See: Speculation.
Everyone who buys a state lottery ticket is one of these. They're rolling a 20 on a wing and a prayer, believing that it's their turn in line to make it to the Big Time.
Many companies are formed with analogous odds of success. Wild cat oil drilling is sorta one of them, albeit with much better odds. Or at least...much less awful odds. Same deal with oh so many iTunes apps made with love, only to be ignored by the masses. But, every now and then, something big breaks, and 14 million downloads of Pin the Vulgar Sign On Your Ex later, some apps-building speculator wins big.
Related or Semi-related Video
![Finance: What is speculation?](https://media1.shmoop.com/video/thumbnails/COURSE.FINANCE.1059_770x433.jpg)
Finance: What is speculation?6 Views
Finance a la shmoop what is speculation? wild bets crazy dreams invested upon the [Man placing bet and woman dreaming about money]
state lottery betting the ranch on red
drilling randomly on street corners hoping to find oil you don't want to do
that all right that's speculation the opposite of speculation in a sense is
well just real investing that is doing research on a company or an industry
finding the megatrend it feeds into and doing the math on its earnings and [Man completing math work]
realizing that the company will in fact in two years earn more like five bucks a
share rather than three bucks a share that well everyone on Wall Street ie the
stock brokers are publishing and predicting speculation is just kind of
throwing money at things on a wing and a prayer and you know hoping for that
miracle yeah but doesn't usually happen so just be an investor