Thursday, October 16, 2008

Gambling?

The recent economic state has left me with one question: Is playing the stock market the same as gambling?

Please justify your answer.

Ex. Is an educated man who knows how to play blackjack and the person who buys and sells stocks on the wall street floor in the same business?

Let me clarify one thing. The man who plays blackjack (knows how to work the system) does not play blackjack as a hobby, but treats it as a job.

3 comments:

EK said...

The main difference that I see is in the concept of ownership.

To make money in the stock market you must carefully invest in the right way. However, you do understand that the market produces a chance factor. You can buy stock and its value may increase, decrease, or stand still. Is this any different than investing in your house in an effort to increase its resale value? The market may go up or down, increasing or decreasing the value of your home.

Gambling has no sense of ownership. You are simply taking what you have been given and trying to beat the odds with a tremendous possibility of loss.

I hope this helps.

I could be wrong, but... said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
I could be wrong, but... said...

Playing devil's advocate here -

In both scenarios, each person starts with nothing. The person that starts on wall street at some point does not have any ownership or a "house" that you have illustrated. One could also argue that once a person wins their first hand, they then have "ownership" and a vested interest.

I don't really know how I feel about it all. I have mutual funds and to say that I have an investment and knowing that I don't have a clue about what it is and how it works, BUT also knowing that I could probably rack up on black jack makes you think(Especially with the billions and billions of lives and dollars that have be lost of people that have been in my exact situation that have said, "here is my money...come on 21) that it's not that much different.

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