Investment, Speculation and the Gambling Instinct Arun Ghosh THE instinct to gamble is probably as old as man can remember The Mahabharaja tells us of Yudhishthira gambling away his kingdom, and later even his wife's honour. Columbus' voyage to the Americas was a gamble. At a time when the popular belief was that the earth was as flat as a pancake, he gambled on reaching India by travelling westward, and not eastward, even though he knew India lay to the east of Spain. And of late, Oscar Morgenstern has made gambling an exercise in scientific exploration by applying to all economic activities the rigours of the theory of probability.