prove to me that stocks are not gambling?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) on my birthday in 1995 was 5,023. Today it is 24,597. If you are trying to make money in the short run, you are up against computers and professionals that do this for a living. You will not be happy. If you invest for the long term, you will be happy.

It is gambling but only in short term.

Its not a zero sum game.

If you and four friends each bring $100 to play poker and you gamble all night long, at the end of the night between the five of you, you have $500.

With investing your putting the capital to work, your creating products and services with that capital. If invested wisely it expands the wealth that exists.

You're not too far from the truth. Stock prices are mostly about human perception and behavior. The fundamentals of market, management, industry, financials are great long term indicators of future performance, but on a short term time scale less than a year, stocks move according to the known irrational behavior of people. That behavior is sometime predictable, but there are no guarantees. For example: BTC, TSLA and others. In the long term, nothing beats quality however.

It's called "playing the market" for a reason. Of course it's a type of gambling, but it's not pure chance like roulette or dice. There are very few sure things in life.

Life is a gamble. Get over it.

Day-trading is gambling. But over the extreme long-term, we're talking at least 20-30 years, the stock market does consistently go up. So if you forget the simulator, and just buy a variety of stocks and forget about them, you should be rich in 2050.

It is gambling and it is falling for two reasons: 1) It's the end of the year. Usually picks up in about February and 2) the Democrats got into the House.

The historical average annual return of "the market" is about 10% over the last 100 years.

There's your proof.

Day trading IS gambling. Day trading IS NOT investing.

If you got yourself a proper investing education and invested with a longer term horizon, you'd be more successful.

The large investors are always trying to make the perfect algorithm but they end up copying each other. If it was predictable everyone would do it. You may also notice that traders take a big cut for themselves when large profits are made but don't take a pay cut when prices fall, they still take their basic percentage. So it is clear that top traders would lose a lot of money if prices were stable. The more ups and downs the more profit they can skim off for themselves. Because they have "high speed trading" made possible by special electronics and computer systems and being located closer to the trading floors they can get in ahead of the trend and buy and sell at almost the same time just taking a small percentage profit for themselves with every trade.

The only way ordinary investors can make a profit is to follow longer term trends such as political events and sectors or individual companies doing well. A good time to buy is when there's some disaster such as a new war. This happens every couple of years so you don't have to wait long!

the stock market is gambling.

how can you provide something opposite from what it is...