Sayonara Nasdaq Gambling Stocks - Gigamedia, Cryptologic, Optimal Group

Nasdaq online gambling stocks are down huge along with their London brethen and fellow gamblign stocks like PartyGaming which were crushed. It's not everyday that an entire industry gets legislated out of existence!

The US stocks are:

Gigamedia Ltd. (Nasdaq GIGM)- Focus on online blackjack and poker and subject of a recent Investors Business Daily mention
Cryptologic, Inc. (Nasdaq CRYP) - Provides backend services to poker sites, lost largest customer this quarter, InterCasino
Optimal Group, Inc. (Nasdaq OPMR) - Payment and credit processing for gambling sites through FirePay

So, how is it looking? Not too good...

Columnar

Symbol	Time	Trade	Change	% Chg	Volume	Related Info
GIGM	9:51AM ET	9.62	1.58	14.11%	1,943,748	Chart, Messages, Key Stats, More
CRYP	9:51AM ET	17.53	4.51	20.46%	2,163,001	Chart, Messages, Key Stats, More
OPMR	9:51AM ET	8.30	3.46	29.42%	2,502,677	Chart, Messages, Key Stats, More

Cryptologic is doing OK because it has a buyback going on - it announced last week just days before the legislation was passed. Should we say that they knew what was going to happen? (Read more previous article on how they generated $104 million out of thin air.)

Gigamedia is holding up because investors think it has more exposure to Europe than the US.

Optimal Group - well, it's getting crushed because the Safe Port Act (which is the bill that the Online gambling act was attached to) specifically prohibits businesses from transferring money for gambling activities.

Send to a Friend! Subscribe!