In case you haven’t seen it yet, Mark Cuban is looking to start up a hedge fund based on the gambling/sports betting industry. He compares and contrasts the financial markets and gambling. He rightly concludes that “gambling is gambling”. I read an interesting explanation of the difference between gambling and speculation a while back. I can’t remember all of the definitions but one critical part was that gamblers gamble for excitement, while speculators treat speculation as a business and are doing it for the money. You can certainly find traders & investors who are nothing but gamblers, just as there are many professional ‘gamblers’ who are actually speculators. Nonetheless, it’s a good article that’s worth reading.

(I need to dig through my books to find that passage about speculating and gambling. I do know that Trader Vic covers those topics very well at the beginning of ‘Methods of a Wall Street Master’)