I got my roommate into it. He used to waste his money on lottery tickets. Now that's gambling. You can expect to lose 50% of your money over time. Very bad risk. The stock market is as much fun with better returns. A lot of it is psychology and studying things.
Oh, by the way, the market's went down again. Then the Fed chairmain said he thought it was overvalued, and it went down again. I was up over 20%, now I'm up a little over 3%; but 3% return in a month's time isn't bad. I expect it to go up for a while. Then if coronavirus hits again, it will crash again.
There are some stocks that are fairly solid, not much like gambling at all. I have one stock I've owned for years in my retirement account, and it pays over 10% annually in dividends. Why put your extra money in a savings account then? Two stocks I bought that kept going down were bank stocks. I don't expect either of them to do that well this year and am not expecting any dividends; but when (if) the economy rebounds, they'll rebound, make more profits and pay dividends next year maybe. When they start paying dividends again, people will want to buy them, so the price will go up; and I'll probably sell them at that point.
I bought some Kohl's stock too. Of course, their stores are closed now. They will probably show a loss and not pay any dividends this year; but they will reopen -- and I think they'll be stronger than before. Why? I think lots of smaller shops won't survive. Some other chains are in bankruptcy already -- hard to tell how many stores they'll keep when they re-organize. When people go shopping for clothes, more will go to Kohl's. They're pushing their online sales too; and they know some stores have too much floor space, so they will probably sublet space in some stores to Planet Fitness. Ha, go to the gym hoping to get thin -- and then buy clothes when you do.
I like utility stocks too. People are going to use electricity and natural gas. I bought stocks in companies that are involved in both oil and natural gas. They won't do well on the oil side this year, but I think they'll survive on the natural gas side; and I expect eventually their oil business will become profitable too.