Moral issues mostly.
And then there are the ones that think they really ARE investors.
When you see the Dow Jones average loose half itās value in a matter of months I would call investors gamblers. Well heck! I could do that with forex! LOL
Some people canāt call it gambling because if they did then it would conflict with their religion. (did that stir the pot? 
pass the popcorn)
Wellā¦ To say āsee you tomorrowā id also some sort pf gambling. Are you 100 % sure you are going to be alive tomorrow? If not, that could be called gambling or you are betting to be alive tomorrow and be able to see the other person again.
In my opinion everything is a gamble to some degree. Starting a business is a gamble, investing in a company is a gamble, eating at taco bell is a gamble. As a Christian, I donāt believe trading or starting up a business is a sinā¦ There is a parable about how God rewarded the man who wisely invested his money instead of the man who buried itā¦
I think the kind of gambling that the bible speaks against is where you are just throwing money at something that is a total chance. Something that required no work and you have no control over. Iām pretty sure everybody can recognize the difference between Forex and Slotsā¦ You can study the market and look for good setups, or you can just pull the lever and hope for a good outcome. Your not guaranteed to make a profit if you study hard, but your likely hood is far greater than if you just leave it to chanceā¦
Would you consider Bill gates or Steve Jobs to be gamblers in a negative connotation? No. They worked hard and influenced their businesses in a way to gain favorable results.
I wish your friend the best! but I still think the odds will catch up to him given enough spins.
Well according to that then every job in the world could be classed as gambling. Everything we do in life from crossing a road to washing the car. Every game and every sport. Say that your a dr and you perform the 1000th transplant(heart,kidney doesnt matter) you have done. You know what you are doing and looking for but the for some reason the patient wakes up during the procedure and obviously dies. So is that dr gambling? When you cross the road you look both ways and then cross. What happens if a police car comes out from a side road speeding and kills you. Was crossing the road a gamble? Of course not. Just because you can not account for all variables in a job/trade/game/activity it does not make it gambling.
Yes. Everything has āriskā. Every day. An asteroid could fall from the sky tomorrow, and wipe me out, or if big enough wipe out the entire world population.
Doctors have āriskā. They are the only profession that gets paid to āpracticeā.
And āgamblingā is just another word for risk.
To say trading is not gambling, is to say there is no risk. That is erroneous, and quite dangerous.
Assuming risk, is part of the game. We have ārisk/rewardā scenarios mentioned daily. One is delusional to say that because they have a sound method, there is no risk, and they are just conducting business.
I have yet to see a trader, successful or not, that hasnāt run into a nasty loss string.
It happens to EVERYONE in the market. Look at John Paulson. Wall Street darling a couple years ago, and a 40%+ drawdown just last year on a multi billion dollar hedge fund. He knew what he was doing. Probably better than any of us.
As Iāve said many times in this thread, trading is NOT a game of āchanceā, i.e. slot machines, or the lottery, but it IS full of risk. Therefore gambling, or speculatory, or chance, or any other synonym that expresses an element of loss is present with every action.
And forex is far and away from āinvestingā. Thereās no buy and hold, with the possibility of a stock split, or dividends in the euroās future.
I think that in gambling you are depriving another person of money. Like if you are playing cards with other people, you are taking/losing real money by another person.
Investing/trading involves risk, but is not the same as gambling. Risking money is not the same as gambling.
That said, the most similar thing to gambling in the trading world is trading with a market maker - they operate pretty much just like a casino. They just want you to blow your account with them and come back next week with money from your next paycheck so you can blow it again. They figure you are going to lose your money anyway, so why not do it with them. They are hoping you will be one of the 95% of traders that fail - and that you will give your money to them instead of some other broker. It doesnāt seem like a sustainable business model, but if you think about how much money casinos take in, it is really quite profitable - but horribly immoral.
Yes you are right gambling could mean it involves risk. Risk is subjective to each individual person. Some people wont play sports because they think its to much of a risk/gamble. Others wont leave their home unattended.
So to summarise this 500 post threadā¦anyone who thinks trading is gambling, you are not wrong. Anyone who thinks it is not gambling, you are not wrong either. The term gambling/risk is subjective to each individual so what one person thinks is gambling, others do not. There is no right answer!!!
