Trading is gambling after all

[jaocoincrypto18]

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.

If trading is a gambling then i will put my bet in trading not in gambling simply because i never know anyone that they become rich because of gambling instead their lives become ruin almost losing everything including their families but i know a lot of people who become rich because they joined trading investments in which they are now living in harmonies with their families.

[1714965477]

1714965477

[1714965477]

1714965477

[1714965477]

1714965477

[1714965477]

1714965477

[1714965477]

1714965477

[Canis Majoris]

and I rather think that gambling can be more promising if we need profit quickly, and of course it can not be separated from. strategy and emotional control.

I beats me why some people still believe that gambling can be more "promising". In trading you can at least hope to evaluate fundamentals and expect the prices to rise or fall in the near future unless these fundamentals have already been priced in. But in casino gambling, such as dice, your only chance at winning is pure luck, except when you can change the odds in your favor somehow. The longer you play the less importance and effect luck will have because it will be largely overridden by house edge. It is not particularly different in trading either, given that the market has its own "house edge" over a typical trader, but at least milking the market as via arbitrage is not considered illegal here.

There are a lot of gamblers who 'play' the crypto market. For a guy who is investing in the 1000th ranked cryptocurrency, do you really think he is trying to evaluate fundamentals and take an informed view? He is just making a punt on the coin. Trading can be treated as a game, and crypto trading is a high-adrenaline game.

I don't get your point frankly, don't get what you are trying to say or challenge here. In essence, I'm saying that in trading you can at least take steps to making more reasonable "bets" on future price moves which could bear some fruit in terms of profit. This is not possible in gambles such as dice, coin tossing, etc. But that doesn't of course deny the fact that there are quite a few people who are gambling while trading in every possible sense of the word. Other than that, the whole topic is about just that, that is trading as gambling, a high-adrenaline game.

[gabmen]

and I rather think that gambling can be more promising if we need profit quickly, and of course it can not be separated from. strategy and emotional control.

I beats me why some people still believe that gambling can be more "promising". In trading you can at least hope to evaluate fundamentals and expect the prices to rise or fall in the near future unless these fundamentals have already been priced in. But in casino gambling, such as dice, your only chance at winning is pure luck, except when you can change the odds in your favor somehow. The longer you play the less importance and effect luck will have because it will be largely overridden by house edge. It is not particularly different in trading either, given that the market has its own "house edge" over a typical trader, but at least milking the market as via arbitrage is not considered illegal here.

There are a lot of gamblers who 'play' the crypto market. For a guy who is investing in the 1000th ranked cryptocurrency, do you really think he is trying to evaluate fundamentals and take an informed view? He is just making a punt on the coin. Trading can be treated as a game, and crypto trading is a high-adrenaline game.

I don't get your point frankly, don't get what you are trying to say or challenge here. In essence, I'm saying that in trading you can at least take steps to making more reasonable "bets" on future price moves which could bear some fruit in terms of profit. This is not possible in gambles such as dice, coin tossing, etc. But that doesn't of course deny the fact that there are quite a few people who are gambling while trading in every possible sense of the word. Other than that, the whole topic is about just that, that is trading as gambling, a high-adrenaline game.

Simply put, trading is like betting on sports. It is a gamble of course but you can at least review and study the aspects that would determine the results. That way you'll have a better chance of making a good risk. Its the same. Of course you can't compare trading to gambling games such as dice and roullette.

[Canis Majoris]

I have experienced shady exchange practices first hand back in the early days. In my cases it was on Mintpal and Cryptsy. The issues were Bitcoin deposits not posting during a massive crash of a certain altcoin, where the deposits posted exactly at the moment the market was bought up again. Disabling deposits and withdrawals of coins with massive spreads accross various exchanges, where everything was enabled again once the spread was gone. Orderbook manipulation where the orderbook adjusted itself based on how I was modifying a buy or sell order before I even executed the order. Altcoins that suddenly got dumped down massively, where a few minutes later the exchanges announced that they will be delisted -- this is something Poloniex has done last year as well. Overall, great analysis!

