Is investing basically gambling? I don’t understand how to invest safely please help?

Neither are any different than EVERYTHING in life – you “gamble” with every second of every day that you will still be alive a second later (e.g I bet your fridge has food//drink in it – YOU are gambling that you will live long enough to enjoy both)

 But you take precautions to minimise that risk (such as driving more carefully than others, taking care of your health, )

Neither investing NOR gambling are basically any different – its just that you are happy to take a greater risk when you gamble than with investing

(This may sound flippant but its not meant to be )

If you learn the business, investing isn’t gambling. It might turn gambling if you have no clue on what the issue is all about. For instance, in case you’re planning to invest in a mobile/web development to have to conduct multiple research on the subject to know how to deal with it. Here are more details on the preparation steps https://agilie.com/en/blog/what-to-do-next-if-you-…

Investing does involve taking some risk, but often a quite small risk.

In general terms, investing is spending money on something that you have reason to believe will return more money after some time.

You can buy something, like gold or art or a house, that you think is underpriced and you can sell it later for more than you paid. Unless you’re an expert on evaluating the worth, this type of investment is gambling.

You can loan money to someone and collect interest. This is usually pretty safe, but there’s the possibility that they will be unable to pay you back. Government and corporate bonds are rated based on how likely they are to pay.

You can buy a house and rent it out. The risk here is that your tenants will be unable to pay as much as it costs you to maintain the house. There’s also the possibility that when you’re ready to sell, you won’t get as much as you originally paid.

Finally, you can buy corporate stock. This is partial ownership of a company and entitles you to a share of their profit. As with houses there’s the risk of the price dropping when you want to sell, or the company going out of business entirely.

To invest safely, you first need to figure out how much risk you’re willing to take. For example, don’t buy property if you need to sell it in one year because the price might go down. However for long-term savings you do need to take some risk in order to get a return that keeps up with inflation. On average the stock market goes up, and you’re collecting dividends the whole time.

The second important point is to invest in many different things that won’t all go down at the same time. Mutual funds let you buy dozens of stocks in different industries even if you don’t have a whole lot of money to invest.

tl;dr: buy FZROX

To a point. Yes

However, the risk is WAY higher of you are buying some unknow stock like a REIT that pays a dividend of 9% and has a stock price of $10 a share vs some stock like PFE, KO, KHC etc.

It is somewhat of a gamble, but in its truest sense like gambling in a casino or buying lottery tickets, it is not gambling. You understand how to evaluate how likely a companies stock will do, based on its statistics and expectations. Learn how to do this at investopedia.com. Good luck to you.

No, investing is not gambling. 

When you invest you buy and sell financial assets, such as stocks, bonds, commodities, contracts, or real estate  Some assets may also pay you while you hold them, such as dividends, interest, royalties or rent..

When you gamble you wager money on the outcome of an event without ever owning anything. 

Trading = high risk gambling

Investing = low risk gambling 

Yes, but with added uncertainty. Most forms of gambling are required to pay you a certain return, investments are not.

It is gambling, but it is calculated risk.  The higher the risk, the higher the potential to make or lose money.  The more secure an investment is, the lower the returns, but chances of losing money are low too.  For people who do not want to invest directly because they do not understand it, you can buy mutual funds from different institutions which are a collection of stocks of varying risk.  The fund managing company takes a small cut and grows it for you, making changes to the portfolio as needed.

why would you believe what people on the internet say, instead of reading a book about BASIC finance?