It is if it becomes an addiction that makes it impossible to provide for your family and you then have to rely on welfare or worse your wife leaves you because you neglect her needs and your kids needs if you have any because you've wasted your money needed for the bills on gambling...
And if taken too far, playing the market has just as much potential to leave the trader's family without money for essentials.
Daytraders take advantage of drops like this and make money on the down side as well as the upside. There is a ton of money to be made by trading this way.....
And things like short selling, buying on margin and derivatives have a huge potential to magnify not only profits, but losses as well. They increase the risk, and, IMO, push things across the line from investing to gambling.
It's just being smart. Why can't a church act smart?
It's acting riskily. Churches and charities should not risk their money. If they
are doing good work, subjecting their investments to undue risk threatens their ability to do good work in future. It's irresponsible.
I served for several years on the board of a local non-profit organization (not a charity, just a non-profit). When we discovered that the previous board had invested a substantial amount of the non-profit's reserve in mutual funds, we decided to move the money to guaranteed investments (GICs here in Canada... I believe they're similar to CDs in the States). In our case, our non-profit didn't have any lofty goals (it's basically a large car racing club), but we recognized that the members who had paid dues and made contributions had done so to help the sport, not to have their money blown on the market.
In the case of a church or other charity, one would hope that every dollar they take in represents a unit of good that can be done for others. It can either be used immediately (since there is no shortage of demand for good deeds in the world today) or held for future use. If you do invest the money while you hold it (and I do think a low-risk investment is appropriate, since otherwise the money loses value through inflation), every bit of risk you take on represents the potential that the church or charity will lose some of its capacity to do good works. Just like gambling with money you can't afford risks the food in your childrens' mouths, speculating with charitable money risks the people in need who depend on that charity.
But if you hold on to certain stocks, especially an alternative fuel stock, there is the potential of it trading in the 100's, it has traded in the 40's in the past and just looked at it today and it dropped to a low of 9 dollars.
Some stocks have the potential to double your money.
Blackjack also has the potential to double your money. As does horse racing. Without a focus on the intrinsic value of the stock, there is no fundamental difference between a speculator and a gambler.
