Faith in God can make you complete, but your faith will be contested. It will be opposed, even as we read here. Your faith will go through the fire of trial.

If you lack spiritually in your life, you can get to the place of holiness. If you are lacking materially, you can get to a place where your needs are met. Whatever your lack, your faith in God has the potential to take you from where you are, and where you are lacking, to this place that the Bible speaks of…being perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
 
But, the path to that completeness is one of trial. Your faith will not get you there until it first goes through testing. You do have an adversary. You will be opposed. The Bible says, Your adversary, the devil, walks about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

The devil knows what is at stake, and he will do all he can to keep you from trusting God. So as your faith encounters the turbulence of trials, do what James says, and count it all joy. You are on your way to becoming perfect and complete in Christ.

Investing is widely regarded as the engine that drives capitalism. It tends to put money in the hands of those with the most promising and productive uses for it, and drives the economy gradually upward. Investors aren't merely betting on which investments will succeed, they're providing the capital those strategies need to accomplish their goals. The U.S.'s leadership position in technology is largely due to investments by venture capital firms, angel investors and technophilic individual investors. Similarly, you can change the world in a small way by investing in something you believe in, such as socially or environmentally, tangible or intangible investment vehicles.

Gambling, on the other hand, is not so clearly making a positive contribution. Gambling does tend to help local economies, but also usually brings with it well-documented unpleasant side effects. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether gambling is, on the balance, a plus or a minus. Looking to the financial markets, one could make the case that people who gamble in this realm do serve a function, by adding to the market's depth, liquidity, transparency, and efficiency. But that's of relatively minor value, and those gamblers probably capture most of that value for themselves and eventually lose it all. On the other hand, they often increase the volatility of the markets, which is on the balance usually a negative (although it does afford savvy investors opportunities for larger profits). As Warren Buffett has said, 'Wall Street likes to characterize the proliferation of frenzied financial games as a sophisticated, prosocial activity, facilitating the fine-tuning of a complex economy. But the truth is that a well studied investment vehicle is systematic or methodical. Investors are risk-averse, while gamblers are risk-seekers.
Risk-taking is intrinsic to both gambling and investing. There are a few investments that don't entail high probable risk. The major difference between the two groups seems to be the participant's relative willingness to accept risk. Investors tend to avoid risk unless adequately compensated for taking it, but gamblers don't. To put it another way, investors take only the risks they should take, while gamblers also take some risks they shouldn't take. Would you rather have $50 or a 50/50 chance at $100? If you take the $50, you're an investor. If you go for all or nothing, you're a gambler. Would you rather put your money under your mattress or in an extremely volatile trading system that could go bankrupt or could double in value? The question is slightly different, but the answer is equally instructive. If you expect to double your money quickly, whatever you're doing is probably gambling, even if it happens on Wall Street, or London, rather than in Las Vegas.

peptraderfx posted:
    So you call yourself a gambler? That's fine! Some currency traders do gamble!


All currency traders gamble. It's just that some traders have a problem accepting that they gamble - they are afraid of the word 'gamble'. Gambling means to bet on an uncertain outcome. That is what we are all doing - betting on an uncertain outcome. It's just another psychological thing that they should get over as soon as possible and accept it for what it is - gambling.

And, yes, I like to consider myself to be a fairly safe gambler.

I admire your response though! Great come back! Great name: Patience!

I respect your opinion! You seem to be a smart guy! Keep in touch!