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 First, there was old-fashioned gambling on football. Then came the fantasy leagues. And now, thanks to Wall Street, fans can buy a stake in their favorite player. 
 
 On Thursday, a start-up company announced a new trading exchange for investors to buy and sell interests in professional athletes. Backed by executives from Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the sports world, the company plans to create stocks tied to an athlete‚Äôs financial performance. 
 
 After considering a number of possibilities for its inaugural initial public offering, the company found a charismatic candidate in Arian Foster, the Pro Bowl running back of the Houston Texans. Investors in the deal will receive stock linked to Mr. Foster‚Äôs future earnings, which includes the value of his playing contracts, corporate endorsements and appearance fees. 
 
 The company, Fantex Holdings, has grand ambitions beyond a Foster I.P.O. ‚ÄĒ it hopes to sign up more football players and other athletes, as well as celebrities like pop singers and Hollywood actors. 
 
 But if such an investment sounds speculative, that is because it is. In a filing for the Foster deal with securities regulators, Fantex laid out 37 pages of risk factors, including a possible career-ending injury or a performance slump. 
 
 ‚ÄúYou are potentially one hit away from losing your money,‚ÄĚ said Bradley Shear, a sports management professor at George Washington University. ‚ÄúOn any given Sunday, anything can happen to any player.‚ÄĚ 
 
 Risks aside, the offering is intended to capitalize on the mammoth popularity of the National Football League and fantasy football, where fans draft players and score points for touchdowns, yardage and other notable plays during the season. 
 
 If thousands of fans are willing to pay as much as $250 for an Arian Foster jersey, the thinking goes, why wouldn‚Äôt they pay up for a few shares of Arian Foster stock? 
 
 Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the N.F.L., declined to comment on the deal. 
 
 A market of star athletes calls to mind other unusual investments tied to entertainers. In the late 1990s, a financier created Bowie Bonds, a small bond issue that paid interest from the current and future revenue of 25 albums by the rock musician David Bowie. The brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald runs the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a marketplace for bets on the fortunes of movies and their stars, but participants use only play money. 
 
 Fantex wants its venture to be anything but make-believe. Investors can now register with the company and soon place orders for the I.P.O. The company will market the I.P.O. in the coming weeks, offering 1.06 million shares at $10 a share, or $10.6 million worth of stock. If demand is insufficient, the company may cancel the deal. 
 
 As for Mr. Foster, he will receive a $10 million payment from Fantex upon consummation of the offering. (The balance of the I.P.O. covers the deal‚Äôs costs.) In exchange for the payment, Mr. Foster has promised to pay Fantex 20 percent of his future earnings. 
 
 The company is effectively financing the $10 million payment to Mr. Foster by raising money from retail investors in an I.P.O. In its filings, Fantex says it believes that the stock is intended to track the economic performance of Mr. Foster‚Äôs future brand income. 
 
 Still, shareholders will not have a direct investment in Mr. Foster or any control over his brand. The company did say it expected to pay a dividend to holders of the Foster stock. 
 
 Shares will trade exclusively on an exchange operated by Fantex. The tracking stock will increase in value if Mr. Foster raises his earnings potential with standout play or increased sponsorships. 
 
 Then, the investor can try to sell his shares at a higher price. Fantex will make a 1 percent commission from both the buyer and seller on the trades. 
 
 Buck French, the company‚Äôs co-founder and chief executive, demurred when asked to predict how the stock might behave in a secondary market. 
 
 ‚ÄúWe don‚Äôt know how it will trade,‚ÄĚ he said. 
 
 A graduate of West Point and Harvard Business School, Mr. French made a fortune during the dot-com boom when, in 2000, he sold OnLink, a software company he founded, to Siebel Systems for about $600 million. One of his Fantex co-founders, David M. Beirne, was a general partner at Benchmark Capital, the venture capital firm that was one of eBay‚Äôs earliest investors. 
 
 Mr. French said Mr. Beirne conceived of the Fantex concept more than a decade ago when working on a sports-related venture with John Elway, the former Denver Broncos quarterback. 
 
