The 7 Wall Street Traps That Quietly Drain Ordinary Investors. How Many Have You Fallen Into?
You did what you were told. You saved. You opened the account. You bought what the nice person at the bank recommended, or the stock everyone at work was talking about.
Then one day you looked at the statement and felt your stomach drop.
The market had gone up. Your money hadn't kept pace. Maybe it had even gone down.
If that's you, here's the first thing to know: it probably wasn't bad luck, and it wasn't because you're bad with money. You walked into a trap. Most people do. Wall Street has spent a century perfecting them.
Why Do Most Investors Lose Money in the Stock Market? The Short Answer
Most investors lose money in the stock market, or earn far less than the market itself, because of seven predictable traps. They pay fees that look tiny but compound for decades. They pay fund managers who usually lag a simple index. They bet on single hot stocks. They try to time the market, trade too often, chase whatever just went up, and trust advice from people paid by commission. The market has rewarded patient owners. The traps sit between the market's return and yours.
The short answer in 4 lines The stock market has made patient owners rich over the long run. Most people don't lose money because of the market. They lose it to costs, to bad timing and to bad advice. Every one of the 7 traps below is backed by hard data from regulators, index providers and peer-reviewed studies. Every one of them has a simple, boring escape you can start tonight. |
In this article:
First, a Myth: Do 90% of Investors Really Lose Money?
You've probably seen the claim that "90% of people lose money in the stock market." It's everywhere.
Here's the problem. Nobody can point to a solid study that proves it for ordinary long-term investors. It gets repeated because it sounds true.
The real picture is more useful, and in some ways more painful:
People who trade a lot usually do lose. In one of the most rigorous studies ever done on day traders, 97% of people in Brazil who kept day trading for more than 300 days lost money (Chague, De-Losso and Giovannetti, 2020).
People who stay invested in funds usually make money, just less than they should. Morningstar found the average dollar invested in U.S. funds made money in every category group over the 10 years to 2025. But it earned about 1.2 percentage points a year less than the funds themselves did, because of when people bought and sold.
Most single stocks are worse bets than you'd think. Professor Hendrik Bessembinder found that most U.S. stocks returned less over their lifetimes than one-month U.S. Treasury bills.
So the honest answer is this. Gamblers lose money. Ordinary investors mostly leave money on the table, and over 20 or 30 years that "left on the table" money can be the difference between a comfortable retirement and a stressful one.
The traps below explain where it goes.
The 60-Second Trap Score: Take This Quiz First
Before we walk through the traps, score yourself. Be honest. Nobody's watching.
Give yourself one point for every "yes."
No. | Question | Yes / No |
1 | I don't know the exact yearly fee (in dollars) I pay on my investments. | |
2 | I own an actively managed fund because it was "top rated" or had a great recent record. | |
3 | More than 20% of my money is in one company's stock (including my employer's). | |
4 | I have sold, or stopped investing, because the market was falling or the news was scary. | |
5 | I check my portfolio more than once a week, or I trade more than a few times a year. | |
6 | I have bought something mainly because it had gone up a lot recently. | |
7 | My adviser or banker is paid commissions, and I've never asked how much. |
What your score means:
0 to 1: You're ahead of most investors. Read on to keep it that way.
2 to 3: You're losing real money every year, probably without seeing it.
4 or more: Don't panic, and don't make any big move tonight. You've just found the leaks. The rest of this article shows you how to fix them, one by one.
Now let's open each trap.
Trap No. 1: The "Tiny Fee" Trap
Wall Street's favourite word is "only."
"It's only 1% a year." "Only a 2% sales charge." "Only a small management fee."
The trap is that fees don't feel like losses. You never write a cheque. They're quietly taken out of your balance, every year, whether your investments go up or down. And you lose not just the fee, but everything that fee would have earned for the rest of your life.
What the SEC itself warns about fees
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission put numbers on it in an investor bulletin.
Take $100,000 earning 4% a year for 20 years:
With a 0.25% yearly fee, it grows to about $208,000.
