patrick.net

John Bogle studied the stock market returns and found that statistically it's likely (not certain) that trying to pick stocks is largely a waste of time.
You need some luck picking a money manager who can pick more winners than the average stock market return.
Some managers seem to have a good method and have beaten the indeces.
The stock market is an auction and can therefore be fickle.

If you think about it for a minute, in theory every stock is at its proper price and there is no reason to choose one over another.

In reality, many stocks are mispriced, but the market doesn't know it yet.

There is always an asymmetry in information.

Look at Pelosi's returns on her investments.

Look at Thiel's $5 billion Roth IRA.

If you don't have inside information or if you cannot set the price, you are simply gambling.

So they sold before the rebound, but did they buy something that is worth more than the volatile stock they sold?

Yeah, the stock market is the worst place to put your money - except for every other option.

I posit the following absolutes w.r.t. equities :

1) I cannot pick stocks.
2) Insider info and sheer luck trumps fundamental analysis
3) A passive index comprised of profitable companies will likely produce returns in excess of the rate of inflation over time
4) I'm too lazy to work for my money and prefer to let it do the work instead (hence market over real property investments)

Misc says

There is always an asymmetry in information.

Look at Pelosi's returns on her investments.

Look at Thiel's $5 billion Roth IRA.

If you don't have inside information or if you cannot set the price, you are simply gambling.

Right. But the people in the OP are the ones we presume to be among the insiders, no?

Over time, the compounding effect of dividends makes you pretty rich; most people focus on the capital appreciation of the stock price, but dividends can really make you some money.
The AAPL dividend is not considered high so I have more capital gains in my AAPL shares. But, they give me shares for free every 3 months, and those shares will also earn dividends, and so on.
The stock market as a whole (W5000 index) has a dividend yield of about 1.7%
So, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund doesn't pay me much of a dividend, and it does just once per year in December. If you had a million bucks in it, the dividend would therefore only be about $17,000 in December (it would also normally distribute some capital gains)
But higher dividends can be found and you can buy a fund like SCHD which has a higher yield and extremely low fees.
Other funds like JEPI use a type of covered call options on the dividend stocks they buy; today's yield of JEPI is 11% but this will likely go down soon enough.
I think picking stocks is a lot of fun, but may be a waste of time too.
On the other hand, it's more productive than looking at Facebook or porn, YouTube, etc.