[Gnolfo]

You can't reliably beat the market. People who say they can are saying so out of some combination of:

  1) lying (to others and/or themselves as well)
  2) cheating (insider trading, boiler rooms, etc) 
  3) drawing conclusions from too small of a sample size

Also I also disagree with the statement to not buy individual stocks because others know more than you. It might be true even, it doesn't matter, because it's not the reasons not to buy individual stocks for retirement.

You don't buy individual stocks for retirement because your risk exposure is a lot higher compared to indexes and just riding the market (x10 for every dollar spent like this before taking maximum advantage of tax deferred retirement options).

If you have enough money that you are able and willing to lose some % of it for the chance of better gains, then buy individual stocks with that money (or play in derivatives if you're into stronger risk-seeking behavior). If you are trying to avoid living off of cat food in your winter years, it is far smarter to surrender the marginal chance for larger gains for a very highly likely chance at modest gains. If you don't have a retirement planned out, then every dollar you get towards it needs to be spent with the retirement goal in mind, and for that goal, the risk profile of individual stocks, historically, is prohibitively high.