1. You could try to do worse than average, and you'd succeed, but only because of the skewness of individual stock performance. You'd be no better than random chance at picking losers, it'd just be that most stocks are losers.
2. Factor-correction means the strategy of "choosing dying companies" won't work (e.g. in the Fama and French five factor model a dying company would an outlier in terms of high-minus-low, robust-minus-weak, and probably conservative-minus-aggressive).
1. You could try to do worse than average, and you'd succeed, but only because of the skewness of individual stock performance. You'd be no better than random chance at picking losers, it'd just be that most stocks are losers.
2. Factor-correction means the strategy of "choosing dying companies" won't work (e.g. in the Fama and French five factor model a dying company would an outlier in terms of high-minus-low, robust-minus-weak, and probably conservative-minus-aggressive).