Trading is gambling- Only if you make it gambling

[ironchef]

Gambling: The activity of risking money on the outcome of something, such as a game or horse race, hoping to make money.

Sounds like trading to me. But like any activity, with time (years) and practice (thousands of live trades), you can get better at guessing the outcome.

How do you quantify "guessing"?

 

[nitrene]

Googled it.

Was it Andy Frankenburger?

Following graduation, Frankenberger took his ambition and energy to Wall Street and succeeded as an equity derivatives trader. He made a lot of money. He loved his job. Then, during the absolute pinnacle of his success as a trader, Frankenberger did the unthinkable.

He quit.

Frankenberger decision to leave a highly-successful and lucrative career on Wall Street reveals a lot about the man he is, and what he most values in life. Frankenberger explained his decision this way: He could have hung around for another year or two and continued to make a lot of money. But he felt he was not growing as a person. He sought new challenges.

After taking some time off, Frankenberger began playing tournament poker. He played in several mid-grade tournaments around the country. Much to his surprise and delight, he quickly discovered an affinity for the game. Indeed, the lessons he had learned from his previous life -- of risk management, maintaining emotional control, and complex problem solving – served him well at the poker table.

Last year, Frankenberger started playing full-time on the tournament circuit. He traveled around to major tournaments. He won two major events in 2010, in the process earning an honor as the tour player of the year. But as impressive as Frankenberger’s rapid ascent seemed, he had yet to prove himself on poker’s grandest stage.

That all changed on the night of June 19th, 2011 when at 1:45 am Frankenberger defeated the runner-up Joshua Evans, giving the New Yorker his first WSOP title.

If there’s such a thing as validation for a poker player, the WSOP gold bracelet brings all that to its recipient -- and more. But for Andy Frankenberger, his victory in poker’s most prestigious tournament series reveals that life’s winners can and will succeed in any endeavor they so chose.

Yeah that was him. It was 2011 not 2008.

 

[PennySnatch]

How do you quantify "guessing"?

Guessing is just the word I used to reflect the uncertainty of any one trade as you can not know with absolute certainty the outcome of any one event (trade). The "getting better" part is seeing an increase in the quality of your guesses over a series of events as discovered through back testing, forward testing, live trading, stats etc. You put 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, 50,000 serious hours in the charts you will get better at guessing.

 

[themickey]

Yeah this gambling theme keeps rearing its head.
I'm a long only stocks swing trader, for me the outcomes relies on pure luck.

If the markets keep rising I get lucky.
If they fall I'm shit out of luck.
If IPO's dry up, VC's buy up stock and take them off market, my chances diminish.
If USA market falls it will drag down the ASX, dang out of luck again.
If crypto goes belly up, I'll get buggered again in the long run. I need to exit fast to lock in profits but another good opportunity will dry up....

So on and so forth.
I'm at the mercy of what the markets offer.

 

[murray t turtle]

If you do not understand why are you doing something then it can be called gambling. But if you have calculated risk and your ex ante calculated probability of success is positive then it is certainly not gambling. But more is required than just an optimized backtest. If one understands why (s)he is trading it that way, that makes the foundation and makes it a sound strategy.

%%
THAT must be why so many lotto players lose;
stupid tax on people that cant do math.
Some times it looks like insurance co cant do math-LOL;
but turns out its more like grocer on a loss leader just to get you in the store + keep you there as long as possible

 

[Jos Carla]

when you get into a car and drive aren't you gambling with your life?

This is a good contrast, there is risk in everything you do

 

[murray t turtle]

so are oddsmakers gamblers?

%%
NO, not a gamble if they work @insurance co
That's why girls-women get cheaper rates on LIFE insurance contract\
dont take as many risk / live longer
More risk in an auto on sat nite sometimes+ more drunks on road.........

 

[schizo]

Stop trying to sugarcoat everything and just accept it how it is. We are gambling and some of us are better at it than others. Some of us may even know how to count cards, others may be profitable from cheating (Insider info or manipulation). And at the end of the day, we're all gamblers, which some of us are still in the denial stage to protect their egos.

You hit the nail straight on the head. We're all gamblers wanting to make money. If not that, what the hell are we doing anyway? It's just a matter of deciding who's the worst degenerate gambler.

As far as "sugarcoating" goes, it's the same for the cryptos as well. Don't pretend that you're investing in Bitcoin out of some noble cause, like believing in how BTC will level the playing field for the poor or that it will replace the evil fiat currency. For crying out loud, just admit that you're investing for the money. All you want is to make GENERATIONAL WEALTH. Otherwise, enough with your bullshit.

 

[Actuarial_Fun]

The reason traders don't realize that's it's gambling and most occurrences are luck, is that they attribute successes to good decisions and loss of money as bad decisions. This is entirely false. Most occurrences in trading are luck and losing money doesn't mean you made a mistake and winning doesn't mean you did well. The fact that's it's impossible to know if a decision was good or bad, and statistics don't get you far at all regardless of massive sample size, keeps people trying to beat the hardest game out there: consistent risk adjusted gains in trading, even though buying and holding passive indices probably makes a lot more sense.

 

[Tokenz]

You hit the nail straight on the head. We're all gamblers wanting to make money. If not that, what the hell are we doing anyway? It's just a matter of deciding who's the worst degenerate gambler.

As far as "sugarcoating" goes, it's the same for the cryptos as well. Don't pretend that you're investing in Bitcoin out of some noble cause, like believing in how BTC will level the playing field for the poor or that it will replace the evil fiat currency. For crying out loud, just admit that you're investing for the money. All you want is to make GENERATIONAL WEALTH. Otherwise, enough with your bullshit.

That is indeed true. But, part of the reason I started with Bitcoin in the first place was to see the people have a currency that wasn't tied with the government that was also annonymous. And as much as I would like to see that come true, crypto has gone down a completely different path that is now working with the government. And even though it has gone down a different path, my dreams of watching it get adopted as well as making a profit are still proving true. So I've learned to just accept it for what it is. An investment asset that can also be used to send money for cheap.

I'm more of a investor that buys into only what he believes in. All my investments are long term holdings of what I truely believe in.

I take that back, Shiba Inu is an investment of mine that I don't believe in lol