Trading is gambling after all

[Canis Majoris]

In a way trading could be considered gambling, but there a lot of different variations in gambling risk. What I mean is that some gambling games are completely games of chance like dice where there is no skill involved. But there are also games where skill is a factor such as in poker.

You can argue that risk in trading is lower if you are skilled at reading charts and if you do research on the coins you are trading. You may even be able to say that if you are highly skilled, trading may not really be gambling.

I would say that trading is not gambling. I think when we do trading then we can still do an analysis that can help us to take decisions, while playing trading then fully we hope to luck. Everyone must have a difference of opinion and I think it is fair. if calculated maybe only 30% of people who consider trading as a gambling.

Exactly, gambling is way too far than trading, you can't stop loss in gambling but through trading you can minimize your loss by taking additional measures. Trading is gambling for panic sellers and beginners who leave the market soon after a single loss.

I think stop-loss in gambling is when you stop gambling. Really, as the term itself suggests, stop-loss is used to prevent additional losses by closing your position when the price goes against you. But the loss already suffered by that time can be considered as a losing bet made in gambling. In this sense, at least metaphorically, we can say that gambling has stop-losses kind of built in. Otherwise, I agree that panic sellers are mostly gamblers because when they open a position they are just hoping for the best, which is not very far from what we see in gambling.

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[Uno17]

Yes trading is gamble because when money is involved in a short term profit is visible it means gamble, but it plays in a different way also, but since trading is about buying and selling therefore it is more on business activity, that needs a hard effort inorder to make profit,  but then after all it is still considered as gamble because money is the main character of the play😊

[bohr]

Well, sort of, at least for the majority of ordinary and wannabe traders. It is relatively easy to earn money on a rising market but it becomes a completely different matter when a sideways market sets in like it is now in the cryptoverse. There are two major factors that turn trading into gambling for most players in this type of market which are presented below.

First, in any financial or speculative market, where Bitcoin rightfully belongs to, you can earn only if you take money from someone else. It could appear as if everyone earns with the rising price but things reveal their true nature when the price stops rising. It is kind of obvious but accepting this is necessary to understand why you can be the one losing the game in the end.

Second, some market participants have an unrestricted edge over the rest of the pack which means that under no circumstances they will be losing. These are arbitrageurs, insiders, exchanges and their likes. For example, it is impossible to beat exchange since it is 100% sure money for them when they can front run your orders and do a lot of other nasty things which you can't.

Given these two circumstances, it is easy to see that if you do not belong to the group of market participants mentioned above, trading pretty quickly turns into gambling for you. So your only chance to win is pure luck. But luck is not a friend of consistency, therefore the only consistency you can reliably expect is losing to someone who has an undisputed edge over you and the market.

Feel free to comment and post your thoughts and ideas here.

I will say that trading is gambling for more that 80% of the participants many want to be on the top 20% making huge profits but it is not easy at all to get to that group especially as you state since there a are a number of participants that cannot lose money, like insider traders, whales, exchanges and arbitragers, so the chance a trader that does not belong to one of those groups makes money is even slimmer.

[Denker]

When 8 out of 10 trades make you a profit, this isn't gambling.
That's having skills and the ability to make money on a constant basis.
Everyone can learn that. All you need is time, discipline and the will to do it!
Even with a small account and no insider informations you can make a decent profit with trading.
Even if it's just small wins. Over the time, this consistency  is what makes your account grow and making it bigger and bigger.
Playing the lottery is gambling. Betting on horse races is gambling.
Trading is no gambling if you acquired a decent skill set for various market situations. You don't even have to read books.
It's all for free on the internet. You can do paper trading and practice by using tradingview for instance.
But you need to have patience and practice regularly. The more passionate you are about it, the faster you will improve.

[Canis Majoris]

If we presume that the absolute majority of traders are losing in the long run, then, to me, this pretty much counts as gambling.

why would you make that assumption? based on what data?

even if we assume it is true, that still doesn't make "trading" like gambling. instead it makes "traders" as gamblers. and there is a big difference there.

