Some stock's prices don't fluctuate widely - Is it an advantages?
Oracle specifically is paying a dividend with a current yield of about 1.4% annually and has appreciated nearly 50% over the last 5 years.  Granted, the past doesn't guarantee the future but the company has paid a pretty steady dividend since 2009.  If you're buying as part of an employee program you would presumably be holding the shares for a long time and the daily and even monthly movements aren't terribly relevant to a long term holding period. Additionally, you may be able to buy the shares at a discount to the market price as part of your employee program.  You probably also won't pay any transaction fee. I don't think you are reading the stock chart right.  ORCL has a beta of 1.12 which means it has more volatility than the market as a whole.  See image below for a fairly wild stock chart for a year.   I would not truly consider ESPP participation investing, unless you intend to buy and hold the stock.  If you intend to sell the stock soon after you are able, it is more speculation.  ESPP's are okay based upon the terms.  If the stock was a constant price, and you could sell right away, then an ESPP plan would be easy money.  Often, employees are often given a 15% discount to purchase the stock.  If you can sell it before any price drop, then you are guaranteed to make 15% on the money invested minus any commissions.   Some employers make ESPP participants hold the stock for a year.  This makes such a plan less of a value.  The reasons are the stock can drop in price during that time, you could need the money, or (in the best case) your money is tied up longer making the ROI less. The reasons people invest in stock are varied and is far to much to discuss in a single post.  Some of your colleagues are using the ESPP solely to earn the discount in their money. Apart from making money from the price difference, some stocks also give dividends, or bonus issues. For long term investors whom are looking for steady income, they may be more interested with the dividend pay-out instead of the capital-appreciation. What is your investment goal?  Many investors buy for the long haul, not short-term gain.  If you're looking for long-term gain then daily fluctuations should be of no concern to you.  If you want to day-trade and time the market (buy low and sell high with a short holding period) then yes less volatile stock can be less profitable, but they also carry less risk.  In that case, though, transaction fees have more of an impact, and you usually have to trade in larger quantities to reduce the impact of transaction fees.
"The stock market is not a zero-sum game.  Some parts are (forex, some option trading), but plain old stock trading is not zero sum. That is to say, if you were to invest ""at random"", you would on average make money.  That's because the market as a whole makes money - it goes up over time (6-10% annually, averaged over time).  That's because you're not just gambling when you buy a stock; you're actually contributing money to a company (directly or indirectly), which it uses to fund activities that (on average) make money.  When you buy Caterpillar stock, you're indirectly funding Caterpillar building tractors, which they then sell for a profit, and thus your stock appreciates in value.  While not every company makes a profit, and thus not every stock appreciates in true value, the average one does. To some extent, buying index funds is pretty close to ""investing at random"".  It has a far lower risk quotient, of course, since you're not buying a few stocks at random but instead are buying all stocks in an index; but buying stocks from the S&P 500 at random would on average give the same return as VOO (with way more volatility). So for one, you definitely could do worse than 50/50; if you simply sold the market short (sold random stocks short), you would lose money over time on average, above and beyond the transaction cost, since the market will go up over time on average. Secondly, there is the consideration of limited and unlimited gains or losses. Some trades, specifically some option trades, have limited potential gains, and unlimited potential losses. Take for example, a simple call option.  If you sell a naked call option - meaning you sell a call option but don't own the stock - for $100, at a strike price of $20, for 100 shares, you make money as long as the price of that stock is under $21.  You have a potential to make $100, because that's what you sold it for; if the price is under $20, it's not exercised, and you just get that $100, free.   But, on the other hand, if the stock goes up, you could potentially be out any amount of money.  If the stock trades at $24, you're out $400-100 = $300, right?  (Plus transaction costs.)   But what if it trades at $60?  Or $100?  Or $10000?  You're still out 100 * that amount, so in the latter case, $1 million.  It's not likely to trade at that point, but it could. If you were to trade ""at random"", you'd probably run into one of those types of situations.  