I Spent Years Picking Stocks on an NHS Salary — the Humbling Research Data Nobody Tells You
- Simon Wong
- 4 days ago
- 10 min read
Why trying to find the next big stock is the worst strategy for your NHS wealth
This is one of the most important blog posts I'll ever write for you.
I've spent weeks breaking down a landmark piece of financial research that I believe every NHS staff who invests needs to read. It's the kind of data that, once you see it, you can't unsee. It fundamentally changes how you think about investing, stock picking, and building wealth. It will also make you question most tradinig headlines to read, most stock gossip you hear about.
Save-To-Retire is no longer a realistic strategy for NHS staff — regardless of your pay grade. That's a topic I'll dive into in a future blog. But without a Save-To-Invest-To-Retire approach, you're looking at working until at least 73, based on the latest trends in state pensionable age movements. And when it comes to long-term investing over decades, no other asset class beats the stock market for returns and consistency.
In my opinion, stock market investing is the key to building real financial wealth and true money freedom.
The research is so powerful — and there's so much I want to walk you through — that I've split this into two parts.
In Part 1, I'm going to show you the cold, hard data behind why stock picking is a losing game. The numbers are brutal. But they're also liberating, because once you understand them, you'll never feel tempted to gamble your hard-earned NHS salary on individual stocks again. You will giggle at anyone who talks about individual stock hot-tips.
In Part 2, I'll show you exactly what to do instead — the beautifully simple, research proven strategy that the data points to, and how to put it into action with your NHS pay to benefit fully from the stock market with lowest risk.
Let's get into it.
But first, let me be clear about something.
I am not against investing in individual stocks. Not at all. In fact, I'm extremely passionate about investing — it's the entire reason I built Medical Finance Academy.
But over my last fifteen years of investing, if there's one lesson that towers above everything else, it's this: Understand Your Limitations and Stay Humble. Always.
I can tell you from personal experience — throughout my time picking individual stocks, I have been humbled more times than I'd care to repeat. The losses. The second-guessing. The sleepless nights wondering if you made the right call. I've lived through all of it. And I'm here to save you from that painful learning path.
My wife Nikki and I have seen our finances transform since I pivoted my investment approach. Our wealth has changed significantly. Not because I got better at picking stocks — but because I stopped trying to outsmart the market and let the data guide me instead.
Now, don't get me wrong. There is still a lot to be gained from investing in individual stocks. But it takes an insane amount of research, time, emotional burden, intellect, and — let's be honest — a healthy dose of luck for the outcome to go your way.
I do believe there might be a role for it one day for my fellow NHS colleagues who have the appetite for it. (Personally, I'd love to start an investing club with like-minded people and put some disposable income to work in individual stocks. That would be brilliant.)
But for everyday, hardworking NHS colleagues and friends trying to grow real financial wealth and generational freedom? Picking individual stocks plays no part in that journey.
Here's why.
You've just finished a 12-hour night shift. You're scrolling through your phone in the break room and you see it.
A mate from uni posts or some instagram reel ad boasts about how they 'got in early' on some stock. Their portfolio is up 40%. They're talking about quitting their 9-to-5.
And suddenly, your ISA contributions into a boring fund feel… well, boring.
So you think: Maybe I should try picking a few individual stocks too.
Or maybe you've already taken that step. One of my clients did exactly this. 👇
They'd finally opened a Trading 212 account after seeing a Tiktok ad — which felt like a big deal in itself — and the second the app loaded, there it was. A screen full of the hot stocks you keep hearing about on the news. Stock symbols pinginig green and red. Nvidia. Amazon. Tesla. All right there, one tap away.
And the thought is instant: These companies must be doing well. Everyone's talking about them. What's a few hundred pounds just to try it out?
It feels harmless. It feels smart, even. You recognise the names. You use the products. How could it go wrong?
Let me stop you right there.
Because one of the most impactful pieces (in my opinion) of financial research ever published says that stock picking isn't just difficult. For the vast majority of people — including professional fund managers — it's a statistically losing game.
And I'm going to walk you through exactly why.
The Research That Changes Everything
In 2024, Professor Hendrik Bessembinder from Arizona State University published a landmark study called 'Which U.S. Stocks Generated the Highest Long-Term Returns?'
He analysed 29,078 publicly-listed stocks from the CRSP database (that's the gold-standard dataset used in academic finance) spanning from December 1925 all the way to December 2023.
