I avoid gambling, except that I’m told that not betting at all is a bad bet in itself, so I gamble a little in the stock market. Meanwhile, others seem to be addicted to it. For example, consider this Archegos business. As I understand it, the guy who did all this gambled by buying stocks on margin (which I would never do), and then when his stocks went up, instead of doing the safe thing and just selling it all for a nice profit, he bought even more stocks on margin. And then it all crashed.
This is like people who win the lottery, but then go to Vegas to gamble with it. See here and scroll down to Evelyn Adams. In fact, this Evelyn Adams actually won the lottery twice, which means that the first win didn’t quench her thirst for gambling. Incredible.
Not quite as extreme are those people who win big in the stock market or something similar, and instead of just relaxing for the rest of their lives, continue to make risky moves. This happened to John Paulson, who was one of the big winners in the housing crash that began in 2007. According to Wikipedia, he made $4 billion from that bet. You’d think that would be enough to set him up for the rest of his life, but no, he kept making trades and in 2011, he made some bad investments. Sheesh. Likewise, Michael Burry, who also won big back in 2007, has been shorting Tesla, which seems much less wise than what he did back when he shorted the housing market.
By the way, the guy with Archegos, Bill Hwang, used to be with Tiger Management, which sounds like it runs specialized services for zoos and circuses, but which was actually in finance.