playing the stock market

[LwyrFirat]

I don’t know whether it is the same in UK’s stock market but in my country speculative actions in stock market are quite common. Also , I might be wrong as I am not a native English speaker but when I hear the word “investment”, long term financial expectations come up to my mind, like; when people invest their savings on real estates they generally sell their properties after a long while to get profit. However in stock market both long term and short term expectations are possible, they may sell their stocks even in an hour, therefore I think for the latter case “play” is more suitable, but for long term expectations “invest” sounds better to me.


I am neither a NES nor a teacher.

[Niall]

I believe that the phrase playing the stock market is in such common usage in the financial world that often it loses its relation to a game completely.
I ask myself when the livelihoods of hundreds of people rely on your correct estimates of the movements in the stock markets, and yet people still refer to the process as just playing the stock market, do they really believe they are just playing a gambling game?

[LwyrFirat]

Originally Posted by Niall

do they really believe they are just playing a gambling game?

Dear Niall, don't you think that some investors of stock market are so careless? Doesn't the word "invest" sound serious for those kind of investors?

[Niall]

Certainly yes, yet the point still remains that even serious investors say that they are playing the stock market, with no belief whatsoever that it is a game.