"Exposure to stocks" is not the problem. Thinking you know which stocks to pick is the problem. Robots and random chance are better than human intuition, partly because of institutional manipulation of markets.
I disagree with the proposition that it is impossible to pick good companies. Anyone with half a brain could have invested in AMD as Zen 1 and Zen 2 came out, and the writing was on the wall for Intel. Same goes for other industries, if you are willing to do your homework and manage your risk.
It's easy to invest in a single stock that goes up in the longest bull market in US history.
It is much harder to beat the market, especially in a bear market.
The core tenet of investing is that you make a bet that other people see as risky. We have enormous amounts of research that active investing at an individual level can no longer beat the market in the face of widespread insider trading at the investor level, HFT, etc.
You need asymmetrical information to beat the market, and individuals just can't get it.
> It is much harder to beat the market, especially in a bear market.
This is the crux of the Warren Buffet vs Hedge Fund bet, and why it failed. Buffet quite possibly realized that a new bull market was about to begin, and the market would beat a hedge fund. When the bull market ends though, let's see if hedge funds don't start beating the market with their long-short-cash strategy.
I am nowhere near hedge fund territory, but do have some qualms about whether this bull market will just grow to the sky or have a big reset sometime quite soon, quite possibly reaching 6000 on the S&P before that.
Also, I find the efficient market hypothesis quite bullshit, so there's that.
The companies and corporations that sell investment vehicles and services try to "make it cool/funny" to not understand money and that "rich people have their wealth managed for them", a bunch of bologne!
That being said, it's not simple, and people need to be serious about investing, it's very easy to get burned without the proper education/patience