I tend to agree. Trading stocks is essentially gambling but almost worse. The odds are rigged but you don’t know by whom abs how much. It’s a game of skill, except not entirely. The house always wins except there are multiple houses and you can lose to all of them.

I think investing is a different beast: that is going long on a company, industry, or the market in general. You reasonably know that the market will over time go up. With specific industries or stocks you take a bit more risk but you are still buying ownership of a thing and things tend to become more expensive over time unless a better thing comes along. But short term gains chasing, especially as a retail investor is just gambling.