Well, it also depends on the goal. My goal is currently to grow wealth by saving and investing, and my thinking is geared towards this goal. A significant majority of forum members are in this situation.
And I think that passive index is the best way for it.
- No need to spend time to do own research. You need it to do your actual job and earn money.
- You can keep fees down. In the accumulation phase, during an exponential growth of the wealth, every few bp of CAGR count.
- I don’t have a specific retirement date in mind and it doesn’t look like I will have an early retirement. What I am targeting is to have some extra in addition to a regular pension. The pressure is much lower, I can outwait most things.
For someone who has 5+ millions portfolio and wants to live from it, the situation might be very different. I will totally understand if this person creates a hand picked portfolio of superboring utilities, cantonal banks, insurances and consumer staples. Take stocks that produce regular and steady income, which are long time in their businesses and don’t hurry to grow at any price. There is a huge chance that this portfolio will underperform the index, but who cares?
If you have won in the game, stop playing.
Another extreme would be someone taking more risk to become rich faster. Can’t recommend it. We always hear about people making crazy money with crazy bets, but it’s because it is rather a very seldom exception. Unless you have a specific point, it is not very sexy to make stories about people who ruined themselves by taking risks.
P.S. Sorry, it came out longer than I thought 
.