I visited the Property and Investment expo (+ Franchising) at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre last weekend. It was a rather sad affair for the “share trading” portion of their show, but it was boom time for franchises and property. Going there, you wouldn’t even suspect that there is a global meltdown from the subprime mortgage fiasco. Many property managers and developers were on show as well as plenty of mum and dad franchises like vending machines, small luxury food chains as well as other luxury services. But I was there for the advertised “share trading” section.

Yes there was a share trading section at the Property and Investment Expo, yes there was a share trading theatre. But there were only a handful of companies on show. A stall holder told me that there were quite a number of companies in the “share trading” section which pulled out last minute. I didn’t gain anything there except to gain a bunch of marketing brochures and perhaps an insight into which companies were really pushing their marketing this year. It wasn’t a good place to compare stockbrokers since none were there except a handful of CFD providers (two?!). Perhaps next time; the organisers at the Property and Investment Expo book more “share trading” representative companies at the next expo.

So who did show up at the “share trading” section at the Property and Investment Expo? There were two newsletter type services: a Resources newsletter (who was also starting up a fund based on their recommendations called Lime Street) and “The Intelligent Investor” newsletter. There were two CFD/Forex dealers there: GFT and City Index. Then there were the share trading educators: Platinum Pursuits, Mastering Wealth and Aussie Rob.

There was one stall at the Property and Investment Expo which did intrigue me. It wasn’t in the share trading section: it was in the franchising section. I’m not going to mention names here but it was a gambling system. The gambling system has been around for nine years, worth $19,000 and is based on trifectas and uses money flow data provided by the TAB (a publicly listed gaming company) for the indicator. This made me think. Personally I don’t gamble on horses: I just don’t know anything about them. Yet their industry: the horses, the race tracks, the gaming systems must be worth hundreds of millions if not billions. What is the difference between me the trader who “trades” equities like stocks and forex and the gambler who “bets” on horses or greyhounds? (Keeping in mind both lines of money making can be systemised and controlled through risk management and use of some sort of indicator.)