In Chapter 6, Sethi tackles the primary belief preventing people from investing in the stock market: the idea that lucrative investing is about picking winning stocks and that professional advisers and stock brokers know how to pick these stocks and can thus beat the market. As he does with credit cards and banks, Sethi argues that regular individuals can handle their money effectively without paying professionals whose services aren’t worth their fees. Wealth managers, financial advisers, money managers—these professionals claim to be able to beat the market, but in truth almost nobody beats the market over the long term. Individual investors are thus best served by putting their money in low-fee brokerage accounts and leaving it there to compound over time.

The chapter opens with an anecdote about wine tasters. A researcher at the University of Bordeaux conducted an experiment whereby he blindfolded professional wine tasters and asked them to describe two wines. Although both were white wines, he told the tasters that one was red and one was white. Predictably, the tasters praised the “red” with standard descriptors like “full-bodied,” proving that they were, in fact, unable to tell the difference. The wine tasters were simply repeating conventional wisdom.