That's because there are lots of potential trades out there that nobody expects anyone to take - but that doesn't mean that people wouldn't be happy to take your money if you offered it to them.   That's the reason your 16.66 vs 83.33 argument is faulty:  you're absolutely right that if there were a consistently losing line, that the consistently winning line would exist, but that requires someone that is willing to take the losing line.  Trades require two actors, one on each side; if you're willing to be the patsy, there's always someone happy to take advantage of you, but you might not get a patsy." I agree that high volatility just means the underlying stock price fluctuates more, and it does not imply if the stock is going up or down. But a high volatility in the price of an underlying also means that there is a higher chance that the underlying price could reach extreme prices (albeit in either direction). However, if you purchased a call option then if the underlying price reached an extremely high value, then you will be richly rewarded. But if the underlying price reached an extremely low value, you won't lose any more than the initial premium that you paid. There is no additional risk on your side, it's capped to the premium that you paid for the call option. It's this asymmetric outcome (Heads - I win, Tails - I don't lose) combined with high volatility that means that call options will increase in value when the underlying price becomes more volatile. If the optionality wasn't there then the price wouldn't be related to the volatility of the underlying. But that would be called a Future or a Forward :-) "This is a complicated subject, because professional traders don't rely on brokers for stock quotes.  They have access to market data using Level II terminals, which show them all of the prices (buy and sell) for a given stock.   Every publicly traded stock (at least in the U.S.) relies on firms called ""market makers"".  Market makers are the ones who ultimately actually buy and sell the shares of companies, making their money on the difference between what they bought the stock at and what they can sell it for.  Sometimes those margins can be in hundreds of a cent per share, but if you trade enough shares...well, it adds up. The most widely traded stocks (Apple, Microsoft, BP, etc) may have hundreds of market makers who are willing to handle share trades.  Each market maker sets their own price on what they'll pay (the ""bid"") to buy someone's stock who wants to sell and what they'll sell (the ""ask"") that share for to someone who wants to buy it.   When a market maker wants to be competitive, he may price his bid/ask pretty aggressively, because automated trading systems are designed to seek out the best bid/ask prices for their trade executions.  As such, you might get a huge chunk of market makers in a popular stock to all set their prices almost identically to one another.  Other market makers who aren't as enthusiastic will set less competitive prices, so they don't get much (maybe no) business.  In any case, what you see when you pull up a stock quote is called the ""best bid/ask"" price.  In other words, you're seeing the highest price a market maker will pay to buy that stock, and the lowest price that a market maker will sell that stock.  You may get a best bid from one market maker and a best ask from a different one.  In any case, consumers must be given best bid/ask prices. Market makers actually control the prices of shares.  They can see what's out there in terms of what people want to buy or sell, and they modify their prices accordingly.  If they see a bunch of sell orders coming into the system, they'll start dropping prices, and if people are in a buying mood then they'll raise prices. Market makers can actually ignore requests for trades (whether buy or sell) if they choose to, and sometimes they do, which is why a limit order (a request to buy/sell a stock at a specific price, regardless of its current actual price) that someone places may go unfilled and die at the end of the trading session.  No market maker is willing to fill the order. Nowadays, these systems are largely automated, so they operate according to complex rules defined by their owners.  Very few trades actually involve human intervention, because people can't digest the information at a fast enough pace to keep up with automated platforms. So that's the basics of how share prices work.  I hope this answered your question without being too confusing! Good luck!" Yes, from the point-of-view to the end speculator/investor in stocks, it is ludicrous to take on liabilities when you don't have to.  That's why single-stock options are far more liquid than single-stock futures. However, if you are a farmer with a huge mortgage depending upon the chaos of agricultural markets which are extremely volatile, a different structure might appeal to you.  You could long your inputs while shorting your outputs, locking in a profit.  