“In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”

― Benjamin Graham

This makes it completely clear that almost anytime you're trading, it's a gamble. To differntiate and make it an investment, you need to have the conviction that it'll go up in the long run, and the fortitude to stick with it when, not if, it drops in the short term.

These 0DTEs take the gambling to a whole 'nother level. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mind this at all, because it has always been the case that fools and their money get separated easily. The problem is that it distorts the market.

One silver lining is that when the market gets distorted, investors willing to ride out the short term volatility get to buy in at otherwise unlikely low price points and sell at otherwise unlikely high prices.