🧭 Introduction

Pick individual stocks or buy a broad index? With a few tech giants dominating the US market and passive funds growing, the question matters more than ever. A recent episode of the Financial Times podcast “Unhedged” discussed the results of the FT’s stock-picking game – a lesson in which investor habits hurt and which help. This is analytical research, not financial advice.

🔍 Key insights

📉 The hare: from 1st to 387th

In the game (around 13,000 players, 8–9 weeks), a player called “Woody 5.0” led by week four. After slipping to second, he began buying and selling erratically – and finished 387th. The lesson: past results should not drive today’s decisions, and overtrading hurts everyone.

📈 The tortoise: patience and fundamentals

The winner was Swapnil Ingole, a supermarket manager from England. He picked just five stocks – Microsoft, Cognizant, Accenture, Adobe and Salesforce – bought near multi-year lows when the market feared AI would hurt software companies. As those fears eased, prices recovered. Such ideas usually take a year or more to pay off – this time, timing helped.

🏦 Beating the market is rare

S&P Global: none of the top-quartile US equity funds from 2021 (except small caps) stayed in the top quartile through 2025.
Morningstar: only about a quarter of active funds beat the index over a decade.
H. Bessembinder: most individual stocks fail to beat short-term Treasury bills over their lifetimes – nearly all market gains come from a small group of companies.

📊 Is a “passive” index really passive?

A US market index now looks much like a tech fund, as the biggest companies make up a large share of it. Diversification may be lower than it seems.

📚 Recommended reading

N. N. Taleb – “Fooled by Randomness”. How we mistake luck for skill.
J. C. Bogle – “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing”. Why low costs and diversification matter.
M. Housel – “The Psychology of Money”. Why behaviour often matters more than knowledge.

📌 How to apply it

Write down your goals and risk limits in advance.
Judge your portfolio against your goals, not yesterday’s result.
Count trading costs – frequent trading adds them up quickly.
Separate luck from skill: a few good months prove little.

🧾 Summary

Stock picking is a difficult art. Emotion and overtrading can quickly destroy a strong start, while patience and discipline tend to pay off over the long run. One bad investment can wipe out the results of several good decisions.

A big thank you for reading! 🙏 Before making any financial decision, gather as much information as you can from reliable sources.

⚖️ Disclaimer

This research is for informational and educational purposes only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and investing involves risk. Before making any decision, please consult your financial representative.