All trading is gambling in its core. You can lose your investment or you can make more money. Is is the very basic of gambling.
It's a gamble and by buying a coin that doesn't have an idea if it will grow or not in the future is certainly a gamble. I'll compare it to sports bet, many sports bettors are studying first the match before it comes and that's what we call analysis before betting. The same goes with trading, whether that altcoin will grow or not we need to study it first before buying it. And other traders are just gambling it that they want to buy that altcoin because they just feel it.