 ‚ÄúFantex represents a powerful new opportunity for professional athletes, and I wish it were available during my playing days,‚ÄĚ Mr. Elway, a member of Fantex‚Äôs board, said in a statement. 
 
 Wall Street executives have also joined the company. Fantex‚Äôs president is John Rodin, co-president of the hedge fund Glenview Capital Management and a Goldman Sachs alumnus. Its chief technology officer is Joshua S. Levine, a former senior executive at E*Trade and Deutsche Bank. 
 
 A big question is whether other athletes are on the sidelines awaiting a Fantex I.P.O. Mr. French declined to discuss future deals. 
 
 On one hand, athletes and their agents could view Fantex as a compelling proposition, providing athletes with a large upfront payment for giving up a certain percentage of their future earnings. Such a payment could act as a hedge against an unexpected downturn in a player‚Äôs career. 
 
 But advisers could counsel against trading a piece of their future earnings for a big lump sum, as some athletes are notorious for squandering money. 
 
 Other considerations are the specter of insider trading violations, and complying with the federal securities laws. Mr. Foster, his friends and his financial team will have to be especially circumspect when discussing issues that might affect his earnings. 
 
 A fifth-year veteran from the University of Tennessee, Mr. Foster, 27, has led all running backs in rushing touchdowns two of the last three seasons, while racking up well over 1,000 yards each year. In March 2012, Houston signed Mr. Foster to a contract worth up to $43.5 million over five years. He has a handful of endorsement contracts, including with Under Armour and Kroger Texas. 
 
 Half Mexican-American, half black, Mr. Foster is a crowd favorite and media darling who trumpets his passions for poetry and yoga. When he scores, he clasps his hands together and strikes a namaste pose. 
 
 ‚ÄúWe see Arian as a unique, multidimensional individual, a trailblazer,‚ÄĚ said Mr. French, who added that Fantex cold-called Mr. Foster‚Äôs agent to pitch the idea. 
 
 Yet during the first six weeks of this season, Mr. Foster‚Äôs production has flagged. He has just one rushing touchdown. Heading into the year, there was concern over various injuries. Off the field, Foster admitted in a documentary released in September that he potentially violated N.C.A.A. rules by accepting money when he was a college player. 
 
 Those issues underscore the risk of betting on Mr. Foster‚Äôs brand, or that of any professional athletes, especially N.F.L. players. Unlike some other sports, N.F.L. contracts often are not fully guaranteed, meaning players are often cut and forced to find a new team, sometimes for a lesser contract. 
 
 For investors, the long-term outlook for a player will be difficult to handicap. If a player‚Äôs fortunes suffer and the tracking stock declines, there will be no rescue financing from a private equity firm ‚ÄĒ or an investor like Warren E. Buffett ‚ÄĒ to stabilize the share price. 
 
 And unlike a stockholder of a public company, investors have no corporate governance rights. 
 
 There are no plans to hold annual meetings with the athlete, or quarterly conference calls. 
 
 Despite all the risks, some football fans appear poised to buy in. As one tweeted on Thursday after reading the news: ‚ÄúWow. This is awesome.‚ÄĚ ||||| Photo: Jeff Gross/Getty Images 
 
 There was a time, not too long ago, when a fool who wandered into the world of investments could very well be separated from his money with the help of any number of dumb, overpriced, or downright fraudulent schemes. Then, in 2008, the economy went into freefall, and everyone who had money left held onto their checkbooks a little more tightly. Fear bred caution, and some of the worst offenders in the dumb-money chase were forced to close up shop, or at least become a little more discreet about their advantage-taking. 
 
 Now, with five years of air between Lehman Brothers and the present, the seal has been lifted. Athletes and virtual currencies are being traded alongside Ford and General Electric. Venture capitalists are pitching start-up stocks to the unwashed masses. And later today, the SEC is expected to propose new rules that will make it even easier for companies to fleece the unsuspecting public. 
 
 Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the age of bullshit investments is back. 
 
 Look around today’s markets and you’ll see a surfeit of senseless investment opportunities wearing the cloak of legitimacy. 
 
