A hundred years of the US stock market history reveals a harsh reality: truly long-term profitable companies for investors are scarce, less than 3%. What about the remaining 97%? They either fade away quickly or are ruthlessly eliminated by the market for various reasons. This pattern is similar to the "standard normal distribution" law in nature—extreme successes are always in the minority, and most things hover around the middle.

Looking at the current stock market landscape makes this clear. Giants like Apple and Amazon are becoming more profitable with increasingly deep moats. In contrast, small companies trying to turn around? The difficulty level skyrockets, and their inherent competitiveness is insufficient, making them easily suppressed by the strong实力 of leading enterprises.

However, it's not to say small companies have no chance at all. Take China's A-shares, for example, which have always had a tradition of "speculating on small and new stocks." Micro-cap and small-cap stocks often experience "bull markets." Among these hotly traded stocks, some companies have no stable profitability at all, yet they are wildly popular simply because of hot topics. In the short term, you can indeed make quick money, but what about the risks? They are enormous.

To put it plainly, this kind of play is like gambling. Most small companies lack the solid strength for sustained profitability, their stock price swings wildly—up limit today, down limit tomorrow—and ultimately, the retail investors following the trend lose money. The truly stable returns for investors ultimately come from those industry leaders with a solid market position and business models that stand the test of time.

Therefore, the key is a mindset shift. If you can shift your focus from "short-term speculation" to "value investing," chase fewer trends, and spend more time researching fundamentals, the quality of your long-term returns will be completely different. This is not some profound theory; it is a rule learned through the market's real money.