With a 0.50% yearly fee, it grows to about $198,000.
With a 1.00% yearly fee, it grows to about $179,000.
That "only 1%" costs nearly $30,000 compared with the 0.25% option. Same investments. Same market. Just a different fee.
Now look at it over a retirement-length horizon
Here's my own illustration with bigger, more realistic numbers. $100,000, left alone for 30 years, earning 7% a year before costs. The only thing that changes is the yearly cost.
Yearly cost | What it usually looks like | Value after 30 years |
0.03% | A low-cost S&P 500 index fund | $754,849 |
0.40% | The average dollar in U.S. stock mutual funds | $680,325 |
1.00% | A typical adviser fee alone | $574,349 |
2.00% | Adviser fee plus an expensive fund | $432,194 |
Read that last line again. A 2% all-in cost takes $322,655 out of a $100,000 investment over 30 years. That's 43% of the ending value. Gone. And you'd never see a bill for it.
How common are high fees?
According to the Investment Company Institute, the simple average expense ratio of U.S. stock mutual funds was 1.08% in 2025, and one in ten charged 1.84% or more. The average investor dollar paid less, about 0.40%, because many people have already moved to cheaper funds. Index stock ETFs averaged just 0.14%.
In other words, the cheap options exist. Many investors simply haven't been shown them. Outside the U.S., funds sold through banks and agents often cost even more. I wrote about that in A Warning to Anyone Who Bought a Fund From Their Bank.
How to escape the Tiny Fee Trap 1. Log in tonight and write down the expense ratio of every fund you own. 2. Add any adviser, platform or "wrap" fee on top. 3. Multiply your total percentage by your balance. That's your real yearly bill in dollars. 4. If the total is above about 0.5% a year, ask yourself what extra you're getting for it. For a deeper walk-through, read The "Tiny" 1% Fee That Can Quietly Steal a Quarter of Your Retirement, or try the free calculators on my Tools page. |
Trap No. 2: The Star Fund Manager Trap
This trap looks like expertise.
A smart manager. A glossy brochure. Five stars. "Beat the market last year." It feels responsible to hand your money to a professional.
The problem is that professionals, as a group, can't beat the market they're part of once their costs are taken out. And the scorekeepers have proved it again and again.
What 25 years of scorekeeping shows
S&P Dow Jones Indices publishes the SPIVA Scorecard, which compares active funds with their benchmark. Here's how many actively managed U.S. large-cap stock funds lagged the S&P 500, to the end of 2025:
Time period | Share of active large-cap funds that lagged the S&P 500 |
1 year (2025) | 79% |
3 years | 67% |
5 years | 89% |
10 years | 86% |
15 years | 90% |
20 years | 93% |
Over 20 years, 95% of all active U.S. stock funds, across every size category, lagged their benchmarks.
The trick of the disappearing losers
There's a quieter problem. Funds that do badly don't stick around to embarrass anyone.
SPIVA found that only about 35% of large-cap funds that existed 20 years ago were still running at the end of 2025. The rest were merged or closed. So when a salesperson shows you a list of "top funds with great long-term records," you're looking at the survivors. The graveyard doesn't make the brochure.
Winners don't keep winning
Surely, you think, you can just pick last year's winner?
S&P's Persistence Scorecard says no. In every reported category of U.S. stock funds except small-cap, not one fund that ranked in the top 25% in 2021 stayed in the top 25% every year through 2025. Among small-cap funds, just 2.4% did.
Last year's star is usually next year's average.
This is exactly why Warren Buffett bet $1 million that a plain S&P 500 index fund would beat a group of hedge funds over 10 years, and won. I told that story in How a Boring Index Fund Beat Five Teams of Wall Street's Highest-Paid Money Managers.