Risk alone does not make an endeavour, whatever it may be, gambling. It only becomes gambling when a positive outcome depends on luck. When I trade, I am taking a calculated risk. Therefore, I am speculating not gambling - big difference. Obviously I donāt know what the outcome of any one trade will be, but I have a positive expectancy over time.
There, Iām done. 
Where in the world do you think the money you win in forex comes from? Itās not your friendly neighborhood brokerās pocket youāre cleaning out. Itās not the ECB, or the BOJ, or RBA, or RBE, or BONZ eitherā¦
Risking money is not the same as gambling? Then what is it? Monetary risk = gamble in any dictionary in the world
Every retail broker, ECN, NDD, or not, is a market maker. Read the fine print on your brokerās disclosure sheet.
āGambleā by definition is to take a risk, in hope of a favorable outcome. That is the very heart of a trade. All youāre dealing with is money. You are betting one currency will fall, or rise against another. Might as well be betting on a boxing match, or football game. And āspeculateā is an often used synonym for āgambleā. So is āhedgeā as in āhedge fundsā.
The Wall Street Journal daily cites trades placing ābetsā on Apple, or Novartis, or BofA, or any other publicly traded company, commodity, or indices.
Sugar coat it any way you like, itās gambling, plain and simple.
Some are just better at it than others.
Jamessheppard, I quote you because what you said pretty much summarizes everything this thread has been about, and my message is addressed to everyone, not to you in particular.
This is the problem that I see, itĀ“s not about what you or I think, itĀ“s about what it is. ItĀ“s not a matter of faith or beliefs, itĀ“s a matter of what is. ItĀ“s not subjective at all since we have a clear definition of what gambling is. ItĀ“s like saying that for Master Tang a cat is a dog, and for me, the same dog is a bird. The dog is a dog regardless of what we think.
Yes, crossing a street is gambling in the strict sense of the word, like stepping out of your house, or riding a train, or betting in a casino. You are playing your odds.
I do not call myself a gambler, because the word gambling covers a broad spectrum of activities and would be too generic, but for the sake of precision I call myself a forex trader. I donĀ“t call a street crosser (?) a gambler, because thatĀ“s too generic, but for the sake of precision, I call him/her pedestrian crossing the street (?)
So I think (here we go again with the I think), there is an aswer, and that is that yes, trading forex is gambling.
Your last paragraph somes up my point. You THINK the term gambling applies to forex when others dont!! As i said it is subjective. Just because we have a clear definition of a word, it does not mean that all people interpret it the same. Without going off subject to much, look at religion for instance. There is a clear definition of a religion but people interpret it differently and go about their faith in different ways.
Its gamblin when your not prepared. When your shooting blind, your gamblinā¦
If you dont use a stoploss, your gamblinā¦
Just like, its easier to bet on a fight, then on a baseball gameā¦
When you factor in INDIVIDUAL VARIABLES, Your chances of losing or winning are more broad, because instead of 2 fighters, you now have 18 different variable branches, and each one, can make or break your bet.
with forex, you win or lose, its either up or down.
its not predicable, but you can pin-point where chances have great possiblitly of being right, and you have the ability to cut losses short if your wrong.
So, really, the bottom line, TO ME, is gamblin aspect is, thinking your trade is going to reverse, while your holding a losing ticket, and you keep thinking it will turn into a winning ticket, by some stroke of luck. Your gamblin, because you really dont know at that point, and each second, your becoming more of a loserā¦ When if prepared, your pin-pointing entry, and profits should be instant, if not, your wrong, and your gamblin by the losing second you hold your wrong bet.
Luck, like randomess does not exist. It is only a way to describe events that have too many variables to follow that one can not follow all of them.
Luck doesnāt exist? Ever been to Vegas?
Actually, forex is not gamb ling. Forex have a fundamental standards that makes it a trade.
Nope! not at all!
Well not unless you treat the markets as gambling
If a trader uses and knows Technical Analysis as well as keeping up to date with fundamentals, and has a tested strategy there is really no need to gamble on the markets
No one has been able to provide a really satisfying answer to this great question. Thanks for goodness the best answer so far in the world is Is Forex Trading GAMBLING? If No, Can a True Christian trade Forex?