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Unless you can and do read financial documents and have a say at the investor relations meetings, you're more likely a trader relying on being able to sell your shares for a greater price than you bought them for, than an investor.

Let's be real. 100 shares of a billion or trillion dollar market cap company does not an investor make.

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No, if you invest you are an investor.

The amount you invest is a quantitative attribute, whether you are an "investor", or not is qualitative.

You could say that a "Professional Investor" is someone whose main income comes from investing. A "Day Trader" for instance.

I interned at a prop shop and all the professional traders there very explicitly did not consider themselves investors, they were day traders. The distinction was mostly a matter of time horizon, almost no one held positions overnight. The goal was explicitly to make money trading on price action, not to evaluate which companies or industries would successfully allocate capital over the long term.

I can appreciate that nuance. If you just day-trade it's more like gambling, even though the odds may be better than in Las Vegas.

Reading financial documents will only give you an illusion that you have some greater chance of success at stock picking.

Amateur investors only buy index funds, anything else is speculation.

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