How to escape the Star Fund Manager Trap Stop paying extra for a manager to try to beat the index. Own the index. A broad, low-cost index fund guarantees you the market's return minus a tiny fee. Over 15 to 20 years, that has beaten about 9 out of 10 professionals. See the numbers in Stock Picking vs. the S&P 500: What 20 Years of Results Say. |
Trap No. 3: The Hot Stock Trap
You've heard the stories. The neighbour who bought Apple early. The friend who "called" Nvidia.
What you don't hear about is the thousands of people who bought the stocks that went nowhere, or to zero. Survivors talk. Losers stay quiet.
Most stocks are worse than you think
Professor Hendrik Bessembinder of Arizona State University studied nearly 26,000 U.S. stocks from 1926 to 2016. His findings shocked even professionals:
Most stocks, about four out of every seven, returned less over their lifetimes than one-month U.S. Treasury bills. That's the "safest, most boring" investment there is.
All of the net wealth the U.S. stock market created over and above Treasury bills, about $35 trillion, came from just 1,092 companies. That's roughly 4% of all the stocks.
A later global study by Bessembinder and co-authors, published in the Financial Analysts Journal in 2023, looked at more than 64,000 stocks worldwide from 1990 to 2020. It found that 55.2% of U.S. stocks and 57.4% of non-U.S. stocks lagged one-month Treasury bills. Just the top 2.4% of companies created all of the $75.7 trillion in net global wealth.
So picking stocks is like searching a giant haystack for a handful of needles. If you miss them, and most people do, your returns suffer badly.
The real cost: the Enron employees
Concentration turns this from disappointing to devastating.
At the end of 2000, 62% of the assets in Enron's 401(k) retirement plan were in Enron's own stock, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service. Employees trusted the company they worked for. Many held even more.
Enron shares traded above $80 in January 2001. A year later, after the company collapsed into bankruptcy, they were worth less than 70 cents. At a U.S. Senate hearing after the collapse, senators stated that Enron workers lost more than $1 billion from their 401(k) plans. Thousands lost their jobs and their retirement savings at the same time.
They weren't foolish. They were loyal. And that's what makes this trap so dangerous. It feels like confidence, not risk.
How to escape the Hot Stock Trap Don't search for the needles. Buy the whole haystack. A broad index fund automatically owns the few big winners, whoever they turn out to be. If you love picking stocks, keep it to a small "play money" slice you could lose without changing your retirement. Never let one company, including your employer, become a large part of your wealth. |
Trap No. 4: The Market-Timing Trap
This trap feels like common sense.
"The market looks expensive. I'll wait for a dip." "Things look scary. I'll get out and come back when it's safer."
The problem is that nobody rings a bell when it's safe. And the market's best days have a habit of arriving right in the middle of the scariest stretches.
Missing a handful of days can cut your money in half
Hartford Funds, using data from Ned Davis Research and Morningstar, looked at $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 from 1996 to 2025:
What you did | $10,000 became | Average yearly return |
Stayed invested every day | $192,167 | 10.4% |
Missed the 10 best days | $85,490 | 7.4% |
Missed the 20 best days | $49,551 | 5.5% |
Missed the 30 best days | $31,123 | 3.8% |
Missing just 10 days out of about 7,500 trading days cut the ending value by 56%. Missing 30 days left you barely ahead of cash in Treasury bills, which returned 2.4% a year over the same period.
Why the best days are so easy to miss
Hartford found that 48% of the market's 50 best days from 1996 to 2025 happened during bear markets. Another 28% came in the first two months of a new bull market, when most people were still too scared to buy.
In plain words: about three of every four best days arrived when the news felt terrible.
The fair objection
Some critics point out that these charts assume you miss only the best days. Someone who stepped aside during a crash would also miss some of the worst days, which softens the blow.
That's true. But it misses the point. To come out ahead, you'd have to get out before the worst days and get back in before the best ones, which often come days apart. Almost nobody does that consistently. The people who try usually get out late, after the damage, and get back in late, after the rebound.
That's why I wrote Why Smart, Hard-Working People Sell at the Very Bottom, and a calm plan for what to do when the market drops 20%.
