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Out of curiosity do you think that market traders who buy fruit and veg from a wholesaler at a low price and then try to sell them at an increased price in local markets before it goes off are gamblers as well?
Is it not a gamble? There's no certainty they will succeed.
There is a likelihood. That's where risk assessment comes into it.
Before the GFC, bankers removed the risk assessment reins in order to maximise profits. It probably worked for some of them... -
Investment is still investment, even if there is inherent risk.
One (still simplistic) way of differentiating it from gambling is that you own something.
I should qualify my previous statement about buying bitcoins as an investment. By modst definitions of investment, it probably is an investment.
But, given the reasons I stated earlier (liquidity, volatility, insecurity etc...) it's little more than a bet, and is being treated as such by pretty much everyone on this thread and in the articles linked to.
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Is it not a gamble? There's no certainty they will succeed.
There is a likelihood. That's where risk assessment comes into it.
Before the GFC, bankers removed the risk assessment reins in order to maximise profits. It probably worked for some of them...They didn't though - They took as much risk as they were comfortable / able to, within the confines of a regulatory risk framework that centrered around single figure VaR with piss-poor cross-correlation measures, while pricing and trading off internal models that had a much clearer picture of the actual risks and expected returns.
When things went belly up (due to defaults, risk concentration among a few monolines, and cheap short-dated East Asian money drying up), a few banks were left holding the baby, some found their assets were worth fuck all, and a lot found they could no longer fund their overnight short positions - hence the bailouts.
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You're confusing buy-side and sell-side.
Who are "they"? A lot of people made a fuck load of money out of the crisis - both in absolute and in relative terms.
Also - nobody stated that the regulatory risk framework was any good. After all, it contributed significantly to the fuck-ups.
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Your logic. So circular.
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Bartering isn't a gamble. You agree and exchange.
Investing, even knowing the risks, is a gamble.
Gamble gamble gambleIt may not be the correct definition, but imo one key difference with most gambling is that it's done through bookies/casinos. The odds are always against you and in their favour. So over any given period you are more likely to lose than to win. In which case if you are taking calculated risks you'd never play.
The other differentiator (IMO) is how close you get to pure chance. I am not saying that "investments" can never be a gamble, but you usually haven't boiled the game down to such a binary outcome.
I'm with TW2 on most of his/her points. I don't claim to know a great deal about the credit crunch, but from what I do know it is not simply a case of dodgy bankers putting it all on black.
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It may not be the correct definition, but imo one key difference with most gambling is that it's done through bookies/casinos. The odds are always against you and in their favour. So over any given period you are more likely to lose than to win. In which case if you are taking calculated risks you'd never play.
The other differentiator (IMO) is how close you get to pure chance. I am not saying that "investments" can never be a gamble, but you usually haven't boiled the game down to such a binary outcome.
I'm with TW2 on most of his/her points. I don't claim to know a great deal about the credit crunch, but from what I do know it is not simply a case of dodgy bankers putting it all on black.
I read a book on the credit crunch. Of course it's not just some casino. You're missing the point though. It's still based on gambling. Taking a chance with money or risk or assets or whatever in the hope of increasing the value of whatever.
Here's a nice long article for you to read where someone tries to distinguish between the two. It might slow you all down before you try once more to change my point of view.
http://www.investorguide.com/article/12525/what-is-the-difference-between-gambling-and-investing/
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I read a book on the credit crunch. Of course it's not just some casino. You're missing the point though. It's still based on gambling. Taking a chance with money or risk or assets or whatever in the hope of increasing the value of whatever.
Here's a nice long article for you to read where someone tries to distinguish between the two. It might slow you all down before you try once more to change my point of view.
http://www.investorguide.com/article/12525/what-is-the-difference-between-gambling-and-investing/
That article explains why it's not gambling though.
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Some bankers, some aspects. Sheesh.
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About
Bitcoin / Bitcoins / Crypto Currency
Posted by
@hippy
I'm not an economist myself so I can't say really.
Fruit and veg selling probably doesn't have the same highs and lows as selling money and Eddie Murphy did OK in it in Trading Places when he purchased all that orange juice at the right price (or was it sold?).
I would say that drug dealing is a pretty safe bet
Even going to buy my lunch now is a gamble