Well from a Arizona State University study of 64,000 globally listed shares between 1990-2020, only 48.2% generated positive returns (ie less than half!).
The reason for the relatively poor performance, was that the bulk of the gains on the benchmark indices came from only a handful of companies (eg #Tesla, #Apple, etc).
Meaning either investors should buy a cheap EFT tracker and hopefully produce 8% pa after capturing the over-sized returns from these few 'super-stocks'.
Or alternatively, spend a ton of time doing detailed research - in order to select & monitor specific companies, industries & economies with the aim of adding an 'Alpha' overlay.
Personally I attempt to do the latter - yet equally endure a great deal of idiosyncratic risk & portfolio volatility. NOT for the feint hearted.
