Is there a hard threshold? Do high risk investments such as penny stocks qualify as gambling? Do low risk investments? Annuities? Bonds? CDs?

This comment got me wondering.

Is it more to do with the venue? Stock markets and real estate vs casinos and the lottery?

Were the MIT Blackjack Team gambling or investing?

Or Jerry and Marge Selbee?

Is this just another semantic hotdogs are sandwiches discussion or is there an agreed threshold?

  • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/02/business/20110102-metrics-graphic.html

    On that 20-year diagonal, there are only eight of the seventy squares that didn’t have returns higher than inflation. And in every one of those few cases, holding just a few years longer made the investment outpace inflation. When even black swan events don’t break the strategy, this simply is more confirmation that investing in an index fund for long periods of time is a proven strategy.

    Note that light-red boxes are investments that outperformed inflation. No clue why they would color making more money than inflation red…