Topic: Isn't trading almost like gambling? - page 9. (Read 1547 times)

There is an element of gambling in any investment where you put in a certain amount of money with the expectation to make more later on. You cannot predict the outcome and have to rely on your experience and expectations.

Trading involves a lot of gambling and split second decisions, so it's more of a gamble than most other ventures, especially when you don't know what you're doing and only trade cause it's popular.

Like gambling, trading's unpredictability carries a high loss risk. A clear distinction exists. Unlike gambling, trading requires research, analysis, and strategy. Despite its severity, your friend's loss is part of trading's learning curve. Remember that every trader has lost. Lessons learned are as important as money lost. Could your pal get $5,000 back? Absolutely. Not simply optimism, but a reality based on learning from past failures, adjusting strategy, and applying new insights.

Losses, recoveries, and gains are all part of trading. Patience, study, and strategy conviction are needed. Trading isnt gambling. With the correct mindset, recovery is probable after a calculated risk.

They do have similarities in some aspects especially the involvement of risking money. Trading is very risky that it could make you lose all your money in short span of time, the same possibility in gambling. Though both also requires luck, but it has differences. You can gamble by only relying with your luck but in trading, luck is one thing but it requires deep understanding and studying the market. You can't just start in trading without learning the basics of trading but on the other hand, you only need to know how to play the game in gambling.

Trading is more technical than gambling. A normal person can enjoy gambling but may see trading too complicated and may not enjoy trading at all.

Trading is almost like gambling but here you can make more informed decision in hopes that this will increase your win rate

Makes sense. Trading is kind of like a mix of strategy and risk, not just pure luck like gambling. But yeah it can be uncertain. Recovering from losses means tweaking tactics, maybe trying less risky stuff. Suggest to your friend to mix it up, not put all eggs in one basket and maybe take it a bit slow to balance out the gains and losses. Learning from mistakes and staying flexible is the key in this game

Step 1
You trade for $200 and loose it all.
Step 2
Next time you trade for $400 to recover it all.

Conclusion: You are a gambler and not trader confirmed.

There are many common traits between gambling and trading. Like both the activities are very addictive. Also, it is true that majority of people in both these activities will loose money at the end of the day.

However, let us see how is trading different from gambling. In trading, one has to apply logic and techniques based on past behavior. It is not random but actually a science which can be mastered with practice.

I agree here. For example buying stocks in companies.

If you flip a coin and base on the outcome of this the decision to buy or not to buy, you are gambling. Like betting on black or red when playing Roulette.

If you do some research on future trends and the details on the companies finances and come to a conclusion about the possible risk, then you are trading based on your view on this specifc company. In case your investment goe swrong, you can analyse the reasons and improve your decision making process for the next trade. Over time you can improve to a dgree that allows you to make serious money.  But at the beginning some losses are to be expected....

Just a suggestion: Measure you success in percent profit     Then start trading and gaining experience with little trades.  So the losses will be very llimited in total amounts.

Once you manage to make good profits over a longer period, you can increase the trades in total amounts involved and pocket the high profits....

Not your perfect astrological take on indicators when you YOLO your life savings into a 50x degen bet, and not your ultimate gambling strategy either.

In the end, it's the time that makes you money.

Trading is like gambling since it can also be a game of chance. Even if you’re knowledgeable and skillful enough, but you’re out of luck, I guess you won’t still end up winning your trades. That’s why it’s hard to win in trading, same like gambling, wherein you will endure more often with losses than gains. However, if we compare between trading and gambling, I still see trading having more potentials of winning and making profits. But of course, this only goes for professional and skillful traders, but for those who are still learning the process of trading, most likely they often lose like gambling.

While trading and gambling can be both risky and hard to win, but we often see a lot of people trying their luck in gambling as much as in trading, where you can always increase the opportunity to be in profits if you are using risk management techniques and you are more patient and disciplined.

I don’t think so. Gambling plays in pure chance. There’s really no strategy involved nor there is some kind of mathematical or even historical patterns to follow. However, with trading an investor can mitigate risks by following historical patterns and setting entry and exit points.

