This is something I have been thinking, that should be fairly obvious but somehow is not discussed anywhere and the complexity in investing is lost. There are different schools of thought when it comes to (active) investing, and they are not necessarily better or worse, but they have advantages and disadvantages. I could list at least 3: Value investing, trading/speculation and quantitative finance. The second one sounds unscientific but I do not discard that there can exist some skills in trading the news and placing bets on underlooked securities or assets. The third one is legit but more niche, and it is the route I am taking because of my background background it is easier for me to think on how to optimize a portfolio in terms of risk and return, using leverage, exploiting momentum, adapting to the environment depending on financial data and so on. This is something you can do in Python and I am not just naively overoptimizing backtests or building trading bots. History is my teacher because I can test what a portfolio strategy would have done in different time frames and different stock markets.
This distinction is essential, because without it, investing advice simply doesn't make sense. Consider the following scenario: A stock you are interested in is dipping 20% today. What do you do? If the valuation of the company or their governance hasn't changed, the value investor would say you need to buy this stock. But the trader or the quant probably wouldn't do that. When you buy dips, you are buying volatility. It doesn't make sense from a risk/return perspective most of the time, because losing money hurts more than winning. When I see people buying dips, I see it no different than just gambling, unless you can give me a good argument based on fundamentals of why it is a good decision. When you look at things from this framework, it is not contradictory to be adaptable and use multiple tools that at times look contradicting.
Similarly, I would say that "beating the market" means much more than just achieving a higher return than the benchmark. It matters how you get there. Because if you are getting the same return for a fraction of the volatility or drawdowns, you are already beating the market. The day you retire you will see what sequence of returns can do to your portfolio while you are withdrawing money. It can mean the difference between being able to withdraw 3% and 5%. Big difference.