A-Z Gambling - You Can Stop Your Gambling Addiction

Public Relations: Understanding Educated Gambling

2007-11-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

As an entry level position to PR, I found myself typing up a forecast by a major Public Relation's firm for a major pharmaceutical company of what life would be like in the year 2000. Market research predictions included telephones with monitors that could help you see people while you talked, fax machines that could transmit information over telephone wires, microwave ovens for reducing food defrosting time from hours to minutes and other devices that have certainly come to pass. In the lifestyle area, predictions proved less valid. Not only would Americans be enjoying longer lives, it foretold, but they would have shorter work weeks, more vacations and overall, a more leisurely lifestyle. An iota of truth, but mostly wishful thinking when we read 2005 front pages.

I will always remember being called to account because the final document the Client saw had several typos. Presentation counts in this field.

PR firms attempt to influence the major media who in turn help persuade viewers, listeners and readers to think or act in a particular way. The people who enter the profession and those in the media usually have a gift of gab, a facility with the written word, a decent IQ and a certain love affair with risk.

Fortune tellers don't make much money. But most PR firms charge a substantial amount of money to present their client, product or service in a positive light to the media. People are continuously reporting polls or surveys as if they are fact, when, in truth, often the questions asked are the reason for the results tendered. Trends are so swift these days, just when buzz begins, another bee is buzzing a different tune.
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Here is the PR agency drill. A brainstorming session consists of several persons who try and identify a project, tag line or campaign hook that will capture the right response from the media while delivering the Client message. Then a qualified person writes the plan, another person interfaces with the Client and still other people "pitch" the media. Often times in large firms, a separate TV department usually has close ties with the producers of various programming. You can pitch the same story to ten different venues, and come up with ten different responses. It is an expensive process.

Since everyone is trying for the biggest hits first, and the spots are truly limited, the pitchers have to be focused and persistent. Then it becomes a numbers game. The more balls you throw, the more likely you are to get a strike. The more strikes you pitch, the more likely your team will win, and the competition will be beaten. The more consistent your story, the more believed you will be. The more you can afford to spend, the more you get to use credible spokespeople to help tell your story. It is a numbers game.
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So by all means pitch "Oprah" first if you have a story that will hug her heart. Next work the syndicated morning shows. Then try the syndicated writers at the major news services when your news is hard and important. Talk to AOL when you have the money, or put it in the movie theatre, the newest venue for enlightening if not annoying a captive audience.

But you can also tell your story with incredible reach and exciting response if you use newspaper mat features to newspapers nationwide via Points of Persuasion Syndicate. For $2100, your message gets faxed to 10,000 plus print and online newspaper outlets immediately. Newspapers use the free columns. Your message gets printed exactly as you tell it, or your captioned color illustration tells the story just the way you approved it. You've increased your chances of the public reading a product or service mention, you've had the help of expert PR people with years of presentation skills behind them, your story will stay on their editorial website for six months to a year, and you get quarterly usage reports to help impress you if you are the business owner or your Clients if you are an agency.
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Best of all, the educated, well-off suburban consumer gets time to find out something informational that can help them and their family live a better life. It seems likely that any marketer would find this a low-budget risk worth taking.
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Myrna Greenhut is currently president of P-O-P-S(http://www.p-o-p-s.com), a service designed to supply incremental PR impressions for companies, Associations and PR agencies. As a consumer product publicist, she has been with numerous independent and advertising affiliated PR agencies like The Rowland Company, Ogilvy & Mather, Cairns & Associates, D-A-Y as well as having done major freelance PR projects for Avon Products Incorporated

Online Gambling Causing Credit Card Debt

2007-11-27T19:14:00.005-08:00

It is the latest craze at the moment and everyone seems to be enjoying gambling at home with the increase of poker sites on the internet, but its not good news if you are running up debts on your credit card. I don't know about you but it seems that I have a misconceived perception of time when I am sitting at my computer; time just seems to fly by. The longer you are gambling on an internet poker site, the more money you are spending.

