Why Most Investors Are Destined to Fail

Wall Street has a dirty secret it doesn’t want you to know. It doesn’t make its greatest profits from being right. It makes most of its money by ensuring you’re confused.

Why does Wall Street want you in an emotional fog? It’s not because they’re inherently “evil.” It’s because their paychecks depend on it.

The great banking houses (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley) and the massive brokerage firms aren’t in the business of making you wealthy. They’re in the business of collecting assets under management and driving transaction volume.

In 2025, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley generated 59% of their profits from asset management and trading fees alone.

That’s why they’re incentivized to keep you in a state of perpetual motion. If you buy a great asset like bitcoin or Tesla and hold it for 20 years (more on this in a moment), they only get to charge you a fee once. That’s a disaster for their quarterly earnings.