 You’ll see, on page one of the New York Times, a start-up called Fantex touting a new investment vehicle that allows fans of NFL running back Arian Foster to support his career by purchasing stock that gives them a share of his future earnings. (What didn’t make page one: Foster’s career-worst game the very next Sunday.) This investment opportunity, which will appeal mainly to those too young to remember Bowie Bonds, is a terrible idea on multiple fronts: It bases returns on the unpredictable performance of professional athletes, it gives stock that can only be traded on a private, relatively illiquid exchange, and its single-athlete stock can be converted into common Fantex stock whenever the company feels like it. 
 
 Look harder, and you’ll see companies like Goldman Sachs throwing millions of dollars at hare-brained schemes like Motif Investing, a “theme-based stock investment platform” that allows rank amateurs to make up “motifs” of stocks they think are going to behave in a certain, coordinated way. (Professional stock traders do this all the time, without calling it a “motif” strategy — but they don’t charge ordinary people what can amount to double-digit fees, nor do they base their investment decisions on “Companies with lots of Facebook likes,” as Motif suggests.) 
 
 You’ll see Bitcoins, the everlasting fascination of Silicon Valley crypto-geeks, being not only spoken about as an investment-grade commodity despite having higher volatility than your average Baldwin brother, but inspiring entire investment vehicles (one of which is structured by celebrity twins) that give ordinary investors as well as the tech-savvy crowd the chance to lose money when the fad runs its course. You’ll also see art dealers trying to convince you that betting on the paintings of unknown artists is a sound portfolio move. 
 
 Some of these bad ideas spring from the normal irrational exuberance that comes with an economic bounce-back, and the fact that many investors are more willing to jump into murky waters than they were in 2008. But there are other factors in play, too. The JOBS Act, for one, was a post-crisis law that was meant to make it easier for companies to raise money. Instead, by paving the way for equity crowdfunding and making it possible for private investors to hawk their services like Cracker Jack vendors at Yankee Stadium, the law opened a Pandora’s box of truly unwise investments. 
 
 Thanks to the JOBS Act, there are now crowd-funding bazaars that make gambling in the markets as easy as picking a Spotify playlist. There’s also the newest West Coast fund-raising trend, the venture capital syndicate, which makes it possible for average shmoes with little to no market expertise to enter into highly risky investments with early stage start-ups, and which has put the sentence “Miley Cyrus could be the next big tech investor” within the realm of the possible. 
 
 There’s a lot to take in, between the NFL-stock-trading and the Miley Cyrus venture capital buffoonery. But the upshot is that between the rise of the social web, the recovering economy, and the deregulatory impact of the JOBS Act, it’s now easier than ever for you to lose money in fun-sounding ways. This is fine if you have disposable income to spare, which many of the people who meet the SEC’s threshold for being an “accredited investor” (someone with a $1 million net worth or an individual annual income of $200,000) do. But other accredited investors are doctors, lawyers, and workaday tech nerds who know next to nothing about the stock markets, but are gullible enough when flashy investments are shined in their faces. For these people, no number of “treat it as casino money” caveats will suffice; they will inevitably succumb to the pitch, and they will lose money. 
 
 I’m not the only one noticing that things are getting dangerous. Felix Salmon says that years of near-zero interest rates and the JOBS Act gold rush mean that “even the smart money has started funding companies at utterly bonkers valuations.” Josh Brown, a financial advisor and CNBC regular, told me in an e-mail that the “ludicrous” investing climate “is a byproduct of the giddiness we’re seeing amongst the owners of financial assets. We’ve eclipsed the 2007 peak of household net worth but the makeup is very different. More has accrued to the upper echelon and the lesson that group has learned about the nature of investing is that even if we blow up, the Fed and Congress will ensure that come out of it in even better shape.” And the SEC has been busting record numbers of petty thefts and boiler-room schemes — many of which reflect the intersection of well-intentioned but underinformed investors with slick profiteers claiming to have access to the next big thing. 
 
 The truly scary part of what’s happening now is that it’s not a particular asset bubble, nor the sketchy practices of a coterie of bankers, that’s endangering the investment portfolios of normal people. It’s the deregulated system itself that poses the threat. Unlike in 2008, this exuberance won’t end in a sudden crash, brought on by shady practices at large investment firms. It will be a slow flow of assets from the information-deprived to the information-rich, in the form of fees and other completely legal wealth transfers. 
 