Online gambling is being seen as pushing up consumer debts and that's not good for the UK economy. Figures from the government have revealed that the amount of money spent on gambling last year was £42.8 million; in 2001 that figure was only £8.6 million. It is a perturbing sharp increase. Internet sites that have been registered outside the UK have not been included in the government figures of money spent.
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The glamorization of gambling, especially poker, by celebrities at the moment is partly to blame for the rise in gambling. Sitting at home on your computer can undermine your ability to spend your money wisely. Internet poker sites or casino sites allow you to insert your credit card details; once your details have been entered you can continue gambling up to your credit limit. Some gamblers are maxing out numerous credit cards at a time to try and win back money they have lost with the Debt Advisor group seeing some individual debts as high as £100,000. Casinos have a strong cash culture unlike internet gambling where it is your credit card that does the spending. Using cash instead of your credit card makes you more aware of the amount you are spending.
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The growth of gambling online in the next five years is predicted to be around 22% a year while playing poker online is said to rise by 44% a year. Gambling through your mobile phone is now also being offered by companies which could see even higher debts being accumulated.

Gambling has always seen its fair share of creating debt problems but with easier accessibility it may cause more households to suffer from unmanageable debt. Other household members are usually unaware that there is a debt problem looming not realizing how much is actually being gambled, the more desperate people become to win back their money the higher the stakes become seeing people usually losing more and more.

If you are suffering form credit card debt problems through internet gambling there are many organizations that can help you. Seeking help sooner rather than later will prevent even more debt.

Joseph Kenny is the webmaster of the credit card comparison sites http://www.credit-cards-info.com/ and also http://www.creditcards121.com/

Is Trading Just Another Form Of Gambling?

2007-11-27T19:14:00.004-08:00

Many people will dismiss trading as mere gambling. Let's examine a definition of gambling (from dictionary.com): To bet on an uncertain outcome, to take a risk in the hope of gaining an advantage or benefit. No trader can know what the outcome of a trade will be before it is complete. All traders have losing trades, but that risk is weighed against the expectation of greater winning trades. So, how is trading any different from gambling?

Trading futures is a zero sum game - for every buyer of a contract there must be a seller. When a futures contract expires, effectively what happens is that the losers pay out to the winners. It is often quoted that 90% of traders lose, which leaves only 10% of traders as consistent winners. What, then, separates the winners from the losers?
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I would suggest that the 90% of traders that lose in the markets are those for which trading is just another form of gambling whereas for the winning 10% it is a business. How can this be? A simple analogy is with a casino. The players in a casino are gambling but the casino is a business. Why? Because the casino has a positive expectancy on all of it's games which means the players must have a negative expectancy. Take a simple bet on red or black in roulette. The casino will pay out even money but, with the addition of a zero (or 2 if your really unlucky!) means the probability of winning for the player is just 18/37 or 48.65%. So the expectancy for the player is:

(.4865 x 1)-((1-.4865) x 1) = -0.027.

In other words, for every dollar bet the player will lose 2.7 cents. As the casino is taking the other side of this bet then for every dollar bet they will win 2.7 cents. The more bets that are placed then the more the results will tend towards this expected outcome. From a casino's point of view they need to make the games as quick as possible to encourage the player to place more bets. Of course, in the short term the player could get lucky and win a few bets - but in the long term the odds are always against them and they will lose.
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How does this relate to trading? Simple - the winners have a system with positive expectancy. They are not gambling because the more trades they place the more likely they are to realise that positive edge, just as a casino realises it's edge over the players over the long term.

Losing traders do not have any proven system or one that is flawed - they are simply betting on the market going up or down in the hope that they will benefit. Losing traders are merely gamblers who are using the markets as a casino.

So, trading is never gambling because a trader will have a plan with a positive expectancy and will realise that edge over a series of trades. Some trades will win, some trades will lose - but after enough trades the trader will come out ahead
Tip! Now that some of these gamblers have been reached or they realized it themselves the insight into one's own mind helps in the recovery from gambling addiction.

Tim runs Online Futures Trading, a website that provides information and resources for traders. Tim also provides a free day trading system.

Is Trading Futures Gambling?

2007-11-27T19:14:00.003-08:00

"Hey Joe! I want to learn how to trade, but I'm having a conflict. Is trading futures gambling?"

