Is trading Futures gambling?

Scataphagos said:
If you're stupid, trading futures could be gambling.

There is nothing about "futures" which makes them any more-or-less "gambling" than any other form of risk-taking in the marketplace.

I get the feeling you don't understand the definition of "gambling". Well, here it is. "Gambling = attempting to prevail when the mathmatical odds are against you and cannot be altered to be in your favor*". There are 2 aspects to gambling... (1) risk of loss, and (2) probability of loss. Other than the aspect of "risk of loss", playing/trading the financial markets have NOTHING IN COMMON WITH GAMBLING.

*EXAMPLE... Roulette.... The "odds of winning are either 37:1 or 38:1, depending upon whether the wheel has "0 Green" or "00 Green"... but the payoff is only 35:1 when you win. Those odds are "against you" and there is nothing you can do to put them in your favor. NONE OF THAT IS APPLICABLE TO TRADING THE FINANCIAL MARKETS. You can put the odds HEAVILY in your behavior based upon what you know and how you behave. Or, you can lose your ass in a blink... not because "it's gambling", but because you didn't know what you were doing in the first place.

(BTW Lloyd... you appear to be a "rookie, looking for wisdom on ET". Sorry, but you ain't gonna find it.... my posts excluded, of course. :))
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Greatly explained the difference that so often comes up. Trading and gambling are just 2 vastly separate and different fields. Trading requires the traders to work so that the odds become increasingly in his favor. But in gambling your hands are tied, whenever someone finds any edge or hack in a casino, it soon gets caught and causes the gambler to lose it all.

Trading if done properly with right research, knowledge and management is a great and probably the most lucrative and clean business on earth.
 
wrbtrader said:
If we look at it that way...almost everything in life is a gamble whenever there's more than one choice.

Seriously, every decision we make that had a choice...we then select what we thought was the best choice to reach our goal. Thus, there's a risk involved in most of the decisions in our life.

For example, recently I researched top 4k TVs and visited several different stores to get an in person look at each TV. I've finally decided on what I want and I think I'm going to be very happy with it...its a gamble because I could be very disappointed. Fortunately, there's a return policy.

Unlike the markets (some gambles), if I'm wrong with my money...I can't ask for a do over. :mad:
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Did you really spend all this time and efforts to choose a TV ???? How many hours
did all of this take?
 
smallStops said:
Did you really spend all this time and efforts to choose a TV ???? How many hours
did all of this take?
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Research done online fairly quickly. Driving to the store to actually see the TV in person took a little more time except for the last store. That one I got in some exercise because I used my bike to get there. :D
 
I'd say it's gambling for most, but there's people on 'the inside' who have access to information that tells them exactly where the markets going!
 
carrer said:
If you are betting the farm and without any positive expectancy on your trading method/strategy, that's called gambling.

If you are putting the money in the index futures and wait for 10 years for it to appreciate before selling it, that's called investing.

If you enter and exit the futures market based on tested strategies which have positive expectancy with proper money management, that's called trading.
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Man, I'm so agree with this. This is what makes us a trader, not a gambler. Cuz we analyze the market before entering an order, we manage our money so we don't risk much to it...
 
carrer said:
If you are betting the farm and without any positive expectancy on your trading method/strategy, that's called gambling.

If you are putting the money in the index futures and wait for 10 years for it to appreciate before selling it, that's called investing.

If you enter and exit the futures market based on tested strategies which have positive expectancy with proper money management, that's called trading.
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If you have a positive expectancy strategy and bet the farm, what do you call that?
 
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