How to escape the Market-Timing Trap Decide now what you'll do in a crash, while you're calm. Write it down. Invest a fixed amount every month, automatically, whatever the headlines say. Remember the long view: see Has the S&P 500 Ever Lost Money Over 20 Years? |
Trap No. 5: The Busy-Trader Trap
Wall Street makes money when you move. Commissions, spreads, platform fees and, today, payment for order flow. Activity is their income. Patience is yours.
Modern trading apps make buying and selling feel like a game. Confetti. Push notifications. "Top movers" lists. Every one of those features is designed to make you act.
The study that named this trap
Professors Brad Barber and Terrance Odean studied 66,465 U.S. households with accounts at a large discount broker from 1991 to 1996. Their paper's title says it all: "Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth," published in the Journal of Finance in 2000.
The 20% of households that traded the most earned 11.4% a year after costs.
The stock market returned 17.9% a year.
The households that traded the least earned 18.5% a year.
The average household turned over about 75% of its portfolio every year. The researchers found the poor results came from the trading itself, not from bad stock picks. Overconfidence made people trade, and the trading cost them.
"But trading is free now"
Commissions may be gone, but the trap is still there.
A study of Robinhood users by Barber, Huang, Odean and Schwarz found that when large numbers of app users piled into the same stock in a single day, the stock jumped, and then fell. Over the following 20 trading days, these stocks lagged by about 5% on average, and by about 9% after the most extreme pile-ins.
Morningstar's 2026 Mind the Gap study points the same way. ETFs, which you can trade all day like stocks, had a wider gap between what the funds earned and what their investors earned (1.6 percentage points a year) than traditional mutual funds (1.2 points).
Easier to trade usually means easier to hurt yourself.
Day trading: the extreme version
In the Brazilian study mentioned earlier, researchers tracked everyone who started day trading index futures from 2013 to 2015. Of the 1,551 who kept going for more than 300 days, 97% lost money. Only 1.1% earned more than Brazil's minimum wage. They also found no sign that people got better with practice.
I covered this in depth in Why Most Day Traders Lose Money. And if a loss has ever tempted you to "win it back" fast, please read The Revenge Trade: How a $50K Loss Quietly Becomes $200K.
How to escape the Busy-Trader Trap Turn off price alerts. Move the trading app off your phone's home screen, or delete it. Check your portfolio once a quarter, not once a day. Ask yourself: am I investing, or gambling? These 7 Signs You're Gambling in the Stock Market will tell you honestly. |
Trap No. 6: The Chase-the-Winner Trap
This is the trap that catches good people with good intentions.
A fund or sector has a great year. It's all over the news. Your friends are making money. You finally buy in, near the top. Then it cools off or falls, and you sell in frustration, near the bottom. You've just bought high and sold low, the exact opposite of what you meant to do.
The gap between what funds earn and what investors earn
Every year Morningstar measures this. Its 2026 Mind the Gap study, led by Jeffrey Ptak, covers nearly 23,000 U.S. mutual funds and ETFs.
Over the 10 years to Dec. 31, 2025, the funds themselves returned 9.9% a year.
The average dollar invested in them earned 8.7% a year.
That 1.2-percentage-point gap is about 12% of the funds' total return, purely from the timing of when investors bought and sold.
Morningstar estimates around $3.8 trillion in timing-related effects over the decade.
In plain dollars, here's what that gap does to one person's $100,000 over 10 years:
Average yearly return | $100,000 after 10 years | |
What the funds earned | 9.9% | $257,026 |
What the average investor earned | 8.7% | $230,301 |
Lost to bad timing | 1.2 points | $26,725 |
The wilder the ride, the bigger the damage
Morningstar found the gap grew with volatility. Investors in the calmest funds lost about 0.4 percentage points a year to timing. In the most volatile funds, they lost more than 2 points a year.
Crypto ETFs, the newest hot thing, were the most extreme. From their launch in January 2024 to the end of 2025, the average dollar invested earned nearly 14 percentage points a year less than the ETFs themselves, because so much money poured in near the peaks.
