I don't know if this is a stupid question, but I'm just curious: is there a difference between trading and investing?
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Yes. It has to do with the time-horizon of the investment. Trading=short term. Investing=long term (obviously lt and st are subjective). I'm sure someone can elaborate on this.
investment is what a bad trader does when he is loseing
investing is for sissies who can't handle the pressure. Trading or bust
Dude, get a clue.
I don't agree with the person that you're retorting to, but that's a bit naive. Buffet has been in the game longer than any trader who can be considered in his league. Besides which, the markets have only liberalized to the extent that traders with cash hordes comparable to Buffet can trade and make money in them for, oh, the last 20 years or so (Reagan/Thatcher administrations, fixed exchange rate breakdowns, fall of Berlin Wall, rise of derivatives etc etc). Even Soros had only properly traded his Quantum Fund for no more than 20 years, whereas Buffet has been going for over 50 years. This is beside the various arguments about whether Buffet's record is really much of an outperformance of anything or a man who has ridden the biggest equity bull, 'buy and hold' market in history, but that's another argument.
Investing is what all normal people should be doing in their free time. There's no reason you shouldn't be gaining yield on your savings. It's easy enough to automatically have your funds go into 'safe' equities and bonds every month.
Trading is a whole different animal. And it's such a big animal that you can't really describe it here. Go read a book on it.
Lots of differences, but time frame is the main one.
Investing relates to the way in which you manage your savings to provide for future use. If you need money for retirement, than you invest current savings to manage risk and maximize profits. If you are a business, you invest money in an area with growth potential or acquire another firm as a way to meet your future needs. Investing is, as mentioned above, a long-term philosophy, and is not just related to stocks and bonds. Entire companies, art, wines, can all be considered investments.
Trading is, as mentioned above, a short term activity that takes place when one wishes to buy or sell a particular security. As for rothyman's post, I would say that investment is a much more difficult beast to tame than trading. Trading is about making little bits of money in the markets on a daily basis. Investing requires long-term strategic thinking, not only about external factors (where is the economy heading? which asset classes will outperform?) but also intrinsic factors (what is my risk tolerance? how much money will I need for future consumption?).
Trading: looking to buy something that you believe someone will buy at a higher price and vice versa
Investing (professional): looking for divergences between price in the market and a 'true value'
Investing (individual): smoothing out consumption over your lifetime
Trading is essentially trying to gamble with loaded odds in your favor. Investing is much larger than the stocks or bonds that one buys for retirement. It has alot to do with life choices, disipline, and enough balls to take short term losses in hope of long term profit.
Trading is like getting a hooker, investing is like getting a girlfriend
Please record that shit and send me an audio copy if you are able to use these posts back to back in a conversation. That would just be gold.
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