Speculation/speculator is another word for “gambler”

Get-rich-quick mentality

— timing the (stock) market, as YLZ mentioned.
— reacting to news and sentiment of “retail hot money”
[[ irrational exuberance ]] and my RTS business analyst — “always recovers after down turn”
— short holding period. Day-trading is an extreme example. I like buy-n-hold to collect dividend
— infatuation, esp. in the property market
— gold investors are often gamblers, partly because 1) negative current-income 2) large positions 3) horrible bid/ask spread
In contrast, my colleague Gavin is a buy-n-hold gold investor.

— retail FX and commodity investors are often gamblers, trading news without understanding the fundamentals
I used USD/SGD FX trading for personal currency hedge in mid 2010’s, at a leverage of 1.0. That’s less speculative.

I feel bitcoin is a classic speculative asset.

— keep mortgage unpaid .. One of the most common j4 is to invest in stocks. Basically borrowing bank money to play stocks.
The most experienced stock investor I know, Kun.H, actually paid off his mortgage early !

— Huge enterprises betting big

• eg: China Aviation Oil
• eg: Nick Leeson
• eg: national governments taking a stake in big banks? Not derivatives

— over-sized bets, like one of my young UChicago classmates (probably a rich kid). Many of these kids bet big on FX
I felt bad about my small bets in stocks and mutual funds, but it could be a good thing ! 

The lesser of two evils — I would rather tolerate poor ROTI, rather than betting big amounts.

If you want to build big positions, I feel U.S. ETF is safer.

One of the biggest price to pay is peace of mind…