Why people think trading is gambling

That’s a very original way to put across your ideas and kudos to you for that. Completely agree with the crux, nothing can surpass learning and trading’s no child play. If you’re in for serious money making, stay committed and consistent.

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Trading is gambling? I don’t think so. If so, then there won’t be companies who rely completely on trading or retail investors who are still successfully trading. It is true that people lose money and that is because of lack of prior learning or misprediction in trades. When one has the ability to understand the trading market and is able to get insights on the movements, then he or she is a perfect fit for trading.

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I absolutely don’t think that forex trading is gambling, the trades are made after proper research and analysis of the market whereas in gambling winning and losing depends only on luck.

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I don’t agree that trading is anything like gambling.

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Looking at definition of gambling, it is hard to say trading IS NOT a gambling activity.
What is the “proper research and analysis of the market”? If you analyze the strength of economies and go with position trading - still there is a risk and a prize. If you trade technical analysis, it is even more gambling - hundreds of people agrees, that when one line cross the other the chance for security to go up is more than 50% :slight_smile: This is just glorified probability game with much noise.

Gambling (also known as betting ) is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as “the stakes”) on an event with an uncertain outcome, with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements to be present: consideration (an amount wagered), risk (chance), and a prize.

Trading is just looking for tipping the expected result in your favor (probability of win adjusted by risk to reward ratio)

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In my view, forex is completely logical and not at all related to gambling. It involves proper learning, skills and practice to achieve success.

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It is a real murky distinction between gambling and speculation.

Both are games of chance, but perhaps we can make speculation more respectable by stating that ‘speculation requires an enduring edge’…which would make professional poker and blackjack ‘speculative games’ as opposed to ‘gambling games’.

However I think many of us can be confused by how much randomness there is in a liquid financial market and we frequently assign skill to luck. Many are therefore fooled by randomness.

For example here is a series of 30 random equity curves over a trade sample size of 500 trades. Many of the equity curves were profitable with 1 curve providing a 100% return over the trade sample horizon. A large number of traders would assume that over such a ‘large trade sample size’ of 500 trades that a profitable system would have an edge…but this unfortunately is incorrect in this example as every equity curve is compiled from a random sequence of compounded trades.

Now here is the same random series of 30 equity curves with an additional equity curve included (in red) that comes from a system with a long term enduring edge. In this case a trend following system. Notice that the system with an edge plots in the lower range of the distribution of returns. If we applied a selection process that selected the top 10 systems from this array of 31 systems. we would find that the system with the actual edge would be excluded from this selection process leaving us with the top 10 systems which are all random. We shouldn’t be surprised that all these 10 random systems fail as soon as we take them to the live trading environment. There was no serial correlation in these equity curves which could lead to a ‘causative’ enduring edge.

But now let’s see how the system with an edge plays out over 5000 trades.

Now we can clearly see how the edge plays out over time.

These examples simply illustrate how easy it is to find that someone who believes that they are a speculator actually just turns out to be a gambler ‘in a suit and tie’ :slight_smile:

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@RichB118, Spot on… BTW…Great explanation. Those of us that code and back test systems and strategies on a weekly basis see this play out time and time again…

Awesome read…

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because people dont know how to trade.

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“I’ve learned the lesson that the worst thing that can happen to a gambler is to let his recent losses or wins knock him off keel emotionally.” :top: :soon: :heavy_dollar_sign:

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People think trading is gambling because they do not know how to trade and think that it is all about luck and guesses. In reality, it is risky but risk can be managed if done wisely.

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I agree with you, but I think people setting up a myth on their mind that trading = gambling. But if we looked out our past then, a true trader must be stepping his path into many hazards and after then he succeeds. So, I hope with reliable predictors like Pipswin, it will be easy to earn some cash.

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Too many people earn regularly money with trading without “gamble trades”, so the statement “trading is gambling” is definetily incorect.

The truth is, that trading can be practised as working (trading), and also as gambling. It depends on the person who makes the mouse-clicks.

When i follow my entry signals, and wait for a knotless signal and sit two hours infront of the screen nearly falling asleep untill i get the ok for triggering a trade-that is working.

When i throw a coin to make my decission wether i should go long or short seconds before data release which will drive the market in any direction, thats gambling.

Trading is allways how you practise it - either you gamble, or you trade (work).

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dose it matter if it labelled as gambling or not its only down to interpretation

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That’s true. I guess I’m gambling whether or not price will bounce at 0.9757.

Maybe it’s just word choice. In that case, everything is gambling.

At your job, you’re gambling your livelihood that they won’t downsize on you before you retire. And your hedge is a 6-month emergency fund.

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It is quite common to find people thinking this. Gambling is however a vice, and no gambler plans what he is going to do. On the other hand traders, or at least, serious ones, try to plan and they aim to understand the market so as to make informed decisions. True, there are those who just tend to make decisions quickly and on the spot but from what I have experienced so far there are several traders who take this very seriously and prefer to do things as wisely as they can.

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yes true time precious, so the fact it take up precious times is a gamble

A few years ago I wrote an article about gambling and posted it online. I dont remember if someone bought it or if it is still on some website waiting to be bought but here are two points in it.

  1. When a Christian buys shares arent they gambling that the price will appreciate?
  2. When a farmer plants a crop of potatoes isnt he gambling that (a) drought or flood wont adversely affect his crop, (b) his effort will actually be successful © thieves wont reap it before he does (d) when he reaps it he will get a good price?
    The bottom line is that maybe gambling isnt all bad after all.
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yes well done

Totally agree with the conclusion of the post. People outside forex really think that it is all about gambling because, I believe, they don’t know the mechanics of the market. They just see charts and people who waste their money because of the charts, they don’t see the inner processes of the market which are the most important things in trading.