>It's not necessarily the case that they return more, except to
>insiders. I think the statistics of who wins and who loses at stocks
>are not all that impressive. A friend told me once that 90% of those
>who invest in stocks lose money, but I find it hard to believe it's
>that bad.
That may be a twisting of the classic factoid that 80% of futures traders lose money. I don't think it's that bad.
Someone who, say, buys a Vanugard S&P index fund and holds it over 30 or 40 years is going to make a market return less a 0.1% management fee (which doesn't compound to all that much actually). But most people don't do that - they try to trade the market. Surveys show that actual retail investors earn returns about half the market average, which compounds to a lot. Over 30 years, such an "average" investor would earn only 27% as much as the buy-and-holder; over 40, just 21% as much.
Doug