The Stock Market as Entertainment

Plus: Raoul Pal's 'Cliff of Death', European Policy Banks, Shift4

Welcome to issue #3 of Net Interest, my newsletter focused on financial sector themes. Last week’s note on Jamie Dimon gained considerable interest. The man himself even emailed me to say how much he liked it! If you know anyone – Chairman and CEO or otherwise – who may like Net Interest delivered to their inboxes every Friday, please invite them to sign up.

The Stock Market as Entertainment

“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.” — Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) in The Colour of Money

Outside the small enclave of the Belarusian Premier League, it’s been a barren few months for sport and with it, for sports betting. To fill the void punters had to look for something else to wager on. They found the stock market.

March and April saw record trading activity flow through retail brokers in the US. The big four online brokers executed as many trades for customers in those two months as in the whole first half of last year. This week, two of the big brokers gave indications that activi…