Nearly 100 years of stock market data. Every single publicly traded company in the US.
Here's what he found...
More Than Half of All Stocks Lost Money
Read that again.
51.6% of all stocks in the study had negative cumulative returns.
That means if you randomly picked a stock and held it for its entire life on the market, you had a worse-than-coinflip chance of making any money at all.
And it gets worse.
In Bessembinder's earlier research, he found that 4 out of every 7 stocks failed to beat the return you'd get from a one-month US Treasury bill, bonds — basically the equivalent gains from cash sitting in a high interest Cash ISA savings account, just about keeping up with rate of inflation.
Let me put that in NHS terms.
Imagine you skipped a few Costa coffees, brought packed lunch to work, saved £200 a month, and invested it into a single stock you'd 'researched' on YouTube. There's a 57% chance that stock would underperform a basic savings account over its lifetime.
All that effort. All that stress watching the price go up and down between shifts. For worse-than-cash returns.
Only 4% of Stocks Created ALL the Wealth
This is the statistic that should make every stock picker sit down and change their game plan...
Bessembinder found that the top-performing 4% of listed companies produced the entire net gain of the US stock market since 1926.
The other 96%? They COLLECTIVELY just matched US Treasury bills (bonds), basically what you'd get in a high interest savings account.
Think about that. Out of nearly 30,000 stocks across a century, around 1,000 of them were responsible for every penny of wealth the stock market created.
And it gets even more concentrated than that. Just 86 stocks — less than 0.33% of the total — accounted for over half of all wealth creation.
Your odds of picking one of those 86 stocks out of nearly 30,000? About 0.003%.
You'd have better odds betting on a specific number in roulette. (odds of single number in roulette = 1/35, 0.03%)
The Average Stock Didn't Even Survive Long Enough to Matter
Here's something most people don't think about when they're picking stocks.
The average stock in Bessembinder's study was only publicly listed for 11.6 years. The median was just 6.8 years.
Only 31 stocks out of 29,078 survived the entire 98-year study period.
More than 9,000 stocks were delisted from exchanges for negative performance reasons.
Nearly all companies 'died' in the end.
And the single most common outcome for a stock in the study? A 100% loss. Total wipeout.
So the stock you're thinking of buying after watching a TikTok video? Statistically, it's more likely to disappear completely, in less than a decade, than to become the next big thing.
Even the Winners Had Modest Annual Returns
Here's the part that surprised me most.
The 17 best-performing stocks in the entire study — the absolute cream of the crop over nearly a century — had an average annualized compound return of just 13.47%.
That's obviously fantastic over decades. But it's not the 'get rich quick' number most stock pickers are chasing.
The magic wasn't in picking the right stock at the right time. The magic was time itself.
Altria Group, the top performer with a cumulative return of 265 million percent, achieved that with an annualised return of about 16.3%. Incredible, yes. But only because it compounded for 98 years.
As Warren Buffett puts it: "The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient."
Note that 95% of Warren Buffett's entire wealth grew AFTER his 65th birthday.
The data screams the same message. Time in the market beats timing the market. Every single time.
The Headline Stocks Already Had Their Run
Here's something that catches a lot of people out.
You see Nvidia on the news. Tesla is trending on X. Amazon just smashed another earnings report. And you think: These are the winners. I should buy them now.
But here's the problem. The enormous returns from those stocks came from investing in them BEFORE they became headline news. Not AFTER.
Once a stock has already rocketed to all-time highs, the maths changes completely. The risk of a significant downside fall massively outweighs the likelihood of further outsized returns that beat average market growth. You're not getting in early.
You're arriving late to the party and paying full price for the drinks. 😒
So to actually profit big-time from stock picking, you'd need to spot the winners before they become the hot stocks everyone's talking about. Before the momentum kicks in. Before the hype drives the price up when nobody else is buying.
Now think about what that actually requires.
You'd need deep research into specific industries.
You'd need to understand company financials, competitive dynamics, management quality, and market positioning.
You'd need impeccable timing — buying when others are fearful, holding when others are panicking. You'd need access to information and analysis that gives you an edge.
And even then, you'd be going up against professional traders at hedge funds and investment banks with quantum computing. People with decades of experience, teams of analysts, multi-million pound software systems, proprietary data, and industry contacts that you and I will never have. These are the people who do this 80 hours a week for a living — and as we've already seen, 90% of them still can't beat a simple index fund long term.
