Gambling - definition of gambling by The Free Dictionary

What a crazy week it was in the stock market! I'm not going to give a recap on what happened, if you missed it, you're an idiot, go away.
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But I am going to talk about that oft-repeated phrase by long-time investors who have never in their many years of investing seen or imagined what happened. "This is not investing, this is gambling."
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There was even a reasonable and well-thought out article by Brett Arends on the subject in "An open letter to Gamestop's "Reddit Army" featured here: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/an-open-letter-to-the-reddit-gamestop-army-11611871658
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What he says is true about people who get involved in the stock market making risky plays, they lose a ton of money, think that's what investing is, and they pull out, never to invest again.
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That squared with my beliefs because that's one thing we're trying to preach here at the TLSS subreddit - get invested early for the long term, and more opportunity will befall you to make money.
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But make no mistake about it - our brokers have tons of ways for us to try to make money that have absolutely nothing to do with investing, and everything to do with gambling. So why is it such a surprise that so many treat investing like gambling and then walk away from it frustrated when they lose?
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Let me define first, what Investing and Gambling mean to me.
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Investing is paying money to own something, with the intention of that thing appreciating in value so that you can make money off that future value. That doesn't have to be stocks, maybe you own a pre-rub Optimus Prime from the original 1984 Transformers and you kept it in pristine condition in its original box expecting you can sell it for over a grand (which you totally can.) I've never really understood why people would say things like, "I'm going to start running, so I have to go invest in a good pair of running shoes." Ridiculous! Maybe in some sense you are "investing" in your health by running a few days a week, but those shoes are not going to appreciate in value, so it's not an investment, you dumb shit. Maybe if you had the original Air Jordans and have never run in them, but that's the only way to "invest" in footwear.
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Gambling is paying money not to own anything material, but simply for the chance to turn that money into more money. Classical examples are playing Roulette and betting on Brady and co. to beat the Chiefs in Super Bowl 55.
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To me, the main difference in Investing v Gambling in the stock/bond/etf market is the ownership of something that you can sell/gift/will to someone, or lose in a divorce settlement to your cunt ex. Betting on Seattle to cover against the Rams so that you can turn 100 dollars into 250 is not exactly something you can will to your kids. The money, yes - the bet, no.
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Investing as we are doing in TLSS means we are buying shares of ownership in the hopes that smart moves made to grow the business will increase the value of that company and therefore the value of our shares. That's what I have always understood to be the primary feature of buying stock and investing, and even though there is a risk of financial loss, owning something is what makes it an investment. But outside of buying stock, what does your brokerage allow you to do?
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Let's start with "Short Selling." What is it? Essentially, you borrow shares from a brokerage on the belief that the value of the shares will go down in price, sell them immediately, and you pay a fee that is a function of the share value and the amount of time for which you borrowed it. When the price goes down and you feel that either you are ready to cash in or you don't think it will go down any further, you "buy" them, give them back to the brokerage, and that becomes your buying price. So if you shorted 100 shares of Game Stop at $480, and executed the short sale when it went down to $240, you made $24,000 on the short sale, less whatever the fees were. During this entire process, did you actually ever own anything? No, you didn't. You borrowed it, with every intention not to keep it. By the time you did anything that indicates ownership - buying - you had to give it back! You paid anywhere from .3% to 30% per annum (depending on how difficult it is to short) and during the time you borrowed it, you didn't even qualify for the dividends on it (if there were dividends!) What's worse, your short selling manipulated the price of the stock. That's right! When you short sell, the first thing that happens is the transaction gets recorded as a sale, which makes it appear that there less demand for the stock than there actually is. Then when you "buy" it after it's gone down (covering) it looks like someone bought it. So it's actually a form of rigged gambling, like the dealer slipping the Ace of spades to his buddy under the table. Sure he won't necessarily win, but the odds are now more in his favor. And that's the thing about gambling; as long as the probability of winning is neither 0 or 1 - it's still gambling if there is any chance you can lose. And since you never really owned anything, by definition, short selling isn't investing, it's gambling.
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Then, there's options trading. I don't have a particularly deep understanding of all the particulars of options, like the designations of naked, uncovered, unmarried, etc. But I do know in a general sense what calls and puts are.
