Someone will always beat the market, because that's what we're looking for.
I think it was on "Thinking Fast and Slow" that I read it's pointless to analyze the stock market winners, since it's a random process. Imagine there are 30 million entities that own stocks in the US - individual, companies, funds, etc... If on a given year half of them did better than average (with some rounding liberty):
1st year: 15M better than average
2nd year: 7.5M better than average
3: 3.25M
4: 1.6M
5: 800k
6: 400k
7: 200k
8: 100k
9: 50k
10: 25k
And so on... after 20 years, probably 25 traders will have beaten the market for 20 years straight. Next year, same thing, 25 traders will have beaten the market, and so on. In the US, there's always someone who has beaten the market over the last few decades - there's nothing special about them. Randomly picking stocks would give you the same end result. But since we're storytellers, we build an explanation and go with it.
I think it was on "Thinking Fast and Slow" that I read it's pointless to analyze the stock market winners, since it's a random process. Imagine there are 30 million entities that own stocks in the US - individual, companies, funds, etc... If on a given year half of them did better than average (with some rounding liberty):
And so on... after 20 years, probably 25 traders will have beaten the market for 20 years straight. Next year, same thing, 25 traders will have beaten the market, and so on. In the US, there's always someone who has beaten the market over the last few decades - there's nothing special about them. Randomly picking stocks would give you the same end result. But since we're storytellers, we build an explanation and go with it.