Trading futures is gambling only when you trade them without full knowledge of what you are doing. There is a good measure of self-knowledge required to choose the proper course to follow if you want to become a trader. It has even been postulated that many small traders in the futures markets, without knowing it, secretly want to lose. They jump in with high hopes—but feeling vaguely guilty. Guilty over 'gambling' with the family's money, guilty over trying to get 'something for nothing,' or guilty over plunging in without really having done much research or analysis. Then they punish themselves, for these or other sins, by selling out, demoralized, at a loss.
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A trader is gambling when he/she trades from ignorance. The gambler makes his trading decisions on gut feelings, hopes, dreams of getting rich quick, tips from the broker, "inside information" from friends, and from the improper understanding and use of indicators, oscillators, moving averages, and mechanical trading systems. In general, he is looking for a way to shortcut having to truly learn what is going on. Unfortunately, most people who attempt to trade fall into this category.
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However, true trading is actually speculation (managed risk). The speculator is willing to accept the risk of price fluctuation in return for the greater leverage that comes with that risk in the hopes of earning a greater profit. The true speculator makes his trading decisions based on knowledge gathered from Information about the behavior of the underlying, seasonality, historical and current trends, chart analysis, fundamentals, the market dynamics, and knowledge of those who trade it.

Joe Ross has been trading for more than 47 years, and is a well known Master Trader. He has survived all the up and downs of the markets because of his adaptable trading style, using a low-risk approach that produces consistent profits.

Joe is the creator of the Ross hook, and has set new standards for low-risk trading with his concept of "The Law of Charts™." Joe was a private trader for most of his life. In the mid 80's he shift his focus and decided to share his knowledge. After his recovery, he founded Trading Educators in 1988 to teach aspiring traders how to make profits using his trading approach. He has written 12 major books on trading. All of them have become classics and have been translated into many different languages.
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Joe holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from the University of California at Los Angeles. He did his Masters work in Computer Sciences at the George Washington University extension in Norfolk, VA. Joe still tutors, teaches, writes, and trades regularly. Joe is still an active and integral part of Trading Educators.

Trading Educators Inc

Investing or Gambling?

2007-11-27T19:14:00.001-08:00

You may think you are investing but could it be more like gambling? A lot of people spend more time looking for shoes or clothes to buy than researching which stock to invest in. I'm not sure why this is so, but what I will try to do is to allow you to gauge for yourself whether you are investing or gambling.

It is entirely possible that you have made some good money in the stock market. You might have made $20,000 on Stock X and $10,000 on Stock Y. But was this just luck or was it because you had intimate knowledge of a particular industry? Was it because you understood the metrics that drove the economics of the business and knew how this company was better than its competitors? Perhaps you had also read the latest annual reports and filings with the Securities Commissions, listened in on recent conference calls and analyzed the last five or ten years of financial statements? If this was the case, then you are most certainly a prudent investor. If not, I think you just got lucky. Let's say you gambled and won!
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The "due-diligence" steps outlined above are but a few of the things professional money managers do before investing in a stock. Unless you are willing to do that, you could be taking a very big risk with your hard-earned money, you are taking a gamble!

Professional investing is just too time consuming, too specialized and too complex to do successfully on a consistent basis by yourself. If you don't have time to read Annual Reports, SEC filings, latest analyst reports, analyze financial statements and… the list goes on, you could be making a big mistake in being your own investment advisor.

If you are not going to be your own investment advisor then what are the alternatives? One alternative is to listen to Warren Buffett, the second richest man in the world and probably the world's greatest investor who will tell you to simply invest in an index fund. This is a fund which owns a portfolio of investments that are weighted the same as a stock-exchange index (such as the S&P 500) in order to mirror its performance. This effectively means that your returns will be similar to the overall stock market. Remember, a majority of mutual funds, which are managed by full-time professional investment managers, fail to consistently beat broad indexes such as the S&P 500.
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If you are serious about your hard earned money and seek consistent returns on it, then a little bit of legwork is in order. Go back to your investment statements and figure out how much you have invested, over what period of time and how much you have earned or lost over the same time period. This information will allow you to calculate the rate of return you have earned. You could then compare it to the overall market return of an Index such as the DOW or the S&P 500 and see if you have out-performed the market or not. Be a savvy investor - figure out what rates of return you have been earning on your investments and then take appropriate action.
Tip! Future articles will address the compulsive gambler, gambling addiction and a search to find a solution to this growing problem.

Fauzi Zamir is a chartered accountant and founder of Solutionera Inc. which has developed a web-site that allows investors to easily track, calculate and compare their ROIs against market indexes without having to do the complex mathematical calculations. You can visit the site at whatismyroi.com.