[squiffy]

There is no need for a lot of intellectual debate. Try it yourself and see how you do over the long run. You can do a real trial, splitting your money up 50-50 and seeing how you do over 5-10 years.

Or you can index your real money and do paper trading to see how you would have done.

There is no substitute for trying it on your own, for real, as there are trading costs, and fear and greed.

I started out with index funds and probably had about 80K to 100K, built up over 5 years, before I took 12 K and tried to pick my own stocks.

It's hard for anyone to generalize about how you might do. We have no idea about your stock picking abilities, etc.

I have always loved economics and investing. So it's fun for me. And I probably put in more than 10 hours a month. Though how much time I put into it is really hard to guage.