OP here.
The advice given to my original question has been great and very helpful. As originally stated and reiterated. I'm not interested in passive investing. I'm not saying it is wrong to use that method, just that I don't want to go down that road for my own personal reasons. ...
Can you explain those 'personal reasons'? It's hard to know how to respond helpfully w/o knowing what your goals/restrictions are.
For an investment, the only reasons I can see for one strategy over another is to balance potential reward versus potential risk/volatility. Is there something else?
For any decision/strategy in life, if we are serious, we always ask "compared to what?" If I want a car with good mpg, I just don't say "I like this number, I'm not going to compare it to anything else".
... Unfortunately, as is often the case those with alternatives to the passive route are shouted down and insulted, much to the detriment of those who want to learn about the alternative strategies.
Rental real estate is another area often shouted down as being stupid, but many have made and continue to make great returns in that semi-passive activity.
...
I think you are overstating it. I haven't seen anyone come out and say land-lording or stock picking is stupid, or are shouted down. But people do challenge these claims, and sometimes the answers are rather convoluted or diversionary and defensive.
... I was ASKED the question if I find stock pickers cannot beat passive index investing relevant. My original post was only to the OP in actually answering the question he proposed. Once you become a passive index investor every single person has their own personal index they compare to, and that is not relevant to how I am investing, .....
Sorry, I'm lost on that response. The passive investors here almost always refer to the handful of big, broad-based passive index funds. Things like VTI, BND, etc. It has nothing to do with X million index funds on the market, many of which I assume are sector funds. Not relevant at all to most of us.
... As Warren Buffet himself says "Over the years, I've often been asked for investment advice, and in the process of answering I've learned a good deal about human behavior. My regular recommendation has been a low-cost S&P 500 index fund," Buffett wrote.
"To their credit, my friends who possess only modest means have usually followed my suggestion. I believe, however, that none of the mega-rich individuals, institutions or pension funds has followed that same advice when I've given it to them." ...
And how have Buffet's friends done with that approach? Have the beat an equivalent AA passive approach?
... I have frequently posted my ideas here and almost always on the STOCK PICKING FORUM, yet I constantly see references to Fama or EFH on indexing posted to those threads and how this is not possible or how it is a bad strategy, why do I want to go bankrupt.
I never go to passive investing threads and speak negatively to individuals who invest this way, yet apparently passive investors, who cannot possible understand why they are investing other than stocks always go up and are the best solution, feel they are vastly superior in investing style and feel a need to denigrate anyone that does not follow that advice. That too is irrelevant.
Indeed perhaps the entire reason for a stock picking forum on this website only exists so passive investors can insult active investors and this website is not relevant.
Has anyone here seriously told you you will go bankrupt with stock picking? I think some of you get overly-sensitive to honest, meaningful challenges, and start imagining things.
But if you are not willing to measure against a passive approach, what's the point? It makes it look like you have something to hide. We are all here to learn (hopefully). If I see a stock picking approach that looks like a winner, I'm interested. But like I said before, it needs context, it needs a comparison to other, easily implemented approaches.
Is that unreasonable?
-ERD50
You must have missed this one:
