trading is risky, but way more controlled than you would have control over gambling, Basically, those you would see complain about trading being as gambling are these categories of traders who might have in one way or the other had gambled before, and it didn't work out for them or maybe currently are into gambling but has come into the trading world with a gambling mindset, where you have them gambling the market and calling it trading, lol.
Trading is the same as gambling and there is no two ways about it, though we no that they work differently but the major aspects we are all looking at is the risks and uncertainty they both have in common that's why we classified trading to be on the same category with gambling, perhaps is because of the passion you either have for gambling or trading that makes you feel they are not the same, so have it in mind that anything that involves you risking your money for a higher return is indirectly considered to be gambling since the chances of making it is low.
To a great degree, you are right that trading is same as gambling because both of them involve exposing the capital to a very big risk that can damage it completely. It even worsen by those using leverage to trade and somewhat the same as gambling. Although we might argue that trading requires huge technical knowledge to scale through and when acquired can offer some kind of advantage, the truth us that knowledge is not enough to succeed in trading because the market works more on human psychology than on some technical knowledge.
Due to the complex nature if trading, it is safer to concentrate on buying and holding Bitcoin, a practice that have produced more successful people than trading. It is easy to implement, does not require much technical and advanced knowledge, just the capital and how to go about it and the bulk of the job would be reduced to finding a safe way of storing the coins. This is highly recommended for those who does not want to beat up themselves for the direction the market took which is not their direction after they have invested so much time and resource in analysing and executing their trades.