The paper started off with the theme that that while investing in equities makes sense, the obstacles facing individual stock pickers are formidable. According to Bessembinder, individual stocks resemble lottery tickets. Bessembinder also claimed that 58% of all individual stocks since 1926 have failed to outperform one-month Treasury bills over their lifetimes. You can take advantage of short-term price dislocation versus a company's value, or use long-term compounding to potentially achieve market outperformance. There is no debating that statistically the stock market has a positive skew – meaning, a relatively small number of outliers like Apple have such great returns that they pull up the average.

Source: The Herald April 25, 2021 10:41 UTC