Now the good news
Investors in plain U.S. stock index funds captured almost all of their funds' returns. Their gap was just 0.1 percentage points a year. Allocation funds, which hold a ready-made mix of stocks and bonds and rebalance themselves, also had small gaps.
The lesson is simple. Boring, steady funds make it easier to behave well. I wrote a full article on this gap: If You've Ever Lost Money in the Stock Market, Read This.
How to escape the Chase-the-Winner Trap Choose your investments based on a plan, not on last year's returns. If you feel the urge to buy something because "everyone's making money," that's your signal to wait, not to act. Pick funds steady enough that you won't be tempted to bail out of them. |
Trap No. 7: The Friendly Salesman Trap
This is the most personal trap, because it comes with a smile and a handshake.
Many people who call themselves "advisers," "planners" or "relationship managers" are really salespeople. They may be kind and well-meaning. But if they're paid commissions on what they sell you, their income depends on which product you buy. That's a conflict of interest, and it costs real money.
What the U.S. government's economists found
In 2015, the White House Council of Economic Advisers studied conflicted investment advice in U.S. retirement accounts (IRAs). It concluded:
Savers getting conflicted advice earned returns roughly 1 percentage point lower each year. For example, a 6% return becomes 5%.
With about $1.7 trillion of IRA assets in products that create these conflicts, the estimated cost was about $17 billion a year.
A retiree drawing down savings at the rate possible without conflicted advice would run out of money more than five years earlier.
The fund industry disputed the size of these estimates, and one consulting firm's review argued the true figure was lower. But even the CEA's own cautious case, half a percentage point, meant losses of more than $8 billion a year.
What 1 percentage point means for you
Say you roll $300,000 from a workplace plan into an account recommended by a commissioned salesperson, and leave it for 20 years:
Yearly return | $300,000 after 20 years | |
Without conflicted advice | 6% | $962,141 |
With conflicted advice | 5% | $795,989 |
The cost of the "free" advice | 1 point | $166,152 |
That's a house, or many years of retirement income, quietly transferred from your family to someone else's.
4 questions to ask any adviser, banker or agent 1. "Are you required to act in my best interest at all times, in writing?" 2. "How exactly are you paid, and by whom, if I say yes today?" 3. "What will I pay in total each year, in dollars, not percentages?" 4. "Is there a cheaper fund or index fund that does the same job?" If you get vague answers to any of these, you have your answer. Also see: Someone Just Offered You a "Guaranteed" Return. Before You Sign Anything, Read This. |
Why These Traps Work So Well, Even on Smart People
Notice something about all seven traps.
Every one of them makes money for someone on Wall Street when you take action: buy a fund, switch a fund, trade a stock, roll over an account. And every escape route is about doing less.
That's the uncomfortable truth. The financial industry is mostly paid for activity, not results. Your interests and theirs line up only when costs are low and you stay put.
The traps also work because they feel like good habits. Paying for a professional feels responsible. Picking strong companies feels smart. Getting out before a crash feels prudent. Checking your account feels like paying attention. None of them feel like mistakes until you see the numbers.
If you want the psychology side in more detail, read Why Smart People Lose Money in the Stock Market: 8 Mental Traps.
The Trap Detector: Use This Before Every Money Move
Print this out or save it to your phone. Before you buy, sell or switch anything, walk through it.
It takes 30 seconds, and it will stop most of the costly mistakes above before they happen.
The 7 Traps at a Glance
Trap | What it quietly costs you | The boring escape |
No. 1 Tiny Fee | Up to 43% of your ending wealth over 30 years at 2% a year | Know your all-in cost; use low-cost index funds |
No. 2 Star Manager | About 9 in 10 active funds lag the index over 15 to 20 years | Own the index instead |
No. 3 Hot Stock | Most single stocks lag Treasury bills over their lifetimes | Own the whole market; cap any single stock |
No. 4 Market Timing | Missing 10 best days cut $10,000's growth by 56% (1996–2025) | Stay invested; automate monthly buying |
No. 5 Busy Trader | Most active traders earned 11.4% vs the market's 17.9% | Check quarterly; turn off alerts |
No. 6 Chase the Winner | About 1.2 points a year lost to bad timing | Follow a written plan; pick steady funds |
No. 7 Friendly Salesman | About 1 point a year, per the CEA's estimate | Ask the 4 questions; get fees in writing |
Your Escape Plan: What to Do Tonight
You don't need to fix everything at once. Here's a calm order to work in.
