Just seems like a weird divergence, that I have more understanding and knowledge than ever, but I am not trying to use it to pick winners anymore.
I think it's a bit like Tic-Tac-Toe. As a young kid, is fun to play with other young kids and try to beat them. But as you play more, gain more experience, and gain a deeper understanding of the logic of the game, you actually end up playing less, rather than more. That's because you realize that unless one of the players is drunk, it's always just going to end in a draw, and there are better ways to spend your time than that. The analogy then breaks down a bit, because you don't continue reading blogs about Tic-Tac-Toe in your adulthood. But markets and economics are a bit more complex, ever-changing, and less-defined than Tic-Tac-Toe, so I think it totally makes sense to continue to follow along, to see if any new theories or strategies have been developed that refute your "this is a waste of time" hypothesis, or, to continue to collect data that bolsters that hypothesis.
I find it telling that I've read a lot of active investors who, after years or even decades, made the determination that they lacked the ability to outsmart the market, and switched to passive investing (
jlcollinsnh is one such example). I can't recall any stories of people going in the other direction, a long-time passive investor who says "dammit, I finally realized these index funds are making my life worse, I'm going to start picking stocks/funds and trading!" Obviously I haven't done a scientific survey on the matter, and certainly we see tons of generally-passive investors whose hypotheses have not yet been sufficiently bolstered by time and experience and thus continue to propose market-timing tactics.
But my general feeling is that tides of time, knowledge, and wisdom tend to float boats from the active-investing ocean to the passive-investing shore, rather than sweeping them out into the open sea.
