Observing the investing behavior of my parents while I was growing up, I came to think that investing in anything other than a certificate of deposit (CD) was too risky. In fact, during my youthful years, I embraced the notion that people who invested in the stock market were gambling. 

Later on, it occurred to me that all publicly-traded corporations are owned my stockholders. If the corporations had no stockholders, there would be no corporations. This would mean the absence of jobs and collapse of the economy. Well, if investing in stocks is actually gambling, it would not take long before corporations would cease to exist because there would be fewer and fewer people who would be willing to gamble away their hard-earned money.

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