Take the Trap Score again. Circle your "yes" answers. Those are your priorities.
Find your real yearly cost. List every fund's expense ratio and any adviser or platform fee. Turn it into a dollar figure.
Don't sell anything in a panic tonight. Selling can trigger taxes, exit charges or surrender fees. Find out first, then decide calmly.
Build around a low-cost, broad index fund. For many people, a single S&P 500 or total-world index fund, or a simple mix with bonds, does the job. See Index Funds for People Who've Been Burned and The Lazy 3-Fund Portfolio.
Automate it. Set up a fixed monthly investment so your behaviour can't sabotage you. Here's how: Who Else Wants to Invest Just 15 Minutes a Year?
Write a one-page plan with a 72-hour rule. No buying or selling outside your plan without waiting three days first.
Ask your adviser the 4 questions. In writing. Keep the answers.
For a set of time-tested principles to keep you on track, read Jack Bogle's 10 Rules for Investors Who Are Tired of Losing Money.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do most investors lose money in the stock market?
Most investors lose money, or earn far less than the market, because of costs and behaviour, not because the market itself fails. High fees, active funds that lag the index, betting on single stocks, market timing, overtrading, chasing hot investments and commission-driven advice all drain returns. Low-cost index investing and patience avoid most of them.
Is it true that 90% of investors lose money?
There's no reliable study proving 90% of long-term investors lose money. Frequent traders do mostly lose: 97% of persistent day traders in one Brazilian study lost money. But ordinary fund investors usually make money, just less than their funds. Morningstar found investors trailed their funds by about 1.2 points a year.
Can you lose money in an index fund?
Yes, in the short term. An S&P 500 index fund can fall 30% to 50% in a bad crash. Over long periods, broad index funds have historically recovered and grown. Index fund investors lose most often by selling during a crash. Morningstar found U.S. stock index fund investors captured almost all of their funds' returns.
How much do investment fees really cost?
More than most people think. The SEC shows a 1% yearly fee can cut a $100,000 portfolio by nearly $30,000 over 20 years compared with a 0.25% fee. Over 30 years, at a 7% return, a 2% all-in cost can take about 43% of your ending value. Low-cost index funds charge as little as 0.03%.
Do professional fund managers beat the market?
Rarely, over long periods. S&P's SPIVA Scorecard found 79% of active U.S. large-cap funds lagged the S&P 500 in 2025, and about 93% lagged over 20 years. Past winners rarely stay on top. That's why many experts, including Warren Buffett, suggest low-cost index funds for ordinary investors.
Should I sell my stocks when the market is falling?
For long-term money, selling in a panic is usually costly. Hartford Funds found that missing just the 10 best days from 1996 to 2025 cut a $10,000 S&P 500 investment's ending value by 56%. Nearly half of the 50 best days came during bear markets, when selling feels safest.
How do I know if my financial adviser has a conflict of interest?
Ask how they're paid. If they earn commissions or bonuses from the products they recommend, there's a conflict. Ask whether they must act in your best interest at all times, in writing, and ask for your total yearly cost in dollars. Vague answers are a warning sign.
What's the simplest way to stop losing money in the stock market?
Own a low-cost, broadly diversified index fund, invest a fixed amount automatically every month, check it rarely, and never act on a tip, a headline or a sales pitch without waiting 72 hours. Doing less, and paying less, fixes most of the 7 traps at once.