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A call is an option, but not an obligation, to buy a stock. Options trading in OTC stocks is essentially nonexistent, but let's take TLSS as an example. Let's say you wanna buy some TLSS stock but not sure it's going to go anywhere in the next 3 months. So you place a call option to buy TLSS at the current price 0.0457, which will be called the "strike" price, anywhere in the next 3 months. For that 3 months, you pay the "premium" for that right to buy. If the price stays flat or goes down, you don't have to buy it, and all you've lost is the premium. But if it does go up, you can now buy at the 0.0457 price no matter how high it goes. You pay to minimize the risk, but until you actually buy it, you don't hold anything of value except a "right," and that right exists solely in contract between the seller and the buyer. That's not owning something tangible, and you can still lose money, hence, that's gambling. Puts work the same way but are the exact opposite. Again, you are paying a premium, but for the right to "short sell" stock at a certain price below the current price. This is protection from typical short selling because in short-selling if the price keeps increasing, there's no limit to how much you can lose. However, with a "put," once the PPS rises above the strike price, you are not obligated to short it and all you've lost is the premium. Given that we've already defined short selling as gambling, then buying put options, a derivative of short-selling, is therefore also gambling. It's just that the put option limits your risk to the premium paid.
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There are all sorts of variants of options and other types of hedges that I don't have the specific knowledge for, but it seems like only 1 feature of all this is actual investing - buying stock and holding it for the long term. That's it! That's the one thing that is an investment. EVERYTHING ELSE - Puts, Calls, Short Selling, Day trading, Swing Trading, Wife Swapping (just making sure you're still paying attention) and just about everything else that is not buying and holding IS FUCKING GAMBLING. Most of what our brokerages enable us to do is in fact gambling, so why is it even a surprise that so many people use their platforms to do it? And even worse, why is it that when the peasants get good at it or find a way to beat the rich at their own game, do these dildo-lickers start getting all fucking bitchy about it? Quit preaching to us you hypocritical cocklamp, all the shit you do on a regular basis is gambling. This is just super-high-risk balls out stupidity, but that doesn't make what the Gamestop reddit army did any less gambling than what you do. It's just idiotic. Call it what you want, but get the fuck off your high horses, you intolerable shitweasels. I'll sink your fucking yacht in shark infested waters and tie a sea lion to your balls.
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tl;dr: Fuck you, you don't get a tl;dr. You want a short post, go to twitter, you illiterate piece of shit.
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EDIT: I would hope I was clear in my limited knowledge of the more advanced types of trading, but please be advised I'm no expert, and this post was intended more for entertainment than anything else. I can seen how things like calls can be used to mitigate risk, and there are probably other types of trading I don't even know about that would qualify as investing. My point is simply that a lot of it isn't, and it fosters the false belief in some people that all investing is gambling, and the mistaken inference that when rich people say "this is not investing, this is gambling" that this type of behavior isn't completely encouraged by the stock market and one's brokerage, because it totally is.

This is such an awkward problem, and causes me embarrassment sometimes. My bf and I have been together for almost one year and I really love him. The biggest issue I have is that he constantly seems to assume that I don’t know things. This is especially grating, when it concerns subjects that I feel like he should realize I have a rudimentary understanding of.
The other day, we were at the park and I was talking to a friend of ours about gambling. My parents used to work in Vegas and I have personally never liked gambling, so I kind of offhandedly mentioned that I “don’t understand gambling,” meaning I don’t get the appeal. You know, just a throwaway comment. My bf heard me say that and gave me a lecture that boiled down to “the house always wins,” and that lots of people lose everything they have cause of gambling. I found it pretty irritating because of the intensity level, and the assumption that I wouldn’t know something that I feel is a cliche at this point.
Even though I keep going “uhu” and “I know,” and I try to make comments that I think should convey that I understand where he’s going, he just... keeps going. For instance I try to turn it into a dialogue by saying something like, “I know. My parents knew many people in Vegas who lost everything they had due to gambling.” It doesn’t appear to register? Cause he just keeps going on with the longwinded explanation.
