2108_ffn.indd 10
the limits of his gastrointestinal system! So, after starting with $200 I ended my week of gambling with $274.83, a rate of return of 37%. Honestly, driving all over creation just to gamble made me want to trade more options. Yes, it was fun, and it did make me watch way more sports than I normally would. Can Trae Young not hit a free throw? But there are a lot of similarities. As trading legend and tastytrade co-CEO Tom Sosnoff preaches, “Once you reach a certain level, it doesn’t matter what the product is. You’ve flipped the switch and moved from the passive world to the active world.” He’s right. I may not know what the heck a GeForce RTX 30 is, but it’s fun to trade Nvidia. And I couldn’t tell you the difference between a sweeper and winger, but I made money betting on soccer—which throws the whole stodgy era of finance and “trade what you know” out the window. So is this the dawn of the Vonnie the Newb
Joey Chestnut recently won the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. You can bet on events like that.
era? No. I’m cashing out my DraftKings winnings and I’m headed to Panda. Vonetta Logan, a writer and comedian, appears daily on the tastytrade network and hosts the Connect the Dots podcast. @vonettalogan
PHOTOGRAPH: KYODO VIA REUTERS CONNECT
I thought the poor guy must have a hard time finding scissors. Anyway, this “analyst” didn’t think the over of 10 runs was in danger, so I took the under. The two teams scored a combined 16 runs that game. Analyst, my butt! So I went back to just randomly picking, and I started winning! I bet on Switzerland to go through in the Euro finals, the Hawks to cover the spread at -6.5, and Tampa Bay to beat the Canadiens. On the third of July, I got an alert from DraftKings about the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. So far, the most exotic thing I had bet on was soccer, but I had no idea you could bet on Major League Eating! I optedin and took Joey Chestnut to eat more than 75 hot dogs. The over/under line in Vegas was 73.5, so DraftKings was kind of screwing me on the spread. (That’s a sentence I never thought I would type). But, hey, never fade a superstar. Chestnut at +125 means I won $45 on my $20 bet—all because a man stretched
7/21/21 10:34 AM
