You don't seem to be comprehending what I am saying. Do you know what an "institutional investor" is? Do you know what the Sharpe-Lintner capital asset pricing model is? How about the Black-Scholes options pricing model? The efficient markets theory and the evidence that supports it (along with some evidence that rejects it)?

There's nothing stupid or foolhardy about being a normal "buy and hold" investor without knowing these things. Normal people who want to invest in, say, common stocks, can do so and are likely to do just fine if they do some research about the companies that they invest in and they diversify their portfolio. Paying a financial advisor can be helpful in designing a portfolio that has the appropriate amount of risk for your situation. (But be wary of advisors who are paid commissions to push particular stocks.)

Speculating is a different game. Speculators bet against the market. Speculating is foolish when the speculator is not trained in finance. In contrast to normal investing, speculation is a professional's game.

If you think that, say, Bitcoin, is going to rise 5000 percent over the next year, and so you buy all of the Bitcoin that you can afford, then you are betting against the market. You are speculating. And you are a fool, unless you are trained in finance and you have inside information.