The Market Was Never Your Enemy
If you've fallen into one, two or even all seven of these traps, you're in very good company. Millions of intelligent, hard-working people have. The traps were designed by some of the cleverest marketers in the world, and they're dressed up to look like good habits.
But here's the hopeful part. The market's long-term reward is still sitting there, waiting for anyone patient enough to collect it. You don't need a hot tip, a genius manager or perfect timing. You need low costs, a simple plan and the discipline to leave it alone.
Close the leaks, and the same market that hurt you can start working for you.
Get Your Free Report
If you've lost money in the stock market and want to understand exactly what went wrong, and how to make sure it never happens again, I've written a free 38-page report: "Why You Lost Money in the Stock Market (And Why It Wasn't Your Fault)."
Inside, you'll discover:
The real reasons ordinary investors lose money, explained in plain English
Why it wasn't your fault, and what the industry never told you
The simple, low-cost approach that lets you start again with confidence
It's free. Just tell me where to send it.
About the Author
Stephen Loke has been a student of the market for more than 15 years. He is also an agritourism entrepreneur whose farm has been featured in Bloomberg News and Asahi Shimbun.
This article is general education, not personal financial advice. I'm not a licensed financial adviser. Your situation is unique, so please consider speaking with a licensed, fee-only professional before making major decisions. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Worked examples are illustrations, not predictions.
Sources
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, "How Fees and Expenses Affect Your Investment Portfolio," Investor Bulletin. https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/general-resources/news-alerts/alerts-bulletins/investor-bulletins/updated
Investment Company Institute, "Trends in the Expenses and Fees of Funds, 2025" (March 2026). https://www.ici.org/system/files/2026-03/per32-01.pdf
S&P Dow Jones Indices, "SPIVA U.S. Scorecard Year-End 2025" (March 2026). https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/spiva-us-year-end-2025.pdf
S&P Dow Jones Indices, "U.S. Persistence Scorecard Year-End 2025" (May 2026). https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/persistence-scorecard-year-end-2025.pdf
Hendrik Bessembinder, "Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?" Journal of Financial Economics (2018); summary by Arizona State University W. P. Carey School of Business. https://knowledge.wpcarey.asu.edu/sites/default/files/do-stocks-outperform-treasury-bills.pdf
Bessembinder, Chen, Choi and Wei, "Long-Term Shareholder Returns: Evidence from 64,000 Global Stocks," Financial Analysts Journal (2023). https://rpc.cfainstitute.org/research/financial-analysts-journal/2023/long-term-shareholder-returns-evidence-from-64000-global-stocks
Congressional Research Service, "The Enron Bankruptcy and Employer Stock in Retirement Plans" (RS21115, 2002). https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RS21115.html
U.S. Senate hearing record on Enron and 401(k) retirement plans (107th Congress, 2002). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-107shrg77706/pdf/CHRG-107shrg77706.pdf
Hartford Funds, "Timing the Market Is Impossible" (data: Ned Davis Research, Morningstar, Hartford Funds, 1996–2025). https://www.hartfordfunds.com/practice-management/client-conversations/managing-volatility/timing-the-market-is-impossible.html
Brad M. Barber and Terrance Odean, "Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors," Journal of Finance (2000). https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/odean/Papers%20current%20versions/Individual_Investor_Performance_Final.pdf
Barber, Huang, Odean and Schwarz, "Attention-Induced Trading and Returns: Evidence from Robinhood Users," Journal of Finance (2022); summary by UC Davis. https://www.ucdavis.edu/curiosity/blog/what-continuing-effect-brokerage-robinhood-stock-market
Fernando Chague, Rodrigo De-Losso and Bruno Giovannetti, "Day Trading for a Living?" (2020), SSRN. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3423101
Jeffrey Ptak, Morningstar, "Mind the Gap 2026" (August 2026). https://www.morningstar.com/business/insights/research/mind-the-gap
White House Council of Economic Advisers, "The Effects of Conflicted Investment Advice on Retirement Savings" (February 2015). https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/02/23/effects-conflicted-investment-advice-retirement-savings
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