Editor’s Letter: The Games Issue
A scene from the 2025 Midnight Madness puzzle hunt, at the Coney Island Museum in Brooklyn, New York
Photographer: Mark Peterson for Bloomberg Markets
In my first job after college, I worked for a brand-new riverboat casino in Illinois, attaching card readers to the front of slot machines. Outside of horse racing tracks and lotteries, legal gambling was still a novelty in much of the US.
Later, I got my first desk job, as a mutual funds analyst. Funds weren’t new, but the business was suddenly booming as middle-class Americans with 401(k) retirement plans poured their savings into the market. I was taught that true investing isn’t gambling—though investing has an unavoidable element of risk, it involves skill and patience. And it’s supposed to be part of planning for the future.