But if that is your definition of gambling then every human gambles every single day just by living.

Personally I don’t think minimizing risk as far as I can is a particularly enlightened or interesting way to live ones life, but to each their own.

Certainly this past decade rewarded risk takers.

I would indeed argue that this is the case, but that's probably not useful for the purposes of this discussion. :)

> Personally I don’t think minimizing risk as far as I can is a particularly enlightened or interesting way to live ones life, but to each their own.

That's perfectly fine, and I'm not trying to dissuade you or anyone else from actively trading if it is interesting and enjoyable to you. (FWIW I have also made very good returns doing this in the past, and had a lot of fun doing it—I only stopped because my risk tolerance changed.) But, except in specific circumstances[0], to call it anything but gambling is a bit disingenuous, and statistically speaking, you will most likely underperform the market.

[0]: In particular, if you have something that most other investors don't, such as data/information, faster algorithms, etc, it's entirely plausible that you can have an edge on the market and tip the odds in your favor. But this does not describe the vast majority of investors, let alone individuals doing this in their free time.

More importantly are you suggestinging individuals buy and weight all components of an ETF like VOO (500 stocks) themselves? Pretty ridiculous. Tracking error is real and there is an extreme time cost which makes hypothetical strategies like that unreasonable for most investors.

I also just don’t understand what your comment has to do with mine in the first place.

You said "statistically you will achieve lower returns" which I pointed out is impossible mean wise due to the added fees.

Yes, if you used a no fee broker to buy and sell (everyday...) the constituent 500-5000 stocks typically in a large index fund you could avoid the very low management fee.

In practice, that’s ridiculous. The management fee on a good ETF is less than pennies on the dollar. It’s the full time jobs of many people to do this. It takes a lot of time. If you tried to replicate it yourself on an individual basis there would be significant opportunity costs as well as far increased tracking error, as well as other things I’m probably not thinking about off the top of my head. There is a reason no one does that.

If it’s gambling so be it. I guess I gambled and won.

Not OP, but the simple answer is: “because my returns over the years prove that I can.” I’ve heard this question enough times over the years that I usually just ignore such silly questions and go back to buying deep-in-the-money AAPL calls. Conversely, if it makes one feel better, continue to tell yourself individuals can’t beat the market (which is mostly true).

But I could make the same argument as to why my "strategy" playing slots or roulette is good, but in reality it just means I've gotten really lucky, and I might wipe out all my earnings in the span of an hour if that luck suddenly turns. That's not to say there aren't legitimately profitable trading strategies—"you can't beat the market" is, strictly speaking, demonstrably false—but "buy stocks of companies I like" is not one of those, and is entirely equivalent to gambling.

Anyway, I have little desire to repeat the same old arguments, nor convince anyone else. However, one might consider the differences between a slot machine (which tells you up front that you will lose money in the long term, and has no stop orders) and trading equities. Or don’t, matters little to me because I have no argument to win.

If you take a few million people and have them invest in put or call options every year, you're still going to have some streaky winners after 20 years. Very few individual investors I have talked to have convinced me they are even tracking results well enough to back their claims of outperformance.