Speculation
Wild bets. Crazy dreams invested. The state Lottery. Betting the ranch on red 17. Drilling randomly on street corners hoping to find oil. Yeah, don’t wanna do that.
The opposite of speculation, in a sense, is real investing, that is, doing research on a company or an industry, finding the megatrend it feeds into and doing the math on its earnings and realizing that the company will in 2 years earn more like 5 bucks a share rather than the 3 bucks a share that everyone on the street, i.e., the stockbrokers, are publishing and predicting.
Speculation is just kinda throwing money at things and on a wing and a prayer, hoping for a miracle.