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By Sean Tepper
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Most people aim to match the annual returns of the broader market index. For me, that was never enough. I wanted to understand how the best long-term investors consistently beat it, so I spent years reading and building a model. What I found was not a secret stock. It was a process.
That distinction is the whole argument. The investment industry encourages people to consume endless financial commentary and chase individual opportunities. A tip from a financial influencer's social media post. A hot stock on Reddit. A friend who opened a brokerage account and is now talking about options. The noise is constant, and it is designed to feel urgent.
The scale of that influence is significant: Amundi reports that 46 percent of investors seek investment information through influencers.
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This is where access to the market and the ability to invest confidently begin to diverge. Opening a brokerage account allows people to buy, sell, and hold investments, but it does not automatically teach them how to evaluate a business, understand its risks, or decide whether a stock is worth buying.
An account can be opened in minutes, and trading can begin the same day. Learning to assess the business behind a stock price takes more work. Without that understanding, investors can find themselves making financial decisions based on someone else's recommendation rather than their own informed judgment.
The challenge, then, is not simply getting people into the market, but equipping them to make their own decisions once they are there. Taking responsibility for an investment means developing the knowledge to question recommendations and understand what you own. It does not mean doing everything alone. It means not depending on someone else's opinion to decide what happens to your money.
Distinguishing Noise From Signal Makes for Better Investing
I built a process because I was the person falling for the noise. My background is in process engineering, not finance. In that world, you roll up a lot of data into a clear signal, a yes or no, or a traffic light to make an informed decision. I could not understand why nobody in investing was doing the same thing. So I did.
The process reduces thousands of data points to a simple rating system: On Sale, Watch, or Overpriced. The calculations behind the ratings are open source. Anyone can look at the math. That transparency matters because the problem with financial advice is not that people are uninformed. It is that recommendations can be opaque.
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You do not always know what is behind the advice, whether the person giving it has a financial incentive or what they own themselves. When investors cannot see the reasoning behind a recommendation, they have little basis for judging whether it deserves their trust. They are left relying on someone else's authority rather than developing their own understanding.
Repeating the Process
A repeatable process gives an investor something more useful than a speculative prediction. It gives a reason for the decision. It cannot guarantee a winning investment. It cannot remove uncertainty from the market. What it can do is provide a consistent way to assess a business, understand the risks, and explain why the investment was chosen.
That matters psychologically as much as financially. Investors who are unsure how to judge an opportunity often look to others for reassurance. But confidence borrowed from an influencer can disappear the moment a stock falls. Understanding gives investors something more durable: a way to revisit their decisions, assess what went wrong, and learn from the outcome. The goal is not to eliminate doubt. It is to make decisions based on evidence rather than allowing fear or somebody else's opinion to dictate them.
The consequences of getting this wrong can extend beyond a single investment. I have seen people lose thousands of dollars following a bad tip and decide the whole system is rigged. Others come away believing that investing is just gambling. Some conclude that building wealth through the stock market is reserved for people who are already wealthy. The money is lost, and so is the confidence to try again.
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That loss of confidence can carry a long-term cost. Someone who decides never to invest again may miss decades of opportunities to build wealth. Investing involves risk. Education cannot prevent every loss. But people deserve the tools to understand the decisions they are making.
They should not be left to conclude that the entire market is beyond their control. A bad investment should be an opportunity to learn, not a reason to walk away for good.
The broader market index is a benchmark, not an enemy. For many investors, a diversified index fund may be the right choice. For those who choose individual stocks, the responsibility is to understand why those investments make sense rather than chasing the possibility of a quick win.
The question is not which stock will go up next. It is whether you have a way to evaluate that decision that does not depend on someone else's opinion. If someone else tells you to buy a stock, the last thing you should do is buy that stock. The first thing you should do is ask why.
Sean Tepper is the founder and CEO of Tykr, a stock analysis and education platform used by investors globally and integrated with over 40 brokers and banks internationally.
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