Do people Win, Yes. Do some Win Big, Heck Yeah. Talking about Las Vegas, not Wall Street. Some people win big and some lose big, but no one talks about their loses, only their victories.

Most folks should avoid the Wall Street Casino. Unless you are an insider and know when crashes are coming, all your little profits will mean nothing in a correction.

The average return for the S&P 500 is around 9% over the last 90 years. Hardly stellar. The average annualized total return for the S&P 500 index over the past 90 years is 9.8 percent. Yet from 1928 to 2016, only six years finished with a gain within 5 and 10 percent, according to LPL Financial.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/18/the-sp-500-has-already-met-its-average-return-for-a-full-year.html

Account for inflation and the capital gains taxes and the profit picture is even more dismal.

Gold

Gold Bugs have fared little better in annual returns, except that they actually are in physical possession of their assets and have paid zero taxes on their gains, unless they sell and declare their Gold "profits", no one knows they have it.

http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2015/07/a-history-of-gold-returns/

Gold prices have been artificially held down by the issuance of "Phony Gold", the form of Paper Gold Certificates of ETFs. The ratio of real Gold in the World vs. Paper Gold is 200:1. So not only is Paper Gold a criminal scheme, the actual market demand is 200 greater then the amount of real physical Gold. Meeting this demand with worthless paper, keeps the price of Gold depressed.

http://heartlandpreciousmetals.com/new-record-comex-paper-leverage-ratio-go-paper/

If you are not in direct control of your money and how it is used, you are taking a leap of faith that the stock, 401k, IRA is going to do well. For the majority the returns are lucky to keep up with inflation.

Also plan on being double taxed, first when you earn the money to invest and secondly when you pull it out as a capital gain.