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by polymatter 713 days ago
That doesn’t make it less true!

It’s a bet because it’s risky “capital is at risk”,“value of investments can go down as well as up” etc. As opposed to a savings account which is far far less risky enough that it’s not really a bet.
3 comments
prewett 713 days ago
Pedantically, any storage of money is a bet, because it could change in value. However, to the Buffett-style investor, you think about whether you want to buy the entire company, even if you can only afford one billionth of it. You look at a reasonable projection of earnings growth--and don't buy companies that are unpredictable (like early stage tech companies). You try to buy at a discount ("margin of safety") in case you are wrong in some fashion. And so forth.

So for example, Coca-Cola (KO) is pretty predictable. Absent any major blunders by management, KO is going to grow roughly the size of the economy, and it's going to put out 3% a year in dividends. So the fair market price of KO is reasonably determinable, and you wait until you can buy it at or less than it's fair price.

This is usually contrasted against technical traders, momentum traders, etc., who are not investing in the fundamentals of the business and assuming the price will follow good fundamentals, but rather they are betting on how the price will change.

So "investing" is seen as buying fundamentals and "betting" (or "gambling") is seen as buying on expected price changes.

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quesera 713 days ago
No, it's just wordplay.

Capital is always at risk in financial investments.

If there is a semantic difference, I'd say you "invest" when you have a historical expectation of future positive returns, and you "bet" when you're taking a contrarian approach or just going with a gut feeling when data isn't available or known.

Anecdotally, and personally, I've had better luck with "bets" than "investments". But they're fundamentally the same thing.

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lotsofpulp 713 days ago
That use of bet would make it a meaningless comment.

Presumably, elzbardico’s use of “bet” meant something akin to betting in a casino or lottery, where the goal is to get high from the rush of sudden, big, improbable wins.

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