| Yes. Casino house games are set up in a way that the player is guaranteed to be losing in the long run (all of the player's decisions have negative expected value). So maybe trading is more similar to poker because in both of them it's possible to have positive EV but they still have many of the problematic aspects of gambling such as: - uncertain outcome - opportunity to lose or win large amounts of money - some element of skill and the opportunity to "have and edge" - confounding skill and luck - it's easy to attribute your wins to your skill and your losses to bad luck - need for emotional regulation to avoid making bad decisions (also known as tilt) - need for emotional regulation after a session to deal with large losses (or even large wins) - the fact that you can make good decisions and still lose, in fact this will happen a lot - the randomness of the outcome and all the associated cognitive biases are prime factors in creating addictive behavior (often to the point where it's problematic) That's why I would label it as gambling, which doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad. But it's important to be aware of the risks and know that most people's personality and their emotional and mental tooling isn't well suited for it. |