God forbid we participants in the stock market evaluate a business before investing in it, or do any sort of work to get the return we're promised.

I, for one, much prefer to earn a 9% return without expending any effort or thought at all.

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throwaway85825 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For most people their talent and expertise does not involve investing. That's why pensions and 401ks exist and why S&P/nasdaq have rules to protect the public.

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bryananderson 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You may wish it were not so, you may find it inelegant and infuriating and unfair, but it is a fact that retail investors nearly all underperform the market over a long enough time horizon. Maybe you are built different but for most of us it is very rational to take the market return for “free”.

	▲	socialcommenter 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Do understand, though, that market return will struggle to achieve 9% for the coming decades. A 9% annualised return would put the US stock market at 50% of world GDP in 10 years (edit: 20) and something like 90% of world GDP in 30 years (edit: 50 years). Cost of goods, and your customer's money, both have to come out of global GDP too. (The current value of around 25% of global GDP doesn't even include the 1.75 trillion SpaceX which alone would be another almost 1%...) ETF expense ratios are small but still mean retail will underperform anyway. It's an unfortunate situation all around.