Everyone who I speak to says that forex (and trading in general) is gambling and as worse as playing poker or the lottery. I can see why people think like that and I understand that forex is a zero sum game (exclusding brokers’ spread costs) so in terms of monertary value 50% will be winners and 50% will be losers (like in poker games or many casino games). Therefore forex could be considered gambling like poker is considered gambling.
Although, if we assume that forex is complelety random and it just is gambling (which I dont think it is), we have a 50% of making money by either going long or short. Assuming each trade is independent of each other we have a 1/2^n (n being the number of trades) of being right. Therefore, for example, if we traded 5 times using a 50% chance of winning, we have a 1 in 32 chance of winning all 5 trades. Compare that to winning the lottery, you have like a 1 in 10 million of chance of winning the jackpot and only a 1 in 10 chance of winning the smallest amount of like a few pounds, which could easily be matched in forex by trading 1 lot and making only a few pips with a 50% chance of winning. Therefore mathematically trading forex you have a easier chance of winning compared to traditional forms of gambling.
Then you hear reports saying 90% of traders lose which gives a bad sterotype to trading and so people then call it gambling but I believe that a lot of new traders fail becuase of bad risk management, over trading and in my own case getting too big headed too quickly. All these aren’t due to forex being gambling, they are down to people making mistakes and not the market screwing them over. Alhtough people who have lost money will say it is gambling and not their fault, but in reality it is becuase of not practicing enough.
So if it is gambling I much prefer trading forex odds compared to traditional gambling.
In my opinion people (i.e stupid people) who say it is gambling just don’t understand it yet and I hope they lose all their money on traditional forms of gambling.
Anybody who says trading is gambling and complete luck, then remember 50% must be winners and 50% losers so somebodies got to win and you have to study hard and practice to make sure that you are on that 50% who are winners.