This has even happened recently and honestly that sucks, knowing that a lot of these exchanges are mostly the ones playing with the market to prevent somethings from happening. The Altcoins getting dumped and then you getting the news of delisting is even more common on bittrex and that has made me as a whole concentrate more on coins that are at least better. One thing with trading is that with knowledge, you can make some predictions based on where the market may be leading and this is where swings come in, and as long as you are not controlling the market, just stick to your own knowledge.

They are trying to earn money, and being one of the largest crypto holders out there makes price manipulation very tempting as well as profitable to them. But as it was already said numerous times, they can only make money by emptying the pockets of low-profile traders. It is still Wild West where fortunes are made and lost in a glimpse. I often think that there are only two main methods of trading that are actually available to us, though they are not even trading as such. The first is just holding your coins and staying away from price manipulation, and the second is arbitrage. Pick up anything in between, and you will end run over by ruthless price manipulators.

[Capt00]

It might be the same thing, considering that buying and selling is just like we gamble our money by putting it in high risk. We are the one who are controlling our money, we may get lucky if we have a good market and gain profit same thing that may happen in gambling. Trading is just like a game,  we need to be smart in order to win.

[el kaka22]

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.

And most people will not know that since they have no strategy and all they do is gamble anyway. I would consider it a gamble for someone who really just sees it as gambling. Buy low, sell high, no strategy and they just feel they can always just keep doing that and depending on luck, wishing the market will work in their favor.

Those who see it as a real business obviously know how to play smartly by learning, and then using the opportunities to make a lot of profit. And from the look of things, you can never have that in the real gambling world.

In fact, trading should be considered far more than the normal sense people have when it comes to gambling. You have great opportunities to make it more in the profit side if you know what you are doing than gambling that you will only have to rely totally on pure luck. Yes, with the meaning of gambling which makes life itself a gamble generally, but you can always make it a calculated one and a smart one.

[Canis Majoris]

In human endavour every things is gambling. Trading is an advance gambling and we have to let newbie know  that trading is a gambling and you cannot continue making money without loses and the odd is always against you because you can not predict the market 100% perfectly.  Don't trade without understanding how the market behave and of a truth cannot make money in forex, stock, commodities and cryptocurrencies without understanding the risk associating with it.

I see what you are trying to say here, that is every human activity has an element of chance or gambling attached to it but this is not the point. Trading is gambling for most traders but it is not like true gambling as in dice or roulette. In a casino all players are gamblers no matter what, while in trading only some part, however large, is gambling. And there are plenty of intermediate stages between thoughtless and reckless trading at one end and things like arbitrage at the other.

[followmenot]

Trading isn't really gamble in real markets but cryptomarkets are very different. Noone surely knows their nature, as they are still very young. That's why it makes crypto trading - gambling. My experience showed that indicators don't work %70-80 of the time with bitcoin and others.

[Canis Majoris]

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.

I emphatically agree that no book however good will help you unless you already have some psychological traits or characteristics required for successful trading. But I can't agree that paper trading is of great help here either. Ultimately, the success or failure in trading is determined by how fast and how good you react under heavy stress. Besides, making 8 profitable trades out of 10 doesn't mean a shit. For example, you can make plenty of small wins and then one big crash sweeps away all your profit. In fact, it doesn't matter how often you lose, all that counts is your final balance at the end of the day. You can make just one trade and with that cover a hundred of losing trades made before.

[crazycatwoman03]

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.

Right,  trading is also not like gambling for me because of the mere fact that you can control how much profit you earned by using analysis before making any decisions. In trading,  you can make sure that there is a profit unlike in gambling where there is totally no assurance and  just luck.  Some are saying that mathematics  can be used to win gambling games but I think that it was very imaginative.

[adelaisav]

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.

"Actually no, not really… trading is not at all like betting in the event that you realize what you're doing". Obviously at the time I did not understand what I was doing, yet that is unimportant.

