Short answer: No.

Longer answer: First, speculation is not evil because there is no way not to speculate, and something that cannot be avoided cannot be evil. Second, speculation is not evil because it is essential for markets to function.

Long answer:

Before I can show that speculation is not evil, I need to clarify my statement: The point I am going to make is that speculation as such is not evil. My statement is not that it was impossible to be evil speculating. While making and selling bread is obviously not evil as such, you can certainly be evil making and selling bread. You can fail to observe hygienic rules and thus harm your customers. The same is true for speculation: While, as we will see, speculation as such is not evil, you can certainly be evil speculating. You could buy all the water in the region and then extort huge sums of money from people dying of thirst.

Many reasons could be given why speculating is not an evil activity. We will concentrate on two of the most obvious reasons: The fact that there is no way to avoid speculating, which I discuss in greater detail in another posting, and the fact that any market needs speculation to function.

At any time you have a certain set of possessions, such as your clothes, tools, food, money, maybe a car, maybe a home, maybe gold, maybe cryptos, and so on. And at any time you decide to trade or not to trade some or all of these things for other things whose possession might be more advantageous for you. Whenever you decide not to trade something you own for something else, you speculate that the thing you own will keep its value or even increase in value or be otherwise useful to you.

The most obvious case is owning vs. not owning "normal money", also known as "fiat money". At any time you decide, actively or passively, to keep your money or to invest it in something. If you do not invest it, you speculate that your money will keep or increase its value. (This is most probably wrong, as virtually all fiat currencies have inflation.) If you invest it in something else, you speculate that this something else will keep or increase its value. Either way, you speculate. How can speculating be evil, when there is no way to avoid it?

If we take "speculation" in a wide sense, then anything we do in life is based on speculation. Virtually all our decisions are decisions under uncertainty, i.e. we never really know if we should do A, B or C. We speculate.

In this respect economic activity is just like any other activity: Our economic decisions are always speculative. Hence, to be economically active is to speculate, at least in the wider sense of this word.

But does economic activity also necessarily involve speculation in the narrower sense, i.e. financial speculation?

Yes, this is obviously the case. By definition, economic activity involves money, or, more generally, payments. To be economically active means to provide goods, such as physical things (e.g. refrigerators), abstract things (e.g. rights) or services (e.g. legal advice) for payment. In other words, economic activity necessarily involves prices. The goods one offers have a certain price. And the things one needs to provide the goods, such as physical parts, services, etc. also have a price. That means that whenever we are economically active, we need to decide at which prices we are willing to buy and at which prices we are willing to sell. How do we know the correct prices?

We don't. Nobody knows what a "correct" price is. All we can do is bargain and speculate.

When it comes to prices, there are basically two situations: Either we buy or sell goods "on the market" or we buy or sell directly from or to another party. In the first case we need to decide if the current market price for a given good is acceptable for us. In the second case we need to decide if the other party's offer is acceptable for us. In addition, we might also try to change the other party's opinion on the correct price, a process known as bargaining. But in either case we never really know if a price is advantageous for us. When we buy a service for our business, such as legal advice, we do not really know if it will pay off. When we exchange euros for gold (in other words, when we sell euros and buy gold), we never really know if this will be advantageous for us. The price of gold may drop like a stone the very next day. Hence, every act of buying or selling is an act of speculation.

And, obviously, it is these acts of speculation of the market participants that determine the prices of goods. Without the market participants speculating, we would not know the price of anything.

But, you might object, the state might determine the prices of goods. The state could do so in a really just manner, e.g. by making goods that everybody needs, such as water and food, really cheap.

This has been tried many times and it never worked out. The state would also have to speculate when determining the prices of goods and it would have to be an expert in every possible domain where prices exist, such as in the domain of legal advice, in the domain of producing microchips, in the domain of producing corn, and so on. Also, the state would have to know the current supply and demand of every good.

But, you might object, although it might be necessary to speculate if one really needs a certain good, such as copper, for making other goods, can it be o.k. to simply speculate to enrich oneself?

Suppose you produce software and your business is in the EU, but you also need U.S. dollars, British pounds and Japanese yen to buy and sell stuff and services in other countries. Then what you really want is a huge number of people trying to enrich themselves by buying and selling currencies, such as euros, U.S. dollars, and so on. Why? Because all of this speculation provides liquidity. When there is a lot of liquidity in the currency market, i.e. when a lot of people buy and sell currencies, then there will always be a buyer of euros and a seller of U.S. dollars, when you happen to need to change your euros to U.S. dollars. A lot of speculation (and, hence, liquidity) also means that the brokers' fees for buying and selling are low. The more something is traded, the lower the cost of trading. Speculators in the narrower sense of the word, i.e. those who only speculate to enrich themselves are just like any other trader: They hold certain goods, such as currencies, gold, cryptos, and so on, and buy or sell them at certain prices. The more of these speculators there are, the better for the other market participants.

To sum up, speculation is not evil, because we cannot not speculate, and because it is needed for markets to work. The huge number of individual acts of speculation that take place at every microsecond is what determines a good's price on the market. And without prices there is no economy and, hence, no wealth.