"Because people buy stocks for only one reason, they want them to go up in price." Indicates the author knows little to nothing. "It is pretty much impossibl

"Because people buy stocks for only one reason, they want them to go up in price." Indicates the author knows little to nothing. "It is pretty much impossible for some man or woman or child who devotes a couple of hours per week to the market to outperform the professionals who spend 24×7 doing this for a living and when they are asleep" There are so many people performing so poorly - even professionals, that working 24x7 obviously doesn't buy you much "performance". While it's true you're competing against everyone else on the market, that doesn't mean there's a large group of professionals performing so well that you can't compete. In fact it's the opposite. "So what does this mean for you ? It means that I don’t know if the market will go up or down, or by how much." I'm thanking God that what it all means to me is not dependant upon what this author knows. As for the remaining "scarcity of capital" argument - it's like the author can only see one point in time, and not the big picture. There's a reason why all the capital being made available is not being borrowed. It's because smart companies know growing for the sake of growing, without demand is a bad reason to borrow, thus they don't. It's your job to determine who they are, and the fact you can't does not mean that it can't be done. There's more to comment on, but overall - I couldn't find much I could agree with.