When somebody says, "Hold on - this tulip bulb is worth more than a mansion on the best street in Amsterdam? That's nuts!", you want to be the guy who just SOLD that bulb, not the guy who just BOUGHT it.

This is where you miss the mark in calling stock investing "gambling." There is no game of chance and results are not the result of an accident. Again, to do it right, you have to study the investment and understand the business. As Warren Buffett said (or something like this), "I would never own a business I don't understand."

No, businesses are not make or break on one event like a horse race.

If I bet on a Blackjack hand based on my last hand being 21, I'm still gambling because each hand is a unique game of chance. However, buying a stock is not based on the hope that one event today will make me rich or poor (although it could be if you buy it on a lark).

If I invest based on a company having 100 customers that have generated $XXXXXXXXXXXX over the last 10 or 20 years, it is likely to continue that business and either grow it, watch it remain the same, or shrink, but it's not going to go broke based on the happening of one event on one day.

Under your rationale, working in your position with your company is a gamble. But, it's not because its fortunes do not depend solely on a chance that it will make the right decision as one split moment in time.

I think there's something about the word "gambling" that makes people want to deny that's what they're doing. But really, you're risking your time, your effort, and/or your money on something that's not entirely under your control, that DOES have an element of chance about it. Call it a 'calculated risk' if it makes you feel better about it, but in the end it's not all that different. You put money in a stock, even one you've carefully researched, and you're risking it on factors beyond your control. Companies do this all the time - they make business decisions based on the best available information, but they don't know the outcome, because it depends on factors outside their control - competitors, consumer sentiment, the state of the economy, etc. Think how many thriving small businesses went under because of COVID.

You might be surprised how many companies' fortunes turn on a single binary event.

The elevation profile for my commute home from the bike shop.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...fea27b8cbf.jpg

I get a similar response when I say, "Capitalism works because it depends on greed, whereas Socialism fails because it depends on altruism", because people don't want to think of it as greed.

I think the difference is mainly quantitative. Equities markets give much more generous odds than the track.

Another way to think about it is, there's a saying, "Don't invest any money in stocks that you can't afford to lose", which is the same thing you say about gambling.

If you want true dollar-cost-averaging, you may want to change that so it's more even throughout the year and does not max out until the end of December.

That's how I do it.

#EarlyRetirementLookingBetterAndBetter

I would not be surprised by anything as I work with a large number of businesses daily on their business decisions.

The failure rate for all business is very high - 20% in year 1, 50% by year 5 and 65% by year 10. But, those include all businesses and most of the failures are privately held.

Very, very few of those failures turn on a single event or decision.

Three years on, my Cygolite Hotshot finally died. I replaced the cord about a year ago. I just ordered another one.

Yours is longer and more total gain, but his has more gain/mile. His entire commute is 400ft of elevation gain in 2.14 miles.

That's true for everything you spend money on. Money spent on food will be money lost. The money spent on your bike collection is gone.

So, money lost on that gamble! :lol:

I understand that, but I am highly risk-averse. 20 years ago, when I had an advisor, I made some good money in the stock market.

Ah, but you're not investing in food hoping for a return on investment, and similarly I didn't buy the bikes as an investment. You don't buy stocks for nourishment, nor for a fun way to while away the time out of doors. So, not really in the same category, is it?

Look, clearly you don't like the word "gambling", so call it "taking a calculated risk", if you prefer, but really, it's more a matter of degree and nuance than a black-and-white difference. Some folks who bet on the horses spend a lot of time studying to maximize their odds, too.

Yes. And I really appreciate having a motor at the end of a long day, at 100ft/mi. If I had to do 200ft/mi, I think it would be a must. :)

Especially for a not-especially-athletic guy who doesn't ride. Also if he wants to arrive at work not drenched in sweat!

As it is, he walks either to or from work most days. If he works at 8 AM, I drop him off on my way to work, then he walks home. But if he's on 11-8, he walks to work then I pick him up after.

Well, you did gamble that buying that food would provide a return on investment. Instead of the return being more money, the return is the ability to sustain life. That's what money does - it sustains life. Without it in today's world you will likely die sooner than otherwise.

I view "gambling" as betting on a game of chance. No matter how many times you watch the dice roll, or how much you study the table, the odds of hitting a 1 on the next roll are the same as the roll before it and the one afterwards.

If you want to use your definition of "gambling," then everything you do in life is a gamble.

How many times did it save my life?

NOW, you're getting it.

Ah, but people also gamble on sports, which don't generally turn on a single fall of the dice, but rather a series of events within a competition between two opposing sides, where skill, effort, and luck all play a part, but no matter how much one team prepares it cannot control what the other team does. Similarly, no company can control what its competition does, nor can it control whether consumers will buy their product, nor whether some event outside anyone's control may impact the business.

There are some words that are funny. "Gambling" is one - is poker gambling? What if it's just friends playing for fun? For pizza money? A tournament with a set buy-in? If a poker tournament with a set buy-in is gambling, how is entering, say, a chili contest with prize money not gambling?

Investment is probably the worst - there's a very vocal group (especially online) that wants it to be strictly for financial appreciation. And before anyone gets :geek: and comes at me with "but dictionary.com says...", I know what it says. Even with the archaic definition you can see that the macro scope is "allocation of resources", as we will often talk about "investing" time or effort into something. A car is an investment, inasmuch as it is certainly an allocation of resources. It can even be financial if it lets you get to work. It's very unlikely to appreciate as an asset (and you don't want to try to predict those that will), but the "that's not an investment" crowd drives me up the dman wall.

The time I've gambled in my work today has come to an end.

Off to get a bike fit.