Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited.

Is buying a lottery ticket considered an investment? 
logically, yes. legally, no. any reasonable definition of an "investment" must include some types of gambling and insurance. lottery tickets specifically are really crappy high risk/high return investment.  obviously most people try to avoid investments with a negative average expected future value, but from a purely semantic perspective anything with a potential future value is an investment. conversely, anyone with a gambling problem should not pretend they are not gambling when making focused investments in high volatility stock options. that said, the irs taxes gains and losses differently depending on whether they are classified as "gambling", or just "crappy investing". so you will not be able to deduct your gambling losses from your earned income (unlike investment losses which can be deducted up to 3k$ per year).