Market-tracking index funds are decidedly non-random. Lumifer's point is that you're confusing the professional money-manager's ability to make money off people who don't want to manage their own money (i.e. marketing) with the professional money-manager's ability to make money off picking individual stocks (i.e. finance), which on average does not exist. The money-management field does not represent 'free money' in that you need to actively market for clients, and there is not free money to be had in doing mediocre money management with your own money. The point that you were trying to make, that there's money to made simply by having capital and investing it in the entire economy as a whole, doesn't seem like a knock-down objection to Lumifer's point; by watching how my index fund holdings are doing, I am getting rapid and unambiguous feedback about how the overall economy is doing relative to various segments or other holdings.