Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend: September 4th, 2026

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News. This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead, with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Businessweek Daily with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec, on Bloomberg Radio.

Tim Stenovec (0:31)

Hi everyone. Welcome to the weekend edition of Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol is off this week in her place, a great rotating crew of co-anchors featuring Norma Linda, Lisa Mateo, and Christine Aquino. A big week for US economic data, reads on the labor market, the Fed Beige Book, and a few earnings continuing to just trickle out. Also renewed skirmishes in the US-Iran conflict after both sides escalated fighting around the Strait of Hormuz.

Any sustained return to fighting risks driving up energy costs and inflation, unnerving global investors and complicating Republicans' efforts to retain control of the US Congress in November's midterm elections. For all the latest developments and breaking coverage, head on over to the Bloomberg terminal or to bloomberg.com. With that sense of uncertainty, this hour we talk about the unpredictability of human behavior and how the rise of prediction markets has raised concerns about their potential to contribute to gambling addiction. Plus, retail investing is undergoing a major structural shift. We caught up with Stephen Wong, founder and CEO of Dubb, to talk about how a new generation of traders are navigating the market and what they want out of their trading platforms. And the Mormon Church is expanding its real estate empire by spending billions of dollars. All that to come, but first. I've been eager to get to this story by Ira Boudoui. He's global business reporter for Bloomberg News. This is one of those stories in Bloomberg Businessweek that you start reading and you just can't put down because it's engaging and it's about something that I think everybody is thinking about right now. And that's about prediction markets and the connection to gambling, specifically when it comes to sports.

Ira Boudoui joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Your story focuses on a man named Chad, does not go into his last name, but tell us a little bit about him and what happened to him once he discovered this prediction markets platform.

Ira Boudoui (2:22)

Yeah, he's a college student, enrolled a few years ago in Texas and fell into a gambling addiction there, not through prediction markets, initially through dorm room bookies, daily fantasy sites, all the kind of social gaming every, all the different ways because gambling is not legal, sports betting is not legal in Texas, but he found ways. And by his junior year, it had gotten so bad, he bottomed out, he basically lied to his parents, burned through about $100,000, fessed up, went home to Utah, and was sort of cleaning up, getting away from gambling and discovers Kalshi. And in his mind, so it's legal in Utah, sports betting is not.

And he thinks, oh, this is a way to win back the money that I owe my parents to get everything back and quickly starts betting there. And over a six-month or so period, lost about $12,000. And then his father discovered bank statements where he was depositing money to Kalshi, including money that he borrowed in personal loans.

And they intervened. He eventually went to rehab into a treatment facility. But it was interesting to me because this was a case of sort of expanding access for people who are vulnerable. And he, this was something that, you know, his parents, certainly his mother had never heard of it, didn't know what it was, didn't know to look out for it. And other people I spoke with said, yeah, this is a problem. We're seeing clinicians and support groups saying, yeah, there's young people, especially men falling vulnerable to prediction market betting and not necessarily knowing that they should think of this as you might think of DraftKings or any other sports book as an addiction risk.

Christine Aquino (4:09)

So in your story, we also got the perspective from Kalshi, right? And very importantly, they say that Chad's story, it's a cherry pick case and they maintain that they do have a list of users who have self-excluded and they have just in general really made a distinction that prediction markets are not gambling. But for consumers like Chad, is there really much of a difference effectively?

Ira Boudoui (4:32)

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think when you just talk about the basics of it, a few clicks, you're getting to put money down on an outcome. You might win, you might lose. That is the essential experience and that is the same addiction, dopamine rush, the same chasing losses, all the same problems that you see with sports betting. Clinicians told me they come up in the context of prediction markets. There's no real important difference there. Call she says, look, you're not betting against the house. We don't lose when you win.