Trading vs Gambling: know which you are doing!

Most professional traders will tell you that there is a very big difference between trading and gambling. Use the following table to understand the differences, and make sure you’re on the only reliably profitable side of this crucial division!

	Trading	Gambling
0.) "Alpha decay": You win for a while but it will never remain consistent for long.
1.) In absence of actionable guidance on how to improve, or any return on lengthy efforts to discover a way to, the whole thing begins to look like a game of chance where "improvement" isn't actually possible.
2.) If improvement is possible, failures ought to be teachable. But in this, 99% of what you "learn" turns out to be about as reliable as a coin flip. Winning is dependent simply on time in the game, rather than on learned info.
3.) Some claim it's a real discipline, but it cannot be taught, other than "forune cookie wisdom" that everyone has plenty of to pass along.
4.) In analyzing it, everything is ambiguous. Anything can be read as confirmation or not enough confirmation. You can find a million different points it's likely to retest (to deny your thesis, set a stop, etc) and no reason why one is more likely than any other. Anything can be read as an "trend" depending on timeframe.
5.) "It seems right to me" and "It's always worked before" are foundational provisions, just like in a religion or a superstition, not like a science.
6.) You're trying to profit off a chaotic system, no cause and effect... overwhelmingly similar circumstances may give rise to vastly different results, for unclear reasons
7.) Consistent profits are very, very rare. Inconsistent results are common.
8.) Knowledge, understanding, technique, and analytical skill are only ever partially, inconsistently, and variably useful.
9.) Most people, regardless of intelligence or skill, lose their shirt.

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