Most things on WALL ST should be labled games of chance

Not that I have any problem with gambling, I gamble when I go to Vegas and have a great time. When I do, I fully expect to lose since I know the games are odds in favor of the house.

Other than simply investing in stock, pretty much everything on WALL ST is a game of chance or a gamble. Betting that a stock will rise or fall and getting paid if it does fall is a gamble. These things should be labeled as such and the legality of them should be adjusted in the same way states legalize gambling.

What this does is force the states to either accept gambling or outlaw it. It also affords the unwitting investor with a more pure knowledge that the money they are putting down is not an investment, but a gamble. Some brokers simply do not tell clients this fact and people who are conned into such a transaction tend to lose everything.

Buying a used car is a gamble.

Buying something without a warranty is a gamble.

Hell, even buying a warranty is a gamble.

Get it? Everything in life is a gamble. Everything you do you take a chance, and most of the time there are positive and negative results.

Casinos are considered a game of PURE chance. No outside influences. Or thats how it is portrayed and supposed to act.

Wall Street, just like buying that used car, have many outside influences where personal judgment comes in to play.

I do not agree with you.

That is a spin doctor response.
Investments are investments. A car used or new is an investment, you are getting real property. Insurance is an investment, a warranty is an investment.

Betting that a stock will fall and profiting or loosing on it is a gamble. Get it straight. It is a game of chance.

reply to post by FritosBBQTwist


One major difference between investing and casinos is that the average prudent investor in the long run should come out ahead, while casinos are designed so the average gambler loses.

Of course, if their is rampant fraud, collusion, speculation, and poor regulation of the investment market, the average prudent investor may not come out ahead. We may be at that juncture now where it does not make sense for a prudent investor to enter the US stock market.

The stock market had become a casino, and a pale shadow of its former lofty aims.

In the past, the stock market was a means whereby capital can be obtained other than the traditional source of from banks. Investors chipped in to invest in a company and hope to get a better dividend at year's end.

There was a belief that no one could move or control the markets, for it would require a huge amount of funds. Unfortunately, this belief was false.

It could be done. Just look at the sheer size of bank funds, pension funds and more recently Sovereign Wealth Funds from Asia and the Middle East, and you see a casino in the making, with such powerful funds acting as the ‘house’ similar in a gambling joint, and as we all know in casino land, the house will never lose.

When crude oil stock price shot up from avg $75 a barrel to an unconciable $147 within months, was it because of market demand, or institutional funds jacking it up to con the individual investors to pay for CEO multi-million dollar bonuses? May the truth be known.

Majority of investors are mainly seeking for returns that can be above savings rate. Not many of them are gamblers nor have the stomach for it. They seek only probably 9-10% annual returns, and trusted those institutional guys to take care of their portfolios.

Unfortunately, those institutional guys are gung ho cowboys, who trade for 9-10% returns – Daily!!! Keeping those DAILY profits made for themselves, using other peoples’ money, and giving only in return 9-10% of such peoples’ money in ANNUAL one time dividends.

Such shuffling around papers is not doing economies any good. It encourages gambling hopes and furthermore, money is circulated into unproductive uses in such cycles of ups and downs instead of creating value such as products and jobs where such funds are more needed there.

If Wall Street is allowed to continue biz as usual after this wake up call of a financial crisis, the cycle of unproductive shuffle of money will hinder all recovery efforts, and set nations up for another similar disaster in time…..

Therefore, better regulations must be in place. Perhaps a narrower band of +/- fluctuations with immediate week suspension on trade for beyond daily limits. for those who insists on making a living out of shuffling papers or paying return on investments such as institutional investors.

Otherwise not only the mom and pop investors get burn throughly, the economy and humanity may head downhill at the expense of a few rich but selfish clods.

[edit on 5-4-2010 by SeekerofTruth101]

I posted my view on how I see it.

Unfortunately I know little on how it actually operates...and if any of you here had any clue I doubt we would be talking right now.

The stock market can be as much of a gamble as you want it to be.

What if your friend starts a new company and you see it having a lot of potential? They issue stock and you buy it, then the company takes off.

That is as much of a gamble as buying a used car.

Or, you can look at it this way. Buy random stock based on a graph, and hope it does well, compared to buying an old Honda because you hear they are good, but do no real investigation.

See?

Circumstances. Almost nothing is describable in such few adjectives.

Not that I am claiming I understand the whole operations of Wall Street, but all I see here is biased hate filled with misunderstanding.