jackpots, but better odds.

Casinos. They are fun, but low pay outs, unless you play table games. Ifcourse, you have to get to the casino. Say from NYC to Vegas, it's around $700 air+4 nights hotel. Expensive food, long lines, drunks, etc.

Thus, if you had say $1000 would you go to the casinos, play the lottery, invest in stocks, bet on sports?

 

With $1000 I go to Vegas. With $100,000 I look at market investments.

 

I know the Minnesota Wild were 200 to 1 to win the Stanley Cup in 2013, they sign Zach Parise and Ryan Sutter and now they are 8 to 1. That is a big turn around. Wish I had put $20 down when they were 200 to 1 just for shits n giggles.

 

With $1000 you might as well go to the casino or bet on sports.

$1000 invested in the stock market isn't going to mean much in the long run - even if you did some amazing investing and managed to quintuple your money in 10 years thats great as far as making your money work for you, but realistically you would only have $5000 in the end.

And $1,000 worth of lottery tickets sounds like a lot, but your odds of winning the big prize are so astronomical - some do the math like "well the odds of winning mega millions is 1 in 174,000,000... if I have a thousand tickets my odds go all the way down to 1 in 174,000!" but thats actually not the case: your odds are still 1 in 174,000,000 just that you have 1,000 tries at it. And you can't say "somebody has to win it" because thats how those lotteries get so big: people aren't winning it.

 

Umm... I think if you are going to be looking back and "wishing" you might as well go a little bigger, like $100, $200, $500 or even $1000

Just stopping short at $20 seems like a rather chintzy waste of a wish


As for the bet: I don't do pre-season NHL futures, but the Wild at 200-1 before the signings would have been interesting - they showed some good promise last season before they just fell apart so if they did a couple of decent deals in the off season and it was enough to make it to the playoffs they'd probably end up with 6th or 7th spot, of which any team that gets 6th place really isn't that bad off for a chance to advance to the second round.

 

commodities

 

For MM and PB with same odds of 1:175m yes buying hundreds of tickets wont matter to win the jackpot. Ifcourse you will win lower prizes, maybe even $1m or $10k. Or even $10-$200 on a few tickets thereby getting
%50-%100 of your bet back, or even a profit.

However, with Take5, Numbers, Win4 spending $1000 does matter due to lower odds. 1:10,000 odds of winning Win4 - $5k, so odds are 1:10.

 

Depends what king of action you want. Stocks are the only thing of the three with a positive expected return but you won't get rich quick. The lottery is basically like lighting money on fire. The casino at least you get a relatively low house advantage and some entertainment value.

If I had no net worth then stocks are the obvious choice. Broke folks shouldn't gamble. If I had savings and retirement covered, which I do, and wanted to gamble that grand then casino it is.

Another alternative is stock options. You can make a ton of money in a very nice short period of time though picking the right options takes a ton of luck and timing. I know a guy who made 6 digits with $4000 worth of Enron put options for what it's worth. Make no mistake though it's definitely a gamble not an investment.

 

Lets not get too crazy!! $20 is right about my comfort zone on something like that, too many factors in the NHL. One game and done if a loss is one thing, but they play through quite a few playoff rounds.