Originally posted on 10/30/2016:

Quote Originally Posted by Optional View Post
I think you are being a bit black and white there.

Whilst investing is a gamble, so is every choice in life if you choose to be as black and white about it as you are here.

Gambling on sports or casino or lotteries etc is buying into something you already know is a mathematical long term loser before you start. Stock market and currency trading are not the same in that way.

Trading anything can also be seen as a gamble. But I do not think you would be calling someone who buys hard goods with the hope of selling them at a higher price a gambler?
Casino games and lotteries are pretty much an absolute mug's game in that they are only a very few little ways to even have a chance of beating any of those games, and for that exact reason I haven't mentioned them at all previously.

But sports betting is only a mathematical long term loser if you bet on the wrong things at the wrong prices that give you minus expected value, but if you're smart, then you can bring the ball back into your court and have a good chance of winning, and there is much more of a chance of being able to beat the bookmaker at sports betting than being able to beat a casino or lottery operator at their own game.

But you say that sports betting is a mathematical long term loser but refer to stock market and currency trading as if it's not also a mathematical long term loser. Of course stock market and currency trading are also mathematical long term losers, as just like sports betting, stock market and currency trading have an inbuilt margin against you that you have to overcome by being selective and only putting your money in the right places where you think the prices give you plus expected value. So sports betting, stock trading, currency trading and all the rest of it are exactly the same as each other, in that each of these products there is an inbuilt margin against you.

That inbuilt margin can be overcome by the right people in stock and currency trading, but the same can be said in sports betting, so to try and differentiate sports betting and other investments etc is simply wrong. Of course stock traders and all the rest of them would scoff at the thought that they are just like sports betting gamblers, as they like to take the moral highground and say that what they do isn't gambling whatsoever, it's "investing", which to them they try to make out is completely different. The reality is that there is absolutely no difference between a smart sports bettor and a smart stock trading or currency investor, in that both professions try to stack the cards in their favour to try and make a profit, but both may also come out at a loss. Both professions are gamblers, there's absolutely no getting away from that for starry eyed "investors" out there. They are gamblers just like sports bettors, it's as simple as that.

And what you say about traders trying to buy and sell things at different prices are surely not gamblers, of course they are gamblers, they are putting money in and gambling on the price of something moving one way or another, if the price the right way they make a profit, if the price moves the wrong way they make a loss, that is very simply a gamble, and the people taking these gambles are gamblers. I don't care if these people are trading the prices of something based on the price movement in the next minute, hour, day, week, month, year or decade, when all is said and done, it's all gambling and the people taking these gambles are gamblers.

I'm the one that accepts that anybody in sports betting, even if they are smart, are gamblers. It's the starry eyed "investors" out there in the stock and currency exchange etc world that think they are somehow different than sports bettors, those "investors" are the ones that are completely deluded.