[MrBingley]

> life-changing generational wealth

By that measure, the people who had their life savings in FTX (and Celsius and Luna before that) have certainly succeeded.

Investing in total-market index funds is the single best strategy for the average investor. (In fact it's so good there's a proof! [1]) If you invested $10000 in the total US market in 1992 (30 years ago) and never touched it again, your inflation-adjusted balance today would be $72452 [2]. That's an insane 7x of real growth that requires absolutely no effort on your part. Even if you did a more conservative mix of 60% stock and 40% bond (VBMFX) you would have 4.5x real growth.

[1] https://web.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/art/active/active.htm

[2] https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio

[boppo1]

Does that study account for stocks that have dropped out of the index? Re-balancing fees? What about LIRP/ZIRP?

[robbintt]

I haven't read this study but the listed returns account for index rebalancing.