That profit is probably lower than what one could expect over the long run without hedging, but it will surely be less volatile. Here's where the advantage of futures come in for that kind of structure: the margin on the longs and shorts can offset each other, forcing the farmer to have to put up much less of one's own money to hedge.  With options, this is not the case. Also, the gross margin between the inputs rarely fluctuate to an unmanageable degree, so if your shorts rise faster than your longs, you'll only have to post margin in the amount of the change in the net of the longs and shorts. This is why while options on commodities exist to satisfy speculators, futures are the most liquid. Can't totally agree with that. Volatility trading is just one trading type of many. In my opinion it doesn't depend on whether you are a professional trader or not.  As you might have heard, retail traders are said to create 'noise' on the market, mainly due to the fact that they aren't professional in their majority. So, I would assume, if an average retail trader decided to trade volatility he would create as much noise as if would have been betting on stock directions. Basically, most types of trading would require a considerable amount of effort spent on fundamental analysis of the underlying be it volatility or directional trading. Arbitrage trading would be an exception here, I guess. However, volatility trading relies more on trader's subjective expectations about future deviations, whereas trading stock directions requires deeper research of the underlying. Is it a drawback or an advantage? I.d.k. On the other hand-side volatility trading strategies cover both upward and downward movements, but you can set similar hedging strategies when going short or long on stocks, isn't it? To summarise, I think it is a matter of preference. Imagine yourself going long on S&P500 since 2009. Do you think there are many volatility traders who have outperformed that? It's the buying and selling of the stock that causes the fluctuation in prices, not the news. People buy and sell all the time, and not just for newsworthy reasons.  They may have to send a child to college, or fix a roof, etc.  Or they may be technical traders looking for signals.  All kinds of reasons. "All else being equal, you should look for more volatile (riskier) stocks. Technically, it was all time value - the entire value of an ""out of the money"" option is time value.   What's confusing is that time value is affected by numerous variables, only one of which is time. The reason volatility is the one to look at is that all the rest are likely already intuitive to you, or are too minor an influence to worry about: Current risk-free interest rates and a stock's dividend payout during the life of the option affect the value of the call, but are usually minor infulences.   (Higher interest rates makes call values higher, and higher dividend yield makes call values lower.) Longer time to expiration will increase the value of the call, but you're pretty likely already focused on that. The strike price's proximity to the current price affects the call's value - agreeing to sell a stock 5% above current levels will pay more than agreeing to sell it 10% above current levels - but again, this is likely obvious to you. Volatility, or the percent by which the stock is likely to move up or down on a given day, is almost certainly the variable that's not already obvious. Stocks that jump all over the place have higher volatility than those that move more predictably.     The reason that options (calls and puts) cost more on higher volatility names is that options' payout is asymmetrical.  In the case of calls, the option holder gets all the upside, but none of the downside, other than what they paid for the opotion.     If one stock goes up or down $5 every day, and another goes up or down $20 every day and you could pay some fixed amount to get that stock's upside, but not have any exposure to its downside, other than that fixed amount, you'd pay more for the one that pays you $20 or $0 than you would for the one that pays you $5 or $0.    That's why higher volatility (meaning larger daily moves) makes optimum prices higher." "No, there are neither advantages nor disadvantages. I'll take on this question from an accounting standpoint.   Financial statements, the tools at which the market determines (amongst other things) the value of a stock, are converted at year end to the home currency (see 1.1.3).If Company A has revenue of 100,000 USD and the conversion to EUR is .89, revenue in the European market will be reported as 89,000 EUR. These valuations, along with ratios, analysis, and ""expert"" opinions determine if a person should own shares in Company A.  Now, if we're talking about comparing markets this is a entirely different question.  Example:  Should I buy stock of Company A, who is in the American market (as an European)?  Should I buy stock of Company B, who is in the European market (as an American)? I would recommend this as additional level of diversification of your portfolio to inlcude possible large inflation of either the currency. The possible gains of this foreign exchange may be greater if one or the other currency becomes weak."