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LAS VEGAS—Investors are sometimes accused of treating the stock market like a casino. Now, one Wall Street firm wants to treat casinos like the stock market.
Bond-trading specialist Cantor Fitzgerald in March took over the management of sports betting at the M Resort, a new 390-room hotel and casino on the Strip's southern edge.
"We wanted to turn gamblers into traders," says Lee Amaitis, the 60-year-old Cantor executive who runs the gambling division, Cantor Gaming.
To do that, the company has transformed Las Vegas sports betting into something it thinks is akin to derivatives trading. By using financial-markets technology, Cantor allows bettors to wager not only on who might win the game or by how much, but also on whether a team can complete its next pass or make a field goal.
While such betting is common in Europe, and has been tried before in Las Vegas, Cantor says it is currently the only company in the U.S. to allow bets while the game is underway. Vegas veterans say Cantor is the first Wall Street trading firm they can remember running a gambling operation here.
Super Bowl Sunday, always one of the busiest weekends for bookies, will serve as a test of whether Cantor's push into Las Vegas will produce a payday. Sports books, which are considered high risk for the house, have always been an anemic component of Las Vegas gambling revenues, accounting for a bit more than 1% of the total.
Cantor's first move when it took over at the M was to rip out the leather lounge chairs with cup holders and turn the place into something resembling a trading floor.

LEE AMAITIS
Bettors now sit in rows of cubicles lined with four screens each. Overhead, a wall of giant monitors flashes the action—though on an October evening, instead of market prices, it was a Monday Night Football match up between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins.
Just before the Jets-Dolphins kickoff, Mr. Amaitis, decked out in a sleek black suit, his hair slicked back, greeted a group of gamblers huddled on a couch with their laptops open, studying up for the game.
The room was filled with the kind of anticipation ahead of the opening bell on Wall Street. But here, cocktail waitresses hovered nearby.
As the game got underway, Dave "Spider" Perry, a 41-year-old former bond trader who now lives in Las Vegas, took his place at a cubicle in the front row of the VIP section.
He gestured and an attendant rushed over. Working at one of his screens, Mr. Perry made one wager after another. Would Miami kicker Dan Carpenter make a 35-yard field goal in the first quarter? Would the Jets score a touchdown late in the fourth? (Both turned out to be true.)
"It's like on Wall Street, when your heart is in your throat. You make the wrong move and you could lose your clients' money," said Mr. Perry, adding, "Wall Street is just a form of legalized gambling."
As the teams jockeyed for the lead, the betting line, which had started out favoring the Jets, shifted to Miami and back again many times. "The market keeps going up and down, like bonds trading," Mr. Perry said during a Jets drive in the fourth quarter.
With his pick, Miami, in the lead, Mr. Perry decided it would be a good time to hedge his bet slightly. He tapped a screen for a $50 bet that the Jets would score during the drive—at about four-to-one odds. Not long after, a Braylon Edwards reception set up a touchdown.
"I was looking for a miracle and I got lucky," Mr. Perry said, a small gold boxing glove strung around his neck. "I have $800 to $900 on Miami so now I'm almost $200 into that margin."
In the back room, Cantor employees plugged in data so a computer could spit out a new set of odds for the next play.
Cantor makes money by charging a small commission on bets. It tries not to take on any risk itself. That means that a bet that Miami is about to score has to be matched with the opposite wager. But frequently, there isn't the same amount of money on the other side of the bet, leaving Cantor exposed.
Employees scan a risk-management chart—imported from trading platforms—which shows bets that Cantor still hasn't been able to match.
When the charts show too much imbalance, Cantor gaming operator Andrew Patterson adjusts the odds to try to persuade gamblers to bet for the other team.
"I manage risk," Mr. Patterson said. "If the pricing gets heavy on one side, I can adjust."
While most Las Vegas sports books discourage professional betters because they expose the house to more risk, Cantor is trying to increase its gambling business to the point where it can use its software to create an efficient market. To do that, it must convince more casinos to sign up with Cantor's service. In addition to the M, it currently operates in the Palazzo and Venetian hotels in Las Vegas.
Some old-time bettors may be slow to adapt.
"I always bet individual games, and I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it," said Bill Reichman, 55, a gambler at M who calls himself "The Battler." "I don't want to be influenced by what's going on in the game."
The Brooklyn-born Mr. Amaitis joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 1995 as a top executive. He later moved to London. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which wiped out Cantor's headquarters in the World Trade Center, he helped rebuild the company from offices overseas.
While in London, he also built a reputation as a foul-mouthed but effective manager. London papers referred to him as the "Brooklyn Bruiser." One London employee successfully brought a suit against him for bullying. Mr. Amaitis chalks up the experience to culture clashes.
"The North American management style in my opinion is more passionate, more aggressive, more entrepreneurial," Mr. Amaitis said. "We want to win."
Five years ago, Cantor successfully lobbied to change a Nevada state law to allow gambling on a new device based on its mobile-bond trading technology. Called eDeck, it allows gamblers to play games while walking through the casino or lounging at the pool. Mr. Amaitis soon realized that the devices could be used for sports-betting as well.
Mr. Amaitis plans to expand Cantor's service to allow gamblers to place bets on stocks and other financial instruments. Cantor has been discussing the move with regulators and while nothing's been approved yet, one regulator said such betting could begin as soon as this spring.
"If I come in one day and say I think gold is going up and bet on that, it takes nothing away from Wall Street," Mr. Amaitis said. "It's no different than betting on the Dolphins vs. the Jets."
Write to Alexandra Berzon at
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