(FORTUNE Magazine) – THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE is sometimes called the "world's largest casino." But Mark Cuban thinks that's unfair--to Las Vegas! The billionaire provocateur says trading stocks and bonds is actually a bigger loser's game than gambling is. To prove it, Cuban, the onetime dot-com potentate now best known for his high-volume ownership of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, says he's going to start up a most peculiar hedge fund. Cuban says it "won't invest in stocks or bonds or any type of business. It's going to be a fund that only places bets. A gambling hedge fund." It is, he says, "an idea whose time has come."

Well, maybe. In any event, Cuban has laid out the concept at blogmaverick.com. And actually, I commend his manifesto to you. As with other crazy-like-a-fox tycoons, such as Ted Turner or Richard Branson, some of what Cuban is saying makes sense. It's just that no one has had the nerve, or a reason, to say it before.

Cuban suggests that commissions are lower in gaming than in investing. He claims that in many cases (blackjack, for instance) your odds are better at a table at the Bellagio than they are trading stocks from your home computer. Which business is more dodgy? That's easy, says Cuban: "Public companies play so many games with their numbers it's ridiculous. ... My favorite is beating the estimates by a penny quarter after quarter. Could you imagine a team that beat its competition by one point every game?" And check out his comparison of investing and gambling: "Unlike the stock market, you know the rules exactly. You know without question, the house is going to play by the rules. The gaming commission appears to actually enforce rules of play, unlike the SEC."

Ouch. Cuban isn't really serious, is he? The feds wouldn't let him open such a fund, would they (especially after they read his screed)? I put those questions to him by e-mail:

Serwer: Listen, I'm with you on much of this, but are you theorizing or are you actually going to set this baby up?

Cuban: That's the plan, but a lot has to take place. The difficult part of the business is scale. You can't go to two different sports books and put down $1 million on both sides of a game to make the spread. A lot has to do with exchanges and other hosts and what happens with their approval efforts.

Serwer: But do you think the NBA, the SEC, and other regulatory agencies will let you do this?!?

Cuban: No, there is no chance. That's why I'm starting it. I wanted to start a business that had no chance of actually starting so I could get ridiculous questions from the media.

Leaving aside Cuban's affection for the fourth estate (whose vigilant attention to his self-promotion helps fill his basketball arena every night), I'll bet that regulators will put the kibosh on Cuban's fund of fancy. They'll probably be outraged at the notion that investing and gaming are on a par (or worse, that gambling could be better for the little guy).

Still, a news item I saw the other day made me think Cuban may be onto something. It seems a British online wagering company, Betfair, has launched a website where gamblers can bet money on the fates of CEOs of Canadian companies. The market sets odds on the likelihood that, say, William Owens of Nortel will be ousted within five months. I wonder if Cuban's fund would place a few wagers on the heads of Canadian CEOs? Hmmm ... gambling on how a leader's departure might affect a company. That's something no investor would ever do, right?

ANDY SERWER, editor at large of FORTUNE, can be reached at aserwer@fortunemail.com. Read him online in Street Life on fortune.com and watch him on CNN's American Morning and In the Money.