He constantly does this, and it makes me feel embarrassed. I brought him some CBD oil that a friend gave me cause she was no longer using it. A friend of his came over and my bf and him started wondering whether the oil contained THC or CBD. I repeated myself at least three times, trying to clear up that it was CBD oil. He then explained to me that weed contains both CBD and THC, and that there’s many benefits to using CBD. Etc.
If I make a throwaway comment about something, he also seems to interpret that as me not understanding the concept. For instance, if I remark that Spanish (a language I speak and he doesn’t), has more obviously gendered articles than our language does, he feels the need to explain to me that “la” and “el” are articles used in the Spanish language and that one is male and the other female...
Every time this kind of stuff happens I feel a bit stunned. How do I even respond to these longwinded explanations about things I already know?
I am a bit socially awkward and on the spectrum and I feel embarrassed and odd when these kinds of things happen. I try to just nod politely or say “I know,” but he will keep going and once in a while look at me and ask me if I’m still following. I don’t know how I can sensitively communicate to him that I already know something, or is that egotistical?
TL;DR; boyfriend is constantly explaining things to me that I already know. I feel awkward and unsure of how to respond when this happens. Has anyone experienced this and how did you handle it?

Well I don't know if this has been said before me or idk. But here I am mashing up like alot of theories and kinda of debunking some to make a new one. This theory involves the "Kevin is a genius stealing money from the company" and the "The Documentary Crew is buying all the Scranton Branch's paper to keep them on Business".
Okay so my theory states that Kevin is not a genius but is so dumb that he is actually doing insider trading without even knowing it, making the Scranton Branch alot of money even tho they spend alot of money in parties and some don't even do their jobs since they are always up to something crazy.
A little backup to this is in the Scott's Tots episode, yes the cringy one, Michael tells Erin that when he hired Kevin he wasn't even applying to be an accountant but to be part of the Warehouse crew. So that indicates that Kevin is the least indicated to even be an accountant. So there is no way Kevin is a genius, because if he was he would be trying to do better things than to be a warehouse worker. Next set of proof is that in the episode "The Convict" Martin says he went to jail for insider trading. Kevin then tells the doc Crew that he had Martin explain over and over what Insider Trading was because it sounded alot like what he did in the Office. Now many believe this is a hint to him being a genius and acting dumb to defraud the company. But what type of Genius tells a documentary crew that is obviously gonna air the doc, that he does insider trading? Not a smart move in my opinion. Another little thing that made me spark this theory, in the webisode on The Accountants where $3,000 go missing, it is discovered Angela accidentally counted $3,000 on something twice. But before that Oscar discovers that he forgot to sign in some money believing that was where the missing money went but then Kevin says that that he took that money but he lost it but then the Pistons beat the Cavs and he got the money back. Meaning what if the whole documentary Kevin gambles and gambles the company's money and keeps on winning? In the episode Casino Night Kevin says he won a World Poker Tournament. This isn't even a reason to say he is a genius because you can be dumb at most things but there has to be something you are good at. Like I bet you anything that alot of the famous smart guys suck at something like gambling or Black Jack or Poker. So there is enough reason to say Kevin may not be business and numbers smart but is gambling smart.
Now to the last thing to settle this issue is the "He used the money he got defrauding the company to buy a bar". Now I also don't believe that people wanted to buy Kevin drinks after the doc aired because no where in the Doc does it show him making drinks to bring this conclusion. I believe Kevin may have used his severance pay to gamble and win alot of money, enough to buy a bar. I believe this because in the Job Fair episode Kevin goes with Jim and Andy to golf and get a sale from a future client. Kevin then says he will use some pocket money Oscar gave him and turn it into next month's rent by betting in the golfing game. And by the end of the episode it is clear Kevin achieved his goal in gambling. Meaning if Kevin can gamble some pocket money into his month's rent he can for sure make a severance pay of like a thousand dollars into enough money to even buy shares at a bar to become a partner.
So in Conclusion: Kevin is actually so dumb he is doing insider trading without knowing it and uses company money to gamble and consistently keeps winning and making the Scranton Branch's numbers boom making it the top Branch.