I don't see how it can be otherwise. As I have already said in OP, a sideways market and speculative one at that like Bitcoin's, is a sort of controlled "lab" environment where things can't be different. Well, I have heard that point of most traders losing in the long run mentioned multiple times here and there but since I didn't have any source I just looked for it myself. Here are the hard numbers. I think you can find plenty of other sources to that tune. Other than that, I don't say that all trading is gambling. It is gambling for most traders, which I also mentioned in OP.

When you flip a coin and you don't know anything about your chances, you can also build sophisticated theories why, for example, you should get heads more often than tails. But it doesn't matter, does it? Given that there is a sort of house edge in trading too, we should unmistakably come to the conclusion outlined in OP.

first of all making theories doesn't mean these theories are correct. and when it comes to gambling such as flipping a coin you will never get more heads and tails. every flip has an equal chance of going either way no matter what happened before.
and that is one of the differences.

Well, this is the point I'm trying to make here. No matter how sophisticated your theories are it still comes down to chances.

secondly house edge means the house or the thingy you are betting against has a better chance of winning than you. there is no such thin in trading, and you are not trading against one entity. you are trading against a lot of others based on the market movements.
if you can go with the flow you win.

I refer to house edge here as something which you can't beat, neither in gambling nor in trading. You can think of trading against a lot of other traders like yourself as a manifestation of what loosely matches luck in gambling. So you either win or lose and it is a game of chances minus the house edge.

[andreijoaquin]

Well you are right, when we do trading we take the risk of either failure or success, it's like you bet in a casino using all your capital. But what was different when you trade is that there are lots of option you can choose from and you can study first the market to somehow make a good assumption of which will likely to appreciate unlike in gambling that is absolutely clueless but just a wild guess.

[Lazada]

Yes trading is gamble because when money is involved in a short term profit is visible it means gamble, but it plays in a different way also, but since trading is about buying and selling therefore it is more on business activity, that needs a hard effort inorder to make profit,  but then after all it is still considered as gamble because money is the main character of the play😊

I think trading is not gambling. although trading often has drastic changes but trading can we analyze. with the right analysis then we can get a satisfactory result. you have to explore the various things dah you also have to find information on the coin that will be invested. the better we do the analysis the more satisfying the results we will get.

[princesocapuyo]

Trading is not gambling at all. I don't consider Poker gambling even, but trading is far less like gambling than poker. First of all, it's not a game of chance, the results are based on real life things, speculation, news, real money transactions. They're not based on chance, on dices, on wheels and  randomness.

[TERA2]

Ill analyze gambling vs poker vs trading in three different dimensions

-1: House edge and winning odds-
A. Gambling: The house has a fixed edge of 10% or so, there is no skill, and you will always lose in the long run
B. Poker: The house still has an edge of 10% via the rake, but you are playing other players so if you are 10% better than other players (or 20% depending on the maths here), then you will win in the long run. Its very hard to get this kind of skill but its possible.
C. Trading: The house has a rake of 0.4% via commissions, and the game is based on skill. So its much easier to beat the game than poker if you are only 0.4% better than the other players.

-2: Risk-
A. Gambling: Typically betting 100% of your money which can be instantly lost
B. Poker: Typically bettering 100% of your money which can be instantly lost
C: Trading: Uness you are using margin, the loss is rarely 100%. A typical crypto loss is around 5-10%. On the worst of days, bitcoin goes down maybe 50% before having a hard rebound and if you have patience you wont even need to take that loss. You control your risk. You can set stop losses, you can catch rebounds. A good trader only takes losses of less than 1-5%, and makes wins of 50%+. Youd have to be in dozens of these losing trades in a row to lose your money.

-3: Bitcoin X factor -
Bitcoin has historically been in a bull market. Even with the 'rake' and even as a bad trader, the odds are always highly in favor of investors. Its still a zero sum game but the people who pay are going to be the big time investors that buy at the very top of $1M (or maybe it was $20K). So if all you do is make long trades, it is very hard to lose fiat (but easy to lose coins). This of course will no longer be the case once bitcoin finally fails.

