Rhode Island’s relationship with securities trading runs deeper than its small size might suggest. Providence developed into an important banking and commercial center during the 19th century, with an active market for bank stocks and other securities; by the early 20th century, the Providence Stock Exchange was an established regional securities market, with Rhode Island companies’ stocks and bonds being traded locally. That tradition eventually evolved from physical securities markets into electronic finance. A particularly fitting example is Suretrade, an early online electronic stockbroker founded in Lincoln, Rhode Island, in 1997 by Donato Montanaro. Suretrade became a significant player in the emerging online-investing era, reportedly reaching more than 350,000 customers and nearly $2 billion in assets before being acquired by FleetBoston Financial’s Quick & Reilly in 2001. Today, Rhode Island remains connected to the fintech economy through companies and financial-technology operations such as eMoney Advisor, Citizens, Atominvest, and others, while the state itself continues to emphasize technology and modernization in financial services. In other words, the transition from Rhode Island’s traditional securities markets to online brokerage and modern fintech is less a break with the past than the latest chapter in a long-standing relationship with financial markets.
That history becomes particularly interesting when conventional investing and gambling begin to occupy the same digital space. Rhode Island legalized sports wagering in June 2018, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal prohibition contained in PASPA, with in-person betting beginning at Twin River in November 2018 and statewide remote/mobile sports wagering launching in September 2019. For Rhode Islanders, placing a wager on a football game, basketball outcome or individual player performance can now be accomplished from a smartphone through a highly sophisticated financial-technology interface. At the same time, prediction markets have introduced contracts based on future events that can, to the naked eye, look remarkably similar to sports bets: users put money behind a predicted outcome, watch the underlying event unfold, and potentially profit or lose based on whether their prediction proves correct. The distinction between trading a contract on an event and betting on an event may be meaningful from a regulatory or legal perspective, but from the standpoint of behavior, reinforcement and the user experience, the two can look increasingly difficult to distinguish.
And that creates a particular behavioral-health challenge in a state of only about 1.11 million residents, of whom roughly 918,000 are adults based on the Census Bureau’s latest population and age estimates. Rhode Island already acknowledges significant behavioral-health workforce shortages affecting psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors and other providers, while the state has been investing in new community behavioral-health capacity to address gaps in access. But finding a general mental-health clinician is one thing; finding someone who is trained in, experienced with, and currently accepting clients for gambling-related problems or problematic trading behavioris a much narrower challenge. That is where Prediction Market Help enters the picture. PMH is throwing a liferaft to Rhode Islanders who may be struggling with sports betting, gambling, compulsive trading or emerging prediction-market activity by identifying, vetting and recommending behavioral-health providers with relevant experience and qualifications—helping people in the Ocean State move beyond simply knowing that help exists to finding a provider who is actually equipped to help.
