Stock Trading: The New Gambling Addiction

Investing doesn't seem like a type of gambling, but lately some traders have been trading like compulsive gamblers. Certain traders suffer from family and social difficulties; others even have problems with the law when they resort to criminal activities to continue financing their transactions. Trading has not yet been classified as a gambling disorder, but in many cases it shares crucial similarities with gambling. A few years ago, the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling stated about trading: "It will be the gambling addiction of the millennium, no doubt." With the pandemic, the isolations and the expansion of the stock market activity, the forecast has been more than fulfilled. Many sports gamblers, trapped in their homes and with some extra cash thanks to government stimulus checks, found in day trading a dangerous new way to gamble.

Claude Kramer is a sociologist, member of the Research Group on Digital Culture & Network Theory, he combines an academic career with contributions in the most important press media worldwide.