It’s become abundantly clear to me that there’s a high degree of gambling in today’s stock market. From the frenzied trading of meme stocks to the speculative bets on tech IPOs, investing often feels more like a high-stakes poker table than a carefully calculated financial strategy.
This isn’t a new phenomenon, though. The tendency to treat investing as a game, rather than a disciplined approach to building wealth, has existed for decades.
Investing is serious business—or is it? In The Money Game by Adam Smith (the modern one, not the 18th-century economist) makes a compelling argument that the stock market is both a game and a Game.
He describes it as “both sport, frolic, fun, and play, and a subject for continuously measurable options.” That idea might sound strange to some. After all, investing is about making money, right? Well, not necessarily.
Smith quotes a leading Wall Streeter who claims, “Eighty percent of investors are not really out to make money.” At first glance, that seems absurd.
Why else would people put their hard-earned cash into the market? But when you think about it, investing often has less to do with pure profit-seeking and more to do with entertainment, ego, and the thrill of the chase.
For many, the stock market is a national pastime. Smith points out that “we have more than twenty-six million direct investors in this country” and that the number keeps growing.
That’s a massive pool of people engaged in an activity that, for some, is less about long-term wealth accumulation and more about the action itself. It’s a form of legalized gambling, only with better odds (most of the time).
And like any good game, there are winners, losers, and the house always takes its cut. Smith acknowledges that “the investment game is intolerably boring save to those with a gambling instinct, while those with the instinct must pay to it ‘the appropriate toll.’”
That’s the cost of playing—whether it’s trading fees, bad decisions, or just the emotional highs and lows of watching your portfolio bounce around like a yo-yo.
So what about bonds, preferred stocks, and other “safer” investments? Smith argues that serious investors rarely touch them, because “they lack romance enough to be part of the game; they are boring.”
In other words, no one gets an adrenaline rush from tracing their finger down a bond yield table. The action, the thrill, and the big wins are in stocks.
But here’s the real question: is it wrong to approach the market as a game? Not necessarily. As Smith points out, “Sometimes illusions are more comfortable than reality.” The danger comes when people fail to recognize which game they’re playing. If you see investing as a casino and treat it accordingly, then fine—just be aware of the risks.
But if you believe the market is some sort of get-rich-quick machine that always rewards daring moves, you’re in for a rude awakening.
Ultimately, the key is awareness. If you acknowledge that investing has a built-in gambling instinct, “we can ‘pay to this propensity the appropriate toll’ and proceed with reality.” In other words, play the game if you want—but know the rules before you bet the house.
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