Honestly your friend lost a lot. One could regain it all back if invested in the right coin but since we are talking about bitcoin, he can definitely regain it all back if he just held it for longer. Altcoins are far better options for trading because of its volatility.

Trading professionally requires qualifications, a lot of dedication and a lot of study, it takes years to achieve the desired consistency in operations. Maybe it takes as much or more study than medical or law school, other than that, it becomes a casino and luck, just see that 99% of day traders ultimately lose money.

Trading is risky, just like gambling; and with the both of them you cannot be sure of what will happen and if you will lose or earn money, so there are similarities with the both of them. Skills is also important, if you have trading skills, you'll surely be closer to earning profits that someone who does not know what they are doing, however, some people also believe that gambling requires skills too. So i think this question is subjective, some people would agree that the both of them are almost the same thing.

Take note that you can lose money in many things, even in investments that people think is less risky, it all depends on how knowledgeable you are, and how much risk you are ready to get exposed to.

short term is like having a bet on up or down.. betting red or black

however long term is safer where there are fundamentals you can look for to judge if price based on long term is near value or near premium to gauge potential direction giving it time.
also ontop of that is the market cycles that pay off in the long run..

but yea short term trading is gambling. especially if your greedy to not want quick 1% profits and rationalising it

EG imagine you only want 20% gains per year (better then banks)
thats like making an order and then setting a positive sale price. letting it sit at 1% profit position waiting for upto 18 days and just taking the 1% when it hits in that time. and repeating that 20 times
(markets move by more then 1%, but the point is just taking 1% every 18 days adds up to a 20% gain)

however trying to leverage using loaned coin trying to 200% in under a day. knowing if it goes negative you need to cut your loss and force a sell to avoid massive losses.. is just a bad bet. also refusing to sell at 20%-199% because you just want that 200%+ number is another extreme foolish level of gambling

I would still give preference to trading, since a person, even making mistakes, will do his own analysis and learn by gaining experience. I am sure that successful traders have a good experience of success and mistakes, after which a person consciously takes risks, acting on his established strategy.
When gambling, a person runs the risk of becoming addicted, the way out of which can sometimes be very difficult. Is it possible to plan your winnings?
This topic has been discussed for a very long time. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62534957

This does not still qualifies trading as gambling, there are many other things we can get into by taking risk on their investment and we run loss, what we should do is to possibly check in the risk factor on anything we are going into before we get started, can we afford to take the risk in them, we shouldn't be only focused on the profits aspects, its a two edged sword, whereby we can loose or win by making profit, i think he just maybe have to taste the bit of his lesson in other other to prepare well for other things in life either as he continues in trading or in other investments in life.

Trading is not gambling but the risks are almost the same. They are very risky. Most traders are losing. So we can say trading is like gambling.

Some people are good and have strategies to make money than losing. Trading is not the same as gambling for people like that. But generally speaking, trading is like gambling.

A trader should not think about recovering from losses because it is not good to think about losses as it can lead to more losses. He should consider ways to make money and not having losses or a way that the profit will be more than the losses as he continues to trade.

If he continues to trade and not making money from it, he should quit.

He will loose it all with this approach.

Tell him to do long term investing instead. However, I feel that he will learn only after loss and you trying to save him is not going to have much impact. Different people but same outcome all the time.

Today I visited a friend who is a forex trader, according to him he trades on the USD, gold and BTC and I normally don't fancy the idea of trading because it appears a bit complex for my understanding and from my little knowledge, it seems as though trading is almost same as gambling because at the end of your analysis you're not sure of the outcome of the trade since it's basically a short term adventure and the volatile nature of most traded items depict it to be uncertain with time.

He has lost almost $5000 dollar in course of his trade and he is still positive that he is going to recover all is lost money back in his next trade. I don't really know how trading works that much cause what I have learnt and I have been used to is to Buy a certain asset like the BTC or any valuable asset that will appreciate with time and HODL it. I know that this strategy isn't for someone of his kind that's basically looking for any immediate means of doubling his income and so long term investment won't necessarily seem a good idea for him.

My question is, isn't trading almost like gambling considering it uncertainty and also looking from the fact that he has lost a fortune out of trading within a short space of time?

Is it possible for him to easily recover his money back or is losses like that very much a part of the trading experience?