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points by riantogo 4 days ago | 0 comments

Not supporting Kalshi here, but why doesn't the reasoning apply to stock market? Maybe it does, but the law excludes stock markets?

[–] bagacrap 4 days ago

The stock market is not like sports gambling because it is connected to actual economic activity and it can be positive sum (everyone wins), unless you are talking about degenerate derivatives like zero day options, which are like gambling and Utah probably would like to ban or make less accessible to uninformed 18 year olds. It's a lot harder to know where to draw the line in financial markets, and that is where lawyers perhaps should be spending their time figuring out; instead, we live in a world where sports gambling is being pitched as a form of "investment".

[–] cowlevel 4 days ago

That was true at one point in time but right now the stock market is quite similar to Polymarket. The bond market is the one that would have been a better example.

[–] bagacrap 4 days ago

Buying a target date fund and holding for decades until retirement is not similar to gambling and despite what some parts of the internet would have you believe, that is how the majority of individuals participate in the stock market.

If you either (a) treat it like gambling or (b) don't participate at all because you think it is gambling, then I am sorry for your sake.

[–] JumpCrisscross 4 days ago

> why doesn't the reasoning apply to stock market?

You have lots of recourse if you lose money through your stock broker. Kalshi, on the other hand, is less regulated than a casino.

[–] weird-eye-issue 4 days ago

That's not really true. It's very easy to start trading options and lose all of your money overnight. There would be no recourse

[–] JumpCrisscross 4 days ago

> It's very easy to start trading options and lose all of your money overnight. There would be no recourse

Of course there is. If the broker improperly evaluated your suitability to trade options, you'd be able to–at the very least–cost them tens of thousands of dollars in compliance costs. In all likelihood, a retail investor taking their broker to FINRA arbitration has even odds of prevailing.

[–] weird-eye-issue 4 days ago

If you answered the options questionnaire and placed the trades yourself, you have essentially no case. So in reality what you are saying is not really true for 99.9% of people that lose money on options

And even in the extreme case that you did file a claim and you were awarded damages it would probably be only for a fraction of what you lost

[–] JumpCrisscross 4 days ago

> If you answered the options questionnaire and placed the trades yourself, you have essentially no case

What are you basing this on?

[–] cowlevel 4 days ago

I lost a bunch (not all) of money in options after checking a box that said "enable options trading" and answering a few multi-choice questions about how they worked. Nothing happened to my broker.

[–] JumpCrisscross 4 days ago

Did you submit a written complaint and threaten escalation to arbitration?

[–] weird-eye-issue 4 days ago

FINRA statistics, common sense, and real world experience with options trading

[–] JumpCrisscross 4 days ago

> FINRA statistics

Sure. What are you looking at?

> common sense

There's your problem.

> real world experience with options trading

Did you ever take anything to arbitration?

For what it's worth, former options market maker here.