| Good morning, and welcome to another working week.
Punters who backed the 33-1 outsider Nick Rockett to win the Grand National were celebrating on Saturday, but that didn’t stop bookmakers coming away from Aintree happy.
A long-odds winner of the big race and just four winning favourites or joint favourites over the three-day festival made for another very bookie-friendly meeting.
The amount staked was well up on the previous year, too, not always the case on warmer days.
Nearly half of all adults in the UK gamble, according to the Gambling Commission, which licenses and regulates betting firms.
Strip out those that only play the lottery, and getting on for 20m Britons gamble. After winners have been paid out, it’s a market that delivers the industry £11.5 billion a year.
Sports betting is easily the most popular category of online gambling, favoured by one in every two punters. Racing’s longstanding relationship with betting endures. Nearly half of those who say they regularly follow horse racing bet.
And more than a fifth of racing fans stake over £100 a month. That compares to 19% of tennis fans, 17% of cricket fans, 15% of rugby fans and 14% of football fans.
Overall, men are more likely to gamble than women, and those aged between 45 and 64 are most likely of all. Strip out the lottery again and the age profiles lowers, with males aged 25 to 34 most likely to bet.
Ask a gambler why they do it, and aside from “because it’s fun”, the most common answer you’ll get is “for the chance to win big money”. Sadly, few do.
People often mistakenly liken investing to gambling, or describe the stock market as a casino. They are wrong.
True, gambling and investing both involve risk and choice, with the potential for future reward.
But investors, unlike gamblers, are buying assets to try to capture an appreciation in value over time.
Yes, markets and the value of investments can be volatile in the short-term. We saw that all too clearly last week in response to President Trump’s tariffs on US imports.
Yet unlike gambling, where the house really always does win in the end, statistics show regular long-term saving delivers dependable winnings. And expert advice will help to mitigate risk.
Data we ran at the start of the year show that investors who set aside £100 per month into an “average” managed fund, the sort with a mix of assets we often recommend to clients, since January 1, 2000 would be sitting on nearly £63,000.
Sheltering that fund in a pension wrapper, and benefitting from the Government’s contribution of £25 for every £100 you pay in as a basic rate taxpayer, would have increased the value of those savings to nearly £80,000.
Now that’s a big win.
As always, thanks for listening.
Martin.
Martin Brown, Managing Partner at Continuum, was talking to Gary Parkinson, former financial journalist at The Times and BBC. |
