I got out of the stock market just before the dot com bust. Ever since, I just see it as gambling. People invest way too much money in companies and cryptocurrency that don’t have any actual intrinsic value “right now”. It’s gambling.
Sure, stocks have always been a form of “gambling”, but there were fundamentals you could watch and drastically remove risk and, of course, to some degree, rewards. But now it’s pretty much just gambling.
I think that there has always been a gambling element in the stock market and that this is true of every market going back millennia. I think the difference now is the enhanced volatility due to mechanized, algorithmic trading.
(That said, I’ve never heard anyone complain about volatility when it has an upward bias.)
If you doubt my belief about the gambling nature of markets, I encourage you to read Edwin Lefèvre’s account of the great speculator, Jesse Livermore, entitled, “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator.” (Livermore didn’t restrict his trading to stocks, but also plunged in the commodities markets.) The wikipedia article on Livermore is fascinating, if you’re looking for a short encapsulation.)