If you’ve been around markets long enough, you start to notice something important. Price doesn’t just tell you what to buy. It also tells you what to avoid.
We’re fortunate to have the deepest, most transparent capital markets in the history of the world. Nearly $70 trillion in publicly traded equities. Real businesses. Real assets. Real ownership.
Whether you’re an investor building wealth over time or a trader capitalizing on trends across timeframes, if you have a strategy, defined risk parameters, and the discipline to execute, you can participate in that opportunity.
That’s how markets are meant to be approached.
Every few years, though, something comes along that tries to blur the line. It gets packaged as “innovation.” It gets dressed up with slick marketing.
And it quietly shifts the conversation away from owning productive assets and toward wagering on fleeting headlines and momentary events.
Back in November, I wrote about the difference between sports gambling and investing, and the response was overwhelming. Not because the idea was controversial, but because common sense still resonates.
There’s a difference between allocating capital with a repeatable process and simply betting on headlines.
Lately, the latest rebrand is “prediction markets,” as if this is some new financial breakthrough. It’s not. Speculation has always existed.
What’s new is the attempt to present thinly traded, low-liquidity betting platforms as if they’re comparable to global capital markets.
They are not.
And when you start to see magazine covers, ETF rebrands, and media tours all celebrating the same theme at the same time, history suggests we are not early to that trend.
Let’s talk about why.
Journalists Chiming In Usually Means It’s Late
The latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek just dropped.
Look what’s right on the front cover: “Should people really be betting on everything? The rise of prediction markets.”
Think about the timeline here.
By the time a theme makes it from niche corners of the internet to a major magazine cover, it’s already gone through the hype cycle.
Editors have noticed it. Writers have pitched it. Designers have mocked it up. It’s been printed, shipped, and displayed.
That’s not how early trends behave.
And this is not an isolated example.
Just two months ago, Barron’s ran a similar cover asking whether there’s any real difference between investing and gambling:
When multiple legacy publications start framing the same debate at the same time, history suggests we’re much closer to saturation than discovery.
Which brings us to the real question.
Is this financial innovation expanding opportunity and improving market structure?
Or is it simply repackaging reckless gambling and hoping no one looks too closely under the hood?
Volume Is Not Capital
If we’re going to have an honest conversation about markets, we need to start with the basics.
Real markets are built on ownership. In U.S. equities alone, there’s nearly $70 trillion in market capitalization. That’s not trading volume. That’s actual capital invested in real companies. Factories, patents, cash flows, employees, assets. Ownership.
That depth matters. Liquidity matters. The ability to enter and exit positions in size without blowing out the price matters. That’s what makes a market functional.
Now compare that to what’s being promoted as “prediction markets.”
Instead of talking about how much capital is actually committed, the marketing leans heavily on trading volume.
Billions traded sounds impressive. But volume is activity. It’s not ownership. It’s not a capital base. It’s not assets under management.
What you want to know is how much real money is locked into the system. The total value locked, the actual capital at risk.
And when you look there, the numbers are a rounding error relative to global equity markets.
That distinction is not academic. It’s structural.
A market supported by trillions in ownership behaves a lot differently than a platform dependent on churn. One is designed to allocate capital and build wealth. The other relies on constant turnover to survive.
And when the pitch shifts from “own productive assets” to “this will be bigger than the stock market one day,” it’s worth asking who benefits if you believe that story.
That brings us to the bigger picture.
The “Degen Economy”
VanEck recently announced it’s rebranding its long-running Gaming ETF (BJK) into the “VanEck Degen Economy ETF.” The change takes effect after the close on April 8.
Think about that for a second.
When publicly traded entities start leaning into the branding of a theme, are they early? Or are they responding to demand that’s already peaked?
We’ve seen this movie before. Journalists put it on the cover. Multiple publications debate it at the same time. Then product providers rush to package it.
Historically, that sequence doesn’t mark the beginning of durable trends. It often signals maturity.
The bigger issue is not the name. It’s the message.
If entire business models are pivoting toward encouraging more gambling behavior, that tells you something about where the easy money has been.
And when the pitch depends on convincing people there’s no meaningful difference between investing and wagering, that should raise eyebrows.
Here’s the bottom line.
If you’re a trader or an investor, operating with a defined strategy and risk management, you’re already on the right side of the equation. You’re participating in real markets with real liquidity and real opportunity. That’s a privilege.
Not everyone pitching you a “new market” is trying to help you build wealth. Some are trying to increase churn. Some are trying to generate headlines. Some are so desperate that they simply need a new story.
If you ever sit down at a table and cannot identify the sucker, it’s probably you.
Do not be the sucker.
Watch the behavior. Recognize the incentives. Stay focused on process, ownership, and risk management.
They can keep betting on degeneration.
I’m long discipline. I’m long real markets.
And, most importantly, I’m long humans who know the difference.
Stay sharp,
JC Parets, CMT
Founder, TrendLabs