Meanwhile, you've got a qualification in healthcare. You trained for years to save lives, not to trade stocks with your mobile phone.
I need not say more.
Coming Up in Part 2...
So the data is clear. Stock picking is a losing game for the overwhelming majority of people.
But here's the good news — and it's really good news.
There's a strategy so simple, so low-effort, and so perfectly suited to busy NHS professionals that it almost feels like cheating. A strategy where...
you automatically own every future winner,
where the losers can't hurt you,
and where the only thing you need to do is show up consistently.
In Part 2, I'll show you exactly what that strategy is, how it works, the real NHS maths behind it, and the step-by-step action plan to get started — even if you've never invested a penny before.
I'll also tackle the ego trap that stops most people from accepting this data. Because the hardest part isn't the maths. It's admitting that boring beats exciting when it comes to your money.
Don't miss it. Part 2 drops soon.
Sources:
Bessembinder, H. (2024). "Which U.S. Stocks Generated the Highest Long-Term Returns?" Journal of Performance Measurement, Fall 2024.
Bessembinder, H. (2018). "Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?" Journal of Financial Economics, 129(3), 440-457.
Bessembinder, H., Chen, T.F., Choi, G., Wei, K.C.J. (2023). "Long-term Shareholder Returns: Evidence from 64,000 Global Stocks." Financial Analysts Journal, 79(3), 33-63.
SPIVA U.S. Scorecard, S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Ready to Start? Here's Your Next Step
You've just read the numbers. You know what starting early does. You know what waiting costs. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you're probably thinking — "okay, but where do I ACTUALLY begin?"
That's exactly where I come in.
One-to-One Investment Coaching — Built for NHS Professionals like you~
I've spent 15 years making every investing mistake you can possibly make.
I bought the wrong funds. I only invested in individual stocks. I panic-sold at the wrong time. I ignored tax efficiency for years and handed money to the government I didn't need to. I read over 80 investment books — from Warren Buffett to Nassim Taleb to Howard Marks to Morgan Housel — so I could filter out the noise and find what actually works for someone with a busy NHS career and a real life to live.
You get all of that. In a few focused sessions. Without any of the painful, expensive lessons.
Think about it this way.
Most people spend years making avoidable mistakes before they find their feet with investing. Wrong accounts. Wrong funds. Wrong timing. Each mistake costs real money — sometimes thousands of pounds.
My coaching compresses that entire learning curve. You skip the mistakes. You start right. You build faster.
And Here's the Part That Surprises Most People
This coaching effectively PAYS FOR ITSELF!
Within the first few months of working together, most clients unlock tax rebates and tax-efficient strategies they didn't even know existed — through their NHS pension, SIPP contributions, ISAs, and workplace expenses they were entitled to claim back but never did.
That money? It was always yours. You just didn't know how to claim it.
Add in the investment returns from starting sooner and starting smarter — and the coaching fee isn't a cost. It's an investment with one of the fastest returns you'll ever make.
Here's What I Want You to Do Right Now
Step 1 — Check your financial health in under 5 minutes
Before anything else, take the free Financial Health Score self-assessment. It gives you an honest snapshot of exactly where you stand with your money right now — budgeting, debt, savings, investing, and tax efficiency.
No judgment. Just clarity.
Step 2 — Book your 1-to-1 coaching session
If you're ready to stop guessing and start building — reach out directly.
📧 Email: simon.wong@medicalfinanceacademy.com
📞 Phone/WhatsApp: +44 7923 069 623
Whatsapp: +44 7923 069 623
P.S. The biggest regret I hear from NHS professionals I coach? "I wish I'd started this sooner." Let's make sure that's not you.
One conversation could be the financial turning point you look back on in ten years and think — "that's when everything changed."
The knowledge is here. The plan is here. The only thing missing is you.
Let's build your financial future — properly, this time.
Disclaimer
All content on this blog is provided for general financial education and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, legal or any other professional advice. Nothing on this site takes into account your individual objectives, financial situation or needs, and you should not rely on it to make any financial decision.
You remain solely responsible for your own decisions and must do your own research, due diligence and independent learning before acting on any information mentioned or implied here. Examples, case studies and any numbers used are purely illustrative and cannot be guaranteed or replicated in your circumstances.
Investing and financial planning carry risks, and the value of any investment can go down as well as up. Before making any financial, investment or tax decisions, you should seek personalized advice from a suitably qualified, regulated professional adviser.