In investing, being unique is easy; being right is hard. Most people think that to beat the market, they just need to do something the index isn't doing. Be contrarian. Like picking ten high-growth tech stocks, trading options, or timing crypto cycles.
The market is an aggregate of millions of smart participants. If you deviate from the index, you are taking on uncompensated risk.
Unless you have informational asymmetry (knowing something others don't) or analytical asymmetry (processing the same data better) or behavioral asymmetry (holding period professionals can't replicate), being different usually just means you've found a unique way to underperform.
Markets are best played for asymmetric returns i.e. you play for the bigger gains of 100% or more in a stock. Whether you get it or not is not important. What’s important is if your strategy allows for such returns.
One winner can fund several losers.
A few winners make up a life time of returns, rest is just staying in the game.
If you study them,this is the path taken by wealthiest investors.
@rustapharian Does this mean the govt is playing safe by buying gold but asking its citizens not to buy gold and hence giving the citizens the responsibility to save rupees?
Best is to diversify portfolio across 2-3 asset classes 50-50 equity debt rebalanced quarterly
Or 50-30-20 equity debt gold. Or simply multi asset funds.