Nobody can predict the market, but what we can do is keep the costs as low as possible. ETF’s and indexfunds have a low expense ratio and depending on your broker some don’t have transaction costs at all. That’s already a win.
As a stockpicker not only do you need to beat the market. You also need to beat it by such amount just to cover your extra trading costs.
So you need to know wich companies will outperform the market (impossible) and you need to know the right time to buy and sell (again impossible)
You might get lucky a few times, but long term this is a losing game.
Another risk of stockpicking is your more likely to make emotional decisions when you only have a few sticks in your portfolio. The best investor is a dead investor.
I highly recommend to read the book “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” by John Bogle.
And to answer your question: “If I put 100k in say mcdonalds instead of veqt, which do you think will be higher in 30 years?”
Person A: invested 100k in MacDonalds
Person B: invested 100k in indexfund that includes McDonalds (<1%)
Tomorrow breaking news: accountants discover massive fraud @ McDonalds or micro plastic found in all burgers… yada yada you get the idea..
Who’s portfolio will be f*cked? Person A or person B? Person B can go to sleep. Person A portfolio might never recover.