> It's not useful to look back and say, for example, if you put money into X stock at Y time you'd beat the market. You can't go back in time so it's not useful

> It's not useful to look back and say, for example, if you put money into X stock at Y time you'd beat the market. You can't go back in time so it's not useful. It's not only not useful, it's totally obvious some things will always beat the market. "Beating the market" is really just "beating the average". If there's nothing that beats the average, then it means that all stocks do exactly the same thing... But yes like you said finding things that beat the market in hindsight certainly isn't very useful unless you can learn some specific strategy (e.g. insider information) that was used and employ it yourself (if you choose).