Losing [輸] and losing [虧] (#133; Topic M)

I gave a PowerPoint presentation on "Issues related to translating Confucius's Analects into English" to a group of professionals of Chinese ancestry today at noon (it meets on the last Sunday of each month). Sitting at the same table during lunch was a past president of this organization and a fellow World Bank retiree. He mentioned that, at the time of his retirement from the WB some 20 years ago (he retired from the WB before I joined it; this lack of overlap prompted the discussion), he withdrew one-half of his pension-plan contributions and used the proceeds to buy a house. At that time, the housing market was, I presume, slow; following his son's advice, he sold the house and invested in stocks. Though he did not mention specific dates, I suspect that it was probably the time of the dom-com boom and subsequent bust. In any case, he promptly lost the entire proceeds from the sale of his house. We were conversing in Chinese; though the word he used must necessarily be translated as lost in English, the Chinese word he actually used was much more specific and revealing -- it has the connotation of a gambling loss [輸]. At first, I thought his choice of words was odd. Then, with his repeated use of that same word, I began to see the logic of his word selection. Apparently, at that time, the stock market was very volatile; it resembled more a casino than an investment institution. Though my tablemate did not give any specific number, I suspect that his loss would be at least half a million dollars. His message was sober. Though it did not affect my presentation, which followed the lunch, it did give me a lot to think about later on. At this very moment, the stock market's volatity is rather high. Though not as high as that in the 1990s, it is high enough. Is my tablemate trying to tell me something? One of my topics for discussion this noon involves a sentence in the Analects: "In any trio, one must be my teacher." Is he trying to teach me something? I need to think this through.