I don't think OP was saying it is, exactly. They seemed to me to say that betting and crypto are gambling, and that picking individual stocks is kinda close.

Which isn't exactly wrong - if you're a retail investor who isn't using satellite footage of parking lots, picking individual stocks is closer to gambling.

Investing in the aggregate is less gambling.

An even more apt analogy, is that investing in individual stocks, is akin to sports betting in a lot of ways.

Investing in the stock market as a whole is just betting the game will be played.

Who's doing to tell 'em?

Investing in stocks is definitely akin to gambling.

With individual stocks, you are just betting on horses.

With hedging, you are betting on economic sectors (which can be as large as the whole world economic system) growing infinitely.

And regarding systems growing infinitely in limited environments, I have some bad news for you. Some would call them cancerous.

In our era of meme stocks, yes it is. You can talk about fundamentals all you want, but unless you have a model that correctly models the performance of NVDA, GME, TSLA, and DJT, it's gambling.

SPACs and BBY angrily enter the chat