I consider it gambling when your expected value for your return is less than 1.

So, if you run a Casino, I wouldn't call it gambling because your expected value is greater than 1.

Everything is a 'gamble' in the sense that there is a chance of ruin. It is a gamble to drive your car to work, because you could die in a car accident. People don't normally call it gambling, though, because it doesn't fit what we mean when we say gambling - taking a sub 1 expected value risk for the chance of a big return.

> You're still gambling

Is running a plumbing business gambling? Is opening and running a restaurant gambling? (Sure there's risk in running a business but risk is not the same as gambling.)

Because owning stock is basically owning a slice of a business. Owning a unit of a S&P 500 ETF or mutual fund is owning a slice of five hundred businesses.

I think this is a difference between 'gambling' and 'taking a gamble', and some people are confusing the two in this thread.

Yes, it is a gamble to start a business, but it isn't gambling.

You have agency over your business. You're just betting on a stock. You wouldn't own enough stock to have meaningful agency over it.

> You have agency over your business. You're just betting on a stock. You wouldn't own enough stock to have meaningful agency over it.

Yes you have more agency in deciding how to run the business, but you have little to no agency about the economic environment you're in. You're highly concentrated in one financial asset, which means any little hiccup can have huge repercussions for your life, especially since you probably only have one business in one particular economic niche.

Whereas if you own a portion of dozens/hundreds of businesses, you have less control of how they are run, but no one business doing badly will impact you as much, nor even one particular economic segment (energy, transportation, tech, agriculture). By owning a broad index of companies you are more diversified.

Further, with modern financial products you can diversify not just between market segments (S&P 500, Russell 3000), but across countries (which deals with the now do Japan retort).

Gambling isn't about the chance to lose money, gambling is about the rush of feeling like you're taking risks, the thrill of winning, and the crash of feeling like you're losing.

As such, if you setup auto-invest into SPY and never look at it, you're not gambling. You don't know if you're winning, you're not thinking about it like a bet.

If you go with your definition of gambling then, well, taking your salary in USD is gambling because the USD, just like SPY, could go to zero and you lose it all.