Replies to post #18161 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[wbmw]

Alan, sure trading is like gambling. You can make money, or you risk losing it. It's a bit different than slot machines, though, where there is hardly any strategy involved at all. I'd say it's more like Blackjack, where you can tune your strategy to tilt the advantage away from the house. I'm also pretty sure I've made more money in the stock market than I have in Blackjack. :-)

[dougSF30]

alan, Options are fundamentally different than stocks.

They allow for a superset of the positions you can achieve with stock alone, considering that you can construct a synthetic stock position using options.

It's an all-too-common misunderstanding that option positions MUST be more risky than stock positions.

They can be more, equally, or less risky. They can comprise merely one piece of a position that also includes stock (covered calls).

The trouble is, most critics only think of short-term, far out of the money plays, and from this, they conclude options are "gambling", and buying stock is "investing".

Doug

[HailMary]

I believe options are no more than legalized gambling.

You can make a complex option strategy that matches just about any way you feel about a situation the stock is in. Options offer so many different possibilities of how to play a stock. Just buying out of the money calls and puts is pretty much gambling, but there is so much more you can do with options than straight trades like that. In many cases you can reduce your exposure to a stock using options. You might want to read up on some of the more complex trades you can do. You are greatly limiting your investing choices if you don't use them.

HailMary

[Elmer Phud]

Alan -

In regards to options strategies...

Sorry but I could not agree with you less. In gambling you are dealing with random chance. Large corporations are making a ton of money on gambling so it's obviously a profitable business for someone. Additionally I don't pick my companies by random lottery, I know something about this industry and I play companies where I think I can discern a trend. And finally, I'm not the sucker pumping quarters into the slot machine, I'm the house.