[burner2014]

Ill analyze gambling vs poker vs trading in three different dimensions

-1: House edge and winning odds-
A. Gambling: The house has a fixed edge of 10% or so, there is no skill, and you will always lose in the long run
B. Poker: The house still has an edge of 10% via the rake, but you are playing other players so if you are 10% better than other players (or 20% depending on the maths here), then you will win in the long run. Its very hard to get this kind of skill but its possible.
C. Trading: The house has a rake of 0.4% via commissions, and the game is based on skill. So its much easier to beat the game than poker if you are only 0.4% better than the other players.

-2: Risk-
A. Gambling: Typically betting 100% of your money which can be instantly lost
B. Poker: Typically bettering 100% of your money which can be instantly lost
C: Trading: Uness you are using margin, the loss is rarely 100%. A typical crypto loss is around 5-10%. On the worst of days, bitcoin goes down maybe 50% before having a hard rebound and if you have patience you wont even need to take that loss. You control your risk. You can set stop losses, you can catch rebounds. A good trader only takes losses of less than 1-5%, and makes wins of 50%+. Youd have to be in dozens of these losing trades in a row to lose your money.

-3: Bitcoin X factor -
Bitcoin has historically been in a bull market. Even with the 'rake' and even as a bad trader, the odds are always highly in favor of investors. Its still a zero sum game but the people who pay are going to be the big time investors that buy at the very top of $1M (or maybe it was $20K). So if all you do is make long trades, it is very hard to lose fiat (but easy to lose coins). This of course will no longer be the case once bitcoin finally fails.

Well, life is gamble too that is why we have to gamble all the time because without taking risk I don't know if we will still win the battle here in the world, it is fine to do trading but be ready when you lose since you cannot win here all the time especially when you are daily trading or still have the job.

[rizkyhiw]

Well, sort of, at least for the majority of ordinary and wannabe traders. It is relatively easy to earn money on a rising market but it becomes a completely different matter when a sideways market sets in like it is now in the cryptoverse. There are two major factors that turn trading into gambling for most players in this type of market which are presented below.

First, in any financial or speculative market, where Bitcoin rightfully belongs to, you can earn only if you take money from someone else. It could appear as if everyone earns with the rising price but things reveal their true nature when the price stops rising. It is kind of obvious but accepting this is necessary to understand why you can be the one losing the game in the end.

Second, some market participants have an unrestricted edge over the rest of the pack which means that under no circumstances they will be losing. These are arbitrageurs, insiders, exchanges and their likes. For example, it is impossible to beat exchange since it is 100% sure money for them when they can front run your orders and do a lot of other nasty things which you can't.

Given these two circumstances, it is easy to see that if you do not belong to the group of market participants mentioned above, trading pretty quickly turns into gambling for you. So your only chance to win is pure luck. But luck is not a friend of consistency, therefore the only consistency you can reliably expect is losing to someone who has an undisputed edge over you and the market.

Feel free to comment and post your thoughts and ideas here.

I want to straighten it out, trading is not a gamble. Well, if you are just guessing in trading it can be said as gambling.
But here trading requires the expertise of the analyst so you do not lose.
Only a few people who think commerce is gambling because of the lack of science in trade, they just do their luck.

[marcuslong]

Well, sort of, at least for the majority of ordinary and wannabe traders. It is relatively easy to earn money on a rising market but it becomes a completely different matter when a sideways market sets in like it is now in the cryptoverse. There are two major factors that turn trading into gambling for most players in this type of market which are presented below.

First, in any financial or speculative market, where Bitcoin rightfully belongs to, you can earn only if you take money from someone else. It could appear as if everyone earns with the rising price but things reveal their true nature when the price stops rising. It is kind of obvious but accepting this is necessary to understand why you can be the one losing the game in the end.

Second, some market participants have an unrestricted edge over the rest of the pack which means that under no circumstances they will be losing. These are arbitrageurs, insiders, exchanges and their likes. For example, it is impossible to beat exchange since it is 100% sure money for them when they can front run your orders and do a lot of other nasty things which you can't.

Given these two circumstances, it is easy to see that if you do not belong to the group of market participants mentioned above, trading pretty quickly turns into gambling for you. So your only chance to win is pure luck. But luck is not a friend of consistency, therefore the only consistency you can reliably expect is losing to someone who has an undisputed edge over you and the market.

Feel free to comment and post your thoughts and ideas here.

