I know the REFI process can be a bit of a gamble.

No more write offs of gambling losses, employee expenses, tax prep fees, investment fees, etc.529 State Education Accounts can now be used for primary and secondary schools in addition to higher education and can now also be used for religious and other private schoolsYou can no longer unwind a Roth ContributionSo many other nit-picky changes that will apply to very few folks, but will be important to get right for those to whom it does apply.

To find out, speak to the owner, neighbors or any local realtor.To the latter, I'd say this is the same gamble any local builder would take. 

Currently, 1 ton of gold goes for approximately $40,576,000 millionIf you have $40.57 million laying around that you are certain you won't have need for in 20 or 30 years, but that you cannot afford gambling with by investing in riskier or other comparatively illiquid assets, you would look to gold to solve that problem. 

But loosing money because you mistimed/misread the market or just bungled a forecast (and many PhDs are good at this), is different from loosing money because someone hid, failed to disclose or deliberately misrepresented a material fact through a fraudulent deliberate scheme of some sort.

Appreciation gamble?

Speculation is Gambling.

It becomes a crap shoot for the company, but they are gambling with the investors money.2.  

Look at it like gambling, people get caught up in the moment and only meant to spend x amount, the excitement causes them to spend more.

I don't like growth stocks (AMZN, TSLA, NFLX, FB, etc) because there is not difference between these and gambling.