Commodities trading?

I choose not to gamble with money. And commodities trading is gambling. The smart choice is to not do it.
With the wife's family mostly reliant on agricultural and livestock commodities and seems to work out better when you are the producer of it.
 
You weren't playing craps in Vegas? Did you stop sports betting?

Okay, so I do gamble on vacation. :)

Haven't been sports betting in a while. Too busy at work. That wasn't gambling, though. Sports betting, much like card counting or poker, is a game where the player can have an edge, unlike craps.
 
Okay, so I do gamble on vacation. :)

Haven't been sports betting in a while. Too busy at work. That wasn't gambling, though. Sports betting, much like card counting or poker, is a game where the player can have an edge, unlike craps.
Same thing with commodities trading or trading of any kind.
 
Not really. If you said commodities investing, then I might agree with you (although few people have the knowledge to be successful at it). But when you get into trading instead of investing, I disagree. That's just gambling. And that's true whether you're talking commodities, bonds, stocks, whatever. Trading is not wise. Investing is.
 
Trading is not wise. Investing is.

There needs to be an "opinion" emoji.

Trading is for those who have the time and inclination to take it seriously, and it can absolutely work well for those that do so. If you treat it as gambling, you'll probably lose all your money. But if you have the research, the timing, and the risk analysis down, you can generate a lot higher returns. It's just that 90% don't have the education/discipline to do it successfully, so it earns a reputation as gambling.

Last week, for instance- the Dow was successfully able to drop through the 50-period MA (turquoise) and the 200-period MA (purple):

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That means the market will continue down, probably to the bottom Bollinger band (the next line of resistance, blue). So I looked for stocks going down in a favorable way.

Like Dow Chemical:

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Dow chemical set up, essentially, the *exact* same pattern. It broke the 50 and the 200 on it's way down. Buy puts.

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I bought an in-the-money, 6-months of time value Put as a way to minimize risk. I anticipate being out of the trade before the option decays significantly, and in-the-money assures price movement. I also had a contingent trailing Stop in place if the price of Dow were to retrace to the 200-period MA. The trade would close, likely at a small loss, which is acceptable.

So if you know what you're doing, making $1,369.39 in about 5 days isn't that hard. But it takes years of study and discipline to not make it gambling, and it's very easy to confuse the two if you're not careful. No different than investing in reputable, long-term companies like K-mart, Enron, or even indices (ala 2008); it's all just risk at different levels.
 
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