[trompetenaccoun]

Everyone doesn't know how to successfully invest or there wouldn't be so many middle class and poor people. Buying and holding (a broad index tracker) seems like the best strategy for someone who doesn't know about the businesses or can't be bothered to follow the market. It's the most passive strategy.

Imo the mistake most make is they mentally compare it to themselves reading a bit online and then picking stocks based on what they feel will perform well. Of course this can only go wrong. If you're an expert in an area like the first quant traders or someone who understands startups and does angel investing, you can absolutely beat the market and people do it all the time. That's how some people get rich, you can not become truly rich by working a 9-5 office job and buying a few stocks. Unless theoretically you trade the riskiest penny stocks with leverage and magically come out on top every time like some of those WSB guys. I've yet to hear of cases where this works long term. The smartest ones know when they get lucky and stop playing, because that's pure gambling.

[bionsystem]

There are hedge funds beating markets over and over, some have been macro driven, some are equity driven, some are quant driven... Now of course it's a pareto law, only a handful out of 100 will get all the excess return and the others will stagnate or underperform indices (or even fail completely). But the same goes for building any company, most of them fail and we watch winners in awe.

[saberience]

Most hedge funds in fact DON'T beat the market though. In almost every case you would have been better to buy index funds and hold versus put your money in a hedge fund.

[bagacrap]

Correct. The true function of a hedge fund is not to beat the market over the long haul, which is generally impossible. The goal is to avoid losing huge amounts of wealth, for people who have way more money than they need. Hence the name --- you put money in there as a hedge against short term losses in equities.

[coliveira]

Most hedge funds don't beat the market, and this is widely known. Moreover, from the few that beat the market, some are involved in insider trading and other deceptive practices. From the remaining ones, a good portion can be explained by sheer luck.

[nerdponx]

I do wonder about using this same analysis to look at various funds' real returns (hedge and otherwise), in addition to the major indices in the study. I'd be curious to look at variance, downside risk during downturns, etc.

[nerdponx]

I realized that this is what https://totalrealreturns.com/ does. It seems like at least a few mutual funds do beat the market over time, e.g. FPURX: https://totalrealreturns.com/s/USDOLLAR,VTSMX,FPURX,FBGRX

[baby]

I remember reading this book pointing out that the big hedge funds that would repeatedly beating markets in the past ended up failing hard in recent years. That really nothing beats index funds.

[coliveira]

Some people will point to Warren Buffet, but he is not really a "normal" investor. Buffet only invests in a company after he talks directly to management and does a lot of analysis that is not available to normal investors. I consider him to be a legal insider trader.

[bagacrap]

I agree everyone doesn't know how to invest well. Some people even advise stock picking! :)

But the problem of some people not being rich is not simply because they can't invest well. First, obviously, not everyone can be rich. Second, most people suffer from the problem that they don't save enough, rather than that they don't invest well enough.

Yes, some people do beat the market. Obviously a lot of people are playing the lotto every day, and some win. Do they do it reliably? No. Disabuse yourself of the notion that beating the market is ever anything other than luck.