Some people think that these two are the same, but the one most obvious difference from the perspective of your finances it this - most medium to large publicly listed companies are not going to go bust overnight. There are rare exceptions, where the shareprice goes into free fall and you lose everything, but that is very uncommon. If you look at sports betting for example, you might place a coin flip type 50/50 bet with the hope of doubling your money, however if you lose it wipes out your original stake completely. If you buy shares in a company, after a lot of research, there is the potential for it to double up in value (over a longer period usually) but even if it doesn't you can cash out and may only lose 10% or 30% or maybe more of your original stake.