News Makes Stocks Drop

As soon as Morgan Stanley announced that the Beijing Government was considering ways of slowing down the gaming growth in Macau, you could almost hear the sound of casino stocks dropping. With Macau being such a major player in the casino and online casino industry, anything that might hamper that growth is seen as a negative.

Beijing is supposedly considering visa restrictions and other methods to bring the expansion rate down and under control as they feel it is happening way too fast. They say that they simply want to slow it down and make it more manageable than it has been so far.

The major players of course felt it immediately. MGM Mirage, Las Vegas Sands, and Wynn Resorts all saw the price per share of investing in their companies go down. MGM Mirage and the Sands both dropped 11% and the Wynn dropped 7%.

Morgan Stanley says that growth will drop from the current 50% for the first year to 25% for the next year – and then drop from there. They say by 2009 it should be down to around 16%.

The government has restricted the issuing of new casino licenses as well.