Stock Market Offers Unique Betting Opportunities

The oddsmakers at BetOnline.ag have been working overtime tracking down and pricing events for the betting public to wager on. During this unprecedented time with most of the world’s major sports shut down this is quite a challenge. One new market you’ll find on the BetOnline.ag betting board is something that is relatively common in many parts of the world: financial market betting. Over the next few days, I’ll try to provide some analysis of these bets and hopefully come up with a few winning positions.

VOLATILITY IS CURRENTLY INSANE BUT OPPORTUNITIES REMAIN

No big surprise, but the major financial markets of the world have taken a big hit during the Coronavirus crisis. That includes the US where all three major averages have experienced significant losses. What is a bit more surprising is how it has happened–instead of a straight downward spiral trading in the US markets have been almost ridiculously volatile with huge swings both up and down of over 1000 points a day. The end of last week is a perfect look at the market in microcosm. On Thursday, the DJIA suffered it’s largest one day loss since ‘Black Monday’ in 1987. On Friday, the same average experienced the biggest single day gains since the financial crisis of 2008. For the week, however, the DJIA was down 10% with other markets experiencing similar losses.

One of the interesting components of the BetOnline.ag stock market props is that you’re not being asked to peg the direction of the market on a specific day. Here’s an example:

HILTON HOTELS STOCK PRICE ON MARCH 31 CLOSE (HLT)

UNDER 50 USD -140
OVER 50 USD +100

The Hilton stock price on Wednesday is another good example of the volatility the financial markets are experiencing. HLT opened the day at $58.01 and like most stocks in the travel sector took a bath from the opening bell. At 1:30 PM Eastern, the price was $44.92, precipitously close to the 52 week low of $44.30. From that point, it recovered a bit ending the day at $56.68.

In my view, the short term performance of the stocks in the travel and leisure sector–hotels, airlines, casinos, etc–is completely dependent on Federal government action to financially backstop the industry. By every indication, these businesses will receive some relief. The airlines, in particular, provide a crucial function within the national economy. Assuming that a ‘bailout package’ is forthcoming, travel stocks could be near their low.

Of course there are countless other variables not the least of which is the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. The US markets in the past week or two have been a good indicator of how the Federal government–and to a lesser extent state and local governments–are responding to the crisis. They’ve also served as a viable proxy for the 2020 Presidential election–at the risk of oversimplifying the dynamic when the market goes up it suggests confidence in Trump’s leadership. This in turn improves his chances for re-election. When the market heads the other way, the opposite is usually true.

Look for more analysis of the BetOnline.ag stock betting props in the days to come. With sports on hiatus, financial market betting provides an entertaining option. There’s ‘action’ every day and plenty of ‘handicapping information’ available online.