This isn't even close to the same thing and you know it. Purchasing capital assets in a retirement account is not equivalent to a bet with a binary outcome, esp

This isn't even close to the same thing and you know it. Purchasing capital assets in a retirement account is not equivalent to a bet with a binary outcome, especially when the other option as a saver is to simply hold cash instead, which is also not riskless and has never outperformed ownership stake in a broad sampling of all businesses over the average workspan of a human laborer. Putting excess income into stock is a bet stock will outperform other asset classes. Keeping it in cash is a bet cash will outperform other asset classes. Not saving for retirement at all is a bet that whatever your country's form of nationalized pension is will be enough, or you'll die before you retire. The reason using all of your disposal income on roulette bets as a retirement strategy is bad is not because there is some probability of increasing your bankroll and some probability of decreasing it. It's bad because the long run expected outcome of repeated bets is negative. The house always has an edge. That dynamic is exactly reversed when putting retirement savings into a stock index. Betting that your entire national economy won't collapse for over four decades is inherently a smarter bet.