“To me the distinction is between actually adding value and creating something as opposed to just buying and expecting to sell it at a huge profit.”
poorgradstudent, agreed that there is a difference. I was talking about the former, which I would consider “flipping” vs. “speculating” (which is what I would call the latter). One could argue that there are social benefits to “flipping”- fixing up the neighborhood eyesore, for instance. JES is right, though – “speculating” is not illegal, and similar to speculation in the stock market. Whether it’s ethical or not is an interesting question.