 Whatever the cause — be it interest rates or income inequality, the JOBS Act or simply the state of the S&P and the folly of man — make no mistake: The investment environment is as hostile to ordinary investors as it’s been in many years. The best course of action is simply to do very little — to invest in low-cost index funds, or just follow Harold Pollack’s now-famous Financial Advice Index Card. But if you must invest in things beyond the ordinary and boring, watch your wallet: Your next big mistake may be just around the corner. ||||| Bitcoins may be getting a lot of buzz, but the market for products that deal with old fashioned dollars and cents is apparently still strong. 
 
 To wit: Motif Investing, the Silicon Valley startup headed up by Microsoft alum Hardeep Walia that lets people invest their money in themed groups of stocks called “motifs”, has raised $25 million in a new round of funding led by Goldman Sachs. 
 
 This counts as a Series C round for Motif, bringing the total amount of money invested in the company to $51 million since it was founded in mid-2010. All of Motif’s previous investors, including Ignition Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Foundation Capital, also pitched into this new round. As part of the investment Darren Cohen, Goldman’s managing director of principal strategic investments, is joining Motif’s board as an observer. 
 
 In an interview this week, Walia told me that Motif’s growth has been strong since it officially launched its platform to the public last summer. To date more than 7500 “motifs” have been created, which are investment indexes that let people invest in genres such as “Biotech Breakthrough” or “Housing Recovery” as opposed to buying individual stocks or putting complete trust in a mutual fund or ETF. 
 
 Motif, which Walia bills as a “Facebook meets eTrade meets Mint.com,” does not collect management fees, which is another thing that sets it apart from traditional money management vehicles. It makes money by charging a flat $9.95 fee to make a motif (which can include up to 30 stocks) and in several other ways, such as collecting margins on investments and selling value-added services and products. In the months since launch, the platform has attracted a diverse user base ranging from “ultra high-net-worth individuals” who primarily appreciate that Motif does not charge management fees, to “newbie investors” who appreciate the site’s natural language approach, Walia says. 
 
 With the fresh Series C funds, Walia says that Motif will work on further developing its product for financial advisors, which will let professional consultants use Motif’s investment platform with their own clients. There are other new products in the works, as well, he says. Motif’s own staff, meanwhile, has grown to 40 full-time employees, and the funding will also be used to continue to add talent (with a special focus, not surprisingly, on engineering.) 
 
 When asked about strategic options — after all, Goldman Sachs doesn’t exactly invest in companies without an eye on getting a return — Walia said that he’s focused on building Motif as “a company that lasts and is independent, so that we can continue to disrupt this space.” 
 
 That said, Walia, whose resume includes time on the M&A team at Microsoft, did acknowledge that Motif could make sense as an acquisition target, especially for established entities that deal in ETFs, stock brokering, and financial services. “A lot of people have found what we do quite fascinating… we are very attractive to certain players.” For now, though, Motif certainly has the vision — and funding — necessary to continue to grow as a standalone entity, and it should continue to be one to watch at the intersection of finance and technology.
– Hang on to your wallets, folks, because "the age of bull---- investments is back," declares Kevin Roose at New York. The collapse of 2008 put a damper on things, but today the financial world is filled with crazy schemes and iffy start-ups designed to separate suckers from their money. Want to buy stock in a football player? Have at it. Heard of "Motif Investing"? Good luck with that. Care to join the Winklevoss twins by investing in Bitcoins? Fine. "Some of these bad ideas spring from the normal irrational exuberance that comes with an economic bounce-back, and the fact that many investors are more willing to jump into murky waters than they were in 2008," writes Roose. But he also blames the JOBS Act, put in place after the financial crisis to help companies raise money, for unleashing a wave of these dumb investments. "The upshot is that between the rise of the social web, the recovering economy, and the deregulatory impact of the JOBS Act, it's now easier than ever for you to lose money in fun-sounding ways." That's fine if you've got money to burn, but ordinary investors should pay heed. Click for the full column.