# About indexes Traditional Finance (TradFi) has created over the last decades many strategies that are each best suited for different types of profiles : institutions, corporations, individual investors … Stock picking and index investing are two opposite strategies. The first consists in choosing some stocks that are more promising (based on research) and can beat the market. The second focuses on diversifying the investment into a group of different assets. Most retail investors are better off with the second strategy. > *Academic studies and empirical evidence suggest that it is difficult to successfully pick stocks to outperform the markets over time. There is also evidence to suggest that passive investing in index funds can beat the majority of active managers.*\ > \ > [Indexed Investing: A Prosaic Way to Beat the Average Investor by William F. Sharpe](http://web.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/art/talks/indexed_investing.htm) --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://whitepaper.dfract.lum.network/extra-content/about-indexes.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.