Very simple. If you don’t want to put in the heavy research time into investing then by investing in index funds/ETFs you essentially become the market. You will still have to pick the markets you want to cover like the S&P 500, or Nasdaq, or Russell, or maybe some foreign exposure indexes. John Bogle made index investing famous, and he has some good books out that are easy to start with. If you want to try and beat the market then you have to take the market out of your investing and become a buyer of businesses at a discount where you can estimate your downside risk otherwise know as a margin of safety. This type of investing is commonly referred to as value investing. With value investing you will have to learn how to detrmine value and it requires reading and research. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are considered value investors. There are a lot of good books on value investing out there. The Little Book series is a good starting place for reading.
