Is there a hard threshold? Do high risk investments such as penny stocks qualify as gambling? Do low risk investments? Annuities? Bonds? CDs?
This comment got me wondering.
Is it more to do with the venue? Stock markets and real estate vs casinos and the lottery?
Were the MIT Blackjack Team gambling or investing?
Is this just another semantic hotdogs are sandwiches discussion or is there an agreed threshold?
Ultimately it gets to the point of, is the risk higher than the risk of money in a bank account.
Given that (at least in the us) money sitting in a checking account is 100% risk with guaranteed negative returns (over time inflation will outpace interest), there are investments that can generally be considered safer (bonds, tbills, etc) than just holding dollar bills.