[nine_k]

Investing is putting money into (hopefully) productive use, like a company with revenue, in an expectation of a return.

Gambling is basically redistributing money according to a random numbers generator, It's a negative sum game (because the house takes its fee), but a surprise positive spike game. That spike forms an addiction in the less fortunate.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Investing is putting money into (hopefully) productive use, like a company with revenue, in an expectation of a return

The big differences are time horizon, addiction and expectations.

The longer the term, the less actively one must watch it and the lower the expected returns, the more likely it’s investing. The shorter the expected turnaround, the more closely one watches numbers go up and down, and the more one is focused on turning multiples than yields, the more likely it’s gambling.

Any stochastic process can produce gambling behaviour. Only a positive-sum game can facilitate investing.

[ryandrake]

When you buy a stock, you're not contributing it to the company's productive use. If I buy $1000 of MSFT, Microsoft doesn't get an extra $1000 in their bank account to invest in their business. That $1000 is going to another bettor to settle his previous bet, and at some point in the future, I'll sell and get an unknown amount of money to settle my bet. Just because historically betting on the stock market has been +EV doesn't mean it's not still gambling.

[JumpCrisscross]

> When you buy a stock, you're not contributing it to the company's productive use

You are marginally reducing their cost of capital.

[ryandrake]

Sure, but that's pretty indirect and a far cry from "putting the money to productive use." Unless you're an early investor or IPO participant, your actual money is not being directly put to productive use by the company you are "investing" in.

[JumpCrisscross]

> that's pretty indirect and a far cry from "putting the money to productive use."

All finance is indirect. Particularly at small scale.

> Unless you're an early investor or IPO participant

Plenty of IPOs are entirely secondary. And public companies regularly raise money via at-the-market offerings, where a random trader may wind up cutting a cheque to the corporate treasury. (I’ve been a seed investor and IPO investor. My effects on the outcome were rarely singularly meaningful.)

In a large offering, a small IPO investor has about as much direct effect on the outcome as someone buying the pop publicly. In aggregate, however, their actions are meaningful and productive.

Put another way: contrast two economies, one in which most capital is tied up sports gambling (negative-sum game), the other in which it’s in equities (positive-sum long term), one will outperform the other.

[jowea]

Early investors and IPO participants put their money in expecting that 20 years later you would buy the stock off their hands. It feels weird to call it causation when it's traveling back in time, but in a way buying the stock contributes to investment.

[jogjayr]

If you buy MSFT specifically you'll get regular, fairly predictable dividend payments and not just an unknown amount of money in the future.

MSFT goes up a tiny fraction when you buy. That means MSFT employees with stock grants get a tiny "raise" courtesy of you and with no cost to the company. Microsoft can also use their more expensive stock to make acquisitions. So you are contributing to the company's productive use in at least 2 ways if you buy its stock.

Buying MSFT doesn't meet the criteria to be called gambling, for me.