“Stocks only go up,” outspoken day-trader Dave Portnoy says – often – on Twitter.
On up days, Portnoy is the best there is. At least, that’s what he tells anyone who will listen…
“There’s nobody who can argue that Warren Buffett is better at the stock market than I am right now,” he said on Twitter earlier this summer. “I’m better than he is. It’s a fact. You’re just gonna have to deal with it.”
When the market moves against him, he always has some story to explain why. But one part of his act is consistent…
Portnoy is an emotional roller coaster.
Even more important, he has become the poster child for the stock market boom that’s underway.
Let me explain…
You might already know about Portnoy… He has built a huge following through his Barstool Sports business, which is now worth nearly half a billion dollars.
Barstool Bets is his latest venture. It’s a sports betting and gambling website. And if you think about the idea of Barstool Bets for a moment, Portnoy’s recent antics in the stock market start to make a bit more sense…
You probably know that the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized online sports betting in mid-2018. Companies have been scrambling to cash in on legal sports gambling ever since.
Then the virus hit, and professional sports shut down for months. That put sports bettors like Portnoy out of commission. But they still wanted to gamble…
The stock market was the perfect place for them to get their fix. Betting on stocks has nearly all of the components of sports betting built into it – there’s risk, skill, luck, and drama. People get to pick their favorites. And they get to spin stories to explain why their picks are the best.
You can change nearly everything about the who, what, where, when, and why. You can swap team names for stock names… and folks will find a way to roll the dice.
People just like to gamble.
You and I might not see the stock market as gambling. But these folks do. And they’re piling in as the market melts up – to a degree that I haven’t seen since 1999. (More on this in tomorrow’s essay.)
Pro sports are finally ramping back up as COVID-19 restrictions ease – giving gamblers something to bet on again. But here’s the thing… The gamblers aren’t leaving the stock market.
I was confident before that we would soon see a true Melt Up – where the public piles into stocks. But I never imagined that the Melt Up would be fueled (at least in part) by bored sports bettors during a full-blown pandemic.
Who could have imagined that? But here we are.
For the first time in more than 20 years, the general public is buying stocks like they’re in a casino. This, my friend, means that the Melt Up is here. It also means that the Melt Down – the inevitable crash that ends the boom – is not far away.
The classic history of Melt Ups shows that ALL the newcomers – unfortunately – will ultimately get wiped out.
The market has a dastardly history of sucking in the largest possible number of unsuspecting participants on the way up – and then wiping all of them out on the way down. They ride the tide all the way in, and then they ride it all the way out.
The thing is, savvy investors will make a lot of money as that tide comes in.
That means you’ve got to take advantage of the Melt Up today, while you still can.
Good investing,
— Steve
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Source: Daily Wealth