I want to straighten it out, trading is not a gamble. Well, if you are just guessing in trading it can be said as gambling.
But here trading requires the expertise of the analyst so you do not lose.
Only a few people who think commerce is gambling because of the lack of science in trade, they just do their luck.

Gambling it may sound but the results will prove its identity and satisfaction, it's based on facts.It's not even a rumor and not even a battle of chance. On the other hand, it both attempts to create a capital gain. Life in any way is about adventure and so same thing goes with bitcoin. I think many investors and sectors trying to pull bitcoin down, because it's making a big wave in the market and has even become a threat to any organization. Call it gambling, scam, or whatever you want it is a platform that creates wealth and prosperity. Try and see it for yourself.

[ethereumhunter]

Trading is not gambling at all. I don't consider Poker gambling even, but trading is far less like gambling than poker. First of all, it's not a game of chance, the results are based on real life things, speculation, news, real money transactions. They're not based on chance, on dices, on wheels and  randomness.

poker is a gambling games and it's using money to attract people to play. but trading is not a gambling as long as we know how to trade. and if we only know how to buy at lower price and sell at high price, then I don't think that this is including in gambling because we still use the basic strategy of trading. and if we can stick with this then trading is not a gambling.

[haroldtee]

In a way trading could be considered gambling, but there a lot of different variations in gambling risk. What I mean is that some gambling games are completely games of chance like dice where there is no skill involved. But there are also games where skill is a factor such as in poker.

You can argue that risk in trading is lower if you are skilled at reading charts and if you do research on the coins you are trading. You may even be able to say that if you are highly skilled, trading may not really be gambling.

I would say that trading is not gambling. I think when we do trading then we can still do an analysis that can help us to take decisions, while playing trading then fully we hope to luck. Everyone must have a difference of opinion and I think it is fair. if calculated maybe only 30% of people who consider trading as a gambling.

Exactly, gambling is way too far than trading, you can't stop loss in gambling but through trading you can minimize your loss by taking additional measures. Trading is gambling for panic sellers and beginners who leave the market soon after a single loss.

I think stop-loss in gambling is when you stop gambling. Really, as the term itself suggests, stop-loss is used to prevent additional losses by closing your position when the price goes against you. But the loss already suffered by that time can be considered as a losing bet made in gambling. In this sense, at least metaphorically, we can say that gambling has stop-losses kind of built in. Otherwise, I agree that panic sellers are mostly gamblers because when they open a position they are just hoping for the best, which is not very far from what we see in gambling.

Stop loss in the real sense of trading is more like re-strategizing, and the difference from a real gambling is that you have an opportunity to get back in at the lower spot and get even better profit than the little loss you had and I see it as just playing safe.

In the literal sense of what gambling means, we may attribute it a little bit to that, since it is mainly speculation and you are acting based on what indicators and charts are telling you and EXPECTING a positive outcome, but at the end, as long as you know what you are doing while doing proper analysis, your chances of having more profit than loss is guaranteed, which you cannot be able to have in dice, blackjack and co that is totally based on luck. Trading only becomes 100% gambling when you have no strategy and you are making bets on the market relying on luck, while it is far more than that.

[denny27]

Yes trading is gamble because when money is involved in a short term profit is visible it means gamble, but it plays in a different way also, but since trading is about buying and selling therefore it is more on business activity, that needs a hard effort inorder to make profit,  but then after all it is still considered as gamble because money is the main character of the play😊

But anyway if seen from the basic of the effort, it's really not a gamble, it's more dependent on the expertise in analyzing the prices over time as well as choosing the right coins to be used as a trading effort. This is not a game such as in a gambling, which's only dependent on lucky (not strategy), and I think the luckies in trading depends on expertise on the price analys, it's different with a gambling that's just dependent on the game which's really randomly and testing our luckies.

[wuvdoll]

I tried trading twice back in 2016 and "lost" 1 Bitcoin in total. Thats a lot, if you consider the last ATH. Not everybody is a born trader 

Lol. One thing I have noticed with trading is as long as you can manage yourself in the market to trade safely, then you should be fine. However, a lot of people only gamble the market, until they realize that they are totally wrong.

