Just to address a few comments, I meant it's hard to beat the market i.e. have your investments grow faster than the benchmark index. That's a different matter

Just to address a few comments, I meant it's hard to beat the market i.e. have your investments grow faster than the benchmark index. That's a different matter than 'growing rich' or 'doing well'. Sure, you can and in fact, after burning my fingers, all my investments are in index funds too. But, my point referred to the original comment that the system isn't rigged. There's a high probability it is and because of how capital and information flows work, there's a select few who will benefit instead of a wider majority.