Notice a typical generic show? "Risk" and "losing". On the off chance that there are two things a trader knows, it's that there's dependably risk and you will lose cash sooner or later. It's basically the cost of working together as a trader.

[ocid]

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.

Right,  trading is also not like gambling for me because of the mere fact that you can control how much profit you earned by using analysis before making any decisions. In trading,  you can make sure that there is a profit unlike in gambling where there is totally no assurance and  just luck.  Some are saying that mathematics  can be used to win gambling games but I think that it was very imaginative.

I do not think that trading is the same as gambling, obviously it's very different. In gambling we spend money to bet. while in trade, the capital we spend is only to develop the results obtained.

[sumanto]

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 you are right many people who consider bitcoin trading is gambling, but if this gambling exists trading FIAT? is not his system almost the same as bitcoin? is that gambling too? I do not think so and obviously I do not consider this gambling.

[Aikidoka]

Well, it arguably is related to gambling in some points. But it is not 100% gambling. It is a fact that gambling and trading is about tactics, luck, and predictions. However, trading requires taking much time to do research about the whole market.

Gambling is just about mastering the game and see your opponents reactions if you are playing poker for example. Added to that, trading is about patience and it takes so much time for you to gain a good profit.

[samcrypto]

Well, it arguably is related to gambling in some points. But it is not 100% gambling. It is a fact that gambling and trading is about tactics, luck, and predictions. However, trading requires taking much time to do research about the whole market.

Gambling is just about mastering the game and see your opponents reactions if you are playing poker for example. Added to that, trading is about patience and it takes so much time for you to gain a good profit.

A good insight about the topic since gambling and trading are both risky but I think its still different from on its own definition and will always depend on the perception of one person. Trading requires so many things to become more successful, but yeah it can also be consider as a gambling since people are quiet more greed in terms of profit taking so for me its depend on your belief.

[Canis Majoris]

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.

But how many traders actually conduct their "due diligence"? Note that it is not just about making some studies as if just that could earn you profits. It is more about making assumptions in a really constructive way. I have already given an example why this distinction makes the difference but it is kinda worth repeating. Imagine that you are tossing a coin, though you don't know anything about your chances or how random the outcome is. You may build complex theories allegedly predicting the outcomes but how useful would they all really be? It is the same with trading. You don't know whether your theories will be of any merit, while you may still be gambling.

[Alijiindahaus]

Well, it arguably is related to gambling in some points. But it is not 100% gambling. It is a fact that gambling and trading is about tactics, luck, and predictions. However, trading requires taking much time to do research about the whole market.

Gambling is just about mastering the game and see your opponents reactions if you are playing poker for example. Added to that, trading is about patience and it takes so much time for you to gain a good profit.

but nevertheless in these two occupations there are some aspects that unite them and make them similar. It is Azart who leads people during the game and during the trade, especially if something turns out well.

[Canis Majoris]

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.

Not to sound picky or nagging, or anything, but did you read the OP? If you do not belong to the group of money takers and profit makers, you will be losing most of the time until you have nothing left. I it was pretty easy to make money in crypto while it had been universally rising but in mature markets like currency or commodity markets it is next to impossible for couch traders to make money consistently over longer terms because you can earn only by taking money from someone else. And that someone else will be yourself in the majority of cases.

[pitiflin]

Your points are good. Point number one proved to be a great reality check in december when people thought the price will go even further but it didn't.
Point number 2,luck matters and so does your amount of money you're willing to spend. If one sells 100BTC and the other sells 1BTC, exchanges will favor the former than the latte because more profits.

[dmamigo]

Trading is kind of Gambling, where you have to believe in your instincts and also luck after after you buy with good study upon the asset you did the trade.
Trading is much like learned and educated gambling, and the risk gets minimized gradually while you learn and analyse more correctly  before trading.
In crypto trading you can be at loss, where as often gambling leads to complete loss of ones capital.