There's quite a bit of evidence that even professionals don't show any ability to pick stocks or to predict market rollbacks. Most of the people we identify as skilled based on returns have probably just been lucky.

After costs, only the top 3% of managers produce a return that indicates they have sufficient skill to just cover their costs, which means that going forward, and despite extraordinary past returns, even the top performers are expected to be only as good as a low-cost passive index fund. The other 97% can be expected to do worse.

Everybody wants the world to be a better place, and some think that government actions can bring that about. But they don't take into consideration that government actions can often do more harm than good.

With less regulation, I think you would see growth come back. Of course, there are situations where you need regulation. Antitrust regulation, for example, is a good idea because you want competition. But beyond that, it gets very difficult.