To say that the stock market is gambling is to say that all forms of putting money at risk are gambling. Buy a house as a rental investment? That's gambling.

To say that the stock market is gambling is to say that all forms of putting money at risk are gambling. Buy a house as a rental investment? That's gambling. Loan money to someone to start their business? Gambling. Buy inventory of a product to resell it? Gambling. One can make the argument that any money at risk is gambling, but this broadens the meaning of gambling so far as to make it useless. Unlike actual gambling - where the expected return of each gambler is negative - stock market investing, like owning other assets, on average has positive expected returns. Yes, it is possible to make bad investments. Just like it's possible to loan money to someone and have it go bad, or it's possible to buy a house and have renters stop paying. But we don't call those things gambling, so why call stock market investing gambling?