What really reinforced this for me was learning to what lengths some hedge funds are willing to go to get an edge. Case in point: buying GIS data on major retailer's parking lots to get a feel for holiday earnings. No retail investor is ever going to be able to match that kind of Intel, ever.
I buy index funds and leave the majority of my money there but allow myself to make small bets on trends in the market that I think will play over long periods. Sometimes it works, like buying lithium stocks in the 2010s and other times it sucks and doesn't, like buying solar stocks in the 2010s and watching the entire industry get shredded to pieces in the last 5 years.
Small speculators do have an advantage in that the market is much more liquid for them. If your position is $1k you can buy and sell without moving the market noticeably. If it's $1bn, not so much.
yeah vast majority is just index funds but I just had to prove to myself than I'm an idiot, so there's a separate account with a tiny bit of money in it that I get to play with. Sometimes you buy GME, sometimes you buy SVB.
I buy index funds and leave the majority of my money there but allow myself to make small bets on trends in the market that I think will play over long periods. Sometimes it works, like buying lithium stocks in the 2010s and other times it sucks and doesn't, like buying solar stocks in the 2010s and watching the entire industry get shredded to pieces in the last 5 years.