Sometimes people believe investing in the stock market is similar to gambling and in reality, parts of it can be. There are parts which require doing your homework to try to ensure you do not lose money, but sometimes the terms of gambling are often used in sound bites because they seem to fit well. Outside of the stock market, legal gambling is a method for governments to collect taxes.

In an article by Wayne Parry of the Associated Press, the American Gaming Association noted the total gambling was up to over $110 billion.

Going to a casino remains the bread and butter of the gambling industry. Slot machines brought in $35.51 billion, table games brought in $10.31 billion up 3.5%. Sports betting was up 44.5% to $10.92 billion. Americans legally wagered $119.84 billion on sports up 27.8% from the previous year. Part of the increase was more states allowed legal betting.

The top states for sports betting was New York at $1.69 billion followed by New Jersey and Illinois where over $1 billion was bet.

Internet gambling generated $6.17 billion up 22.9%. The top state was Michigan with $1.92 billion followed by New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Casinos paid an estimated $14.42 billion in taxes up 9.7%. Nevada is the top gambling market with $15.5 billion in revenues, followed by Pennsylvania at $5.86 billion and Atlantic City at $5.77 billion. The strip in Nevada are the largest casinos, the next largest casinos by revenue are Resorts World in New York, MGM National Harbor in Washington, DC, Encore Boston Harbor and Borgata in Atlantic City.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, while there is a significant element to gambling on the stock market, gambling means win or lose and in a casino the house always wins. If the house always wins, think about buying the owner of the casinos. One method to ensure you win more than you lose is buy profitable stocks which pay a dividend. The stock market will fluctuate, but the dividend and the P/E ratio of profitable stocks tends to be higher than non-profitable stocks. When non profitable stocks have the same P/E ratio or above, most analysts believe a correction will result or the price of the non-profitable stock will fall. One of the best methods to avoid this is try not to buy these types of stocks, for this is when deploying money on these types of stocks is gambling.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.