At least, we have somethings to look out for to know if the whales are looking to direct a market upward, look for available resistance and play with that, and at the end, that gives you some undisputed advantage as well over someone who does not have the skills.

I honestly like the last aspect of OP where he said losing to someone who has an undisputed advantage over him and the market. I consider all these groups as whales anyway and whether we leave it or not, they control the market and they will always have the highest advantage, and the only thing is to make use of this to roll along with them and see where it leads which gives the learned trader an edge over the ones who just see gambling as 100% luck. One way or the other, someone would be smarter than the other.

[Menuotares]

Trading looks like a gamble when you are in a hurry and want to quickly make alot money in short time and without proper analysis. So when you lose, then you judge that trading is gambling.

[Canis Majoris]

yes definitely true, trading is like a gamble..you use money as capital... you gamble it whether   it will be successful or not..it is a nature in trading but it is good to try because it adds knowledge on how and what to trade

No it's not, crypto trading needs a lot of learnings and abilities while gambling are not. Because when it comes to crypto trading, you can be a successful one if you have all the abilities of a good trader. But in gambling, even though that you're a professional gambler or what ever profession you have, you don't know actually what will happen to your capital, because gambling always depend on the luck of the player.

Well, I'm afraid that it is not that simple. Having all the abilities of a good trader is definitely not enough. Imagine that all traders trading at the moment are your exact clones with absolutely the same abilities. So who takes money from whom will depend on entirely random factors. But isn't it what makes up luck? So it is not enough to have those abilities, your abilities should be way above an average level if you want to get consistent profits. And since there is a group of the invulnerables against which you have no chance, your chance of not going against them is also mostly luck based or random.

[ofelia25]

yes definitely true, trading is like a gamble..you use money as capital... you gamble it whether   it will be successful or not..it is a nature in trading but it is good to try because it adds knowledge on how and what to trade

No it's not, crypto trading needs a lot of learnings and abilities while gambling are not. Because when it comes to crypto trading, you can be a successful one if you have all the abilities of a good trader. But in gambling, even though that you're a professional gambler or what ever profession you have, you don't know actually what will happen to your capital, because gambling always depend on the luck of the player.

Well, I'm afraid that it is not that simple. Having all the abilities of a good trader is definitely not enough. Imagine that all traders trading at the moment are your exact clones with absolutely the same abilities. So who takes money from whom will depend on entirely random factors. But isn't it what makes up luck? So it is not enough to have those abilities, your abilities should be way above an average level if you want to get consistent profits. And since there is a group of the invulnerables against which you have no chance, your chance of not going against them is also mostly luck based or random.

There is no simple task here in life, you need to exert more effort if you want to become successful, there is no tree full of fruit of money that we will just pick up of course everything we are doing needs time and patience as well as gamble since we don't assure what will happen.

[Zach707]

Well, sort of, at least for the majority of ordinary and wannabe traders. It is relatively easy to earn money on a rising market but it becomes a completely different matter when a sideways market sets in like it is now in the cryptoverse. There are two major factors that turn trading into gambling for most players in this type of market which are presented below.

First, in any financial or speculative market, where Bitcoin rightfully belongs to, you can earn only if you take money from someone else. It could appear as if everyone earns with the rising price but things reveal their true nature when the price stops rising. It is kind of obvious but accepting this is necessary to understand why you can be the one losing the game in the end.

Second, some market participants have an unrestricted edge over the rest of the pack which means that under no circumstances they will be losing. These are arbitrageurs, insiders, exchanges and their likes. For example, it is impossible to beat exchange since it is 100% sure money for them when they can front run your orders and do a lot of other nasty things which you can't.

Given these two circumstances, it is easy to see that if you do not belong to the group of market participants mentioned above, trading pretty quickly turns into gambling for you. So your only chance to win is pure luck. But luck is not a friend of consistency, therefore the only consistency you can reliably expect is losing to someone who has an undisputed edge over you and the market.

Feel free to comment and post your thoughts and ideas here.

Yes trading is also gambling but at least with a small risk. Gambling is a game that if you lose you lose all that you have gambled. But in trading it is a buying and selling formula in which you can get more profit when the value will soar high but if not you can at least get a little profit and the invested money is still intact or at least a little bit lesser.