or is the stockmarket a "the only way to lose is not to play" kind of deal?
But yeah I’d trend towards “the only way to lose is not to play” side of things. It’s really hard to find other ways to efficiently save/grow your money, interest rates are crushed for saving money outside of the market.
There is very little, if even any way to recourse this without massive societal change. And getting such change in action is even harder.
getting water to flow up hill is massively hard. And in the foreseeable future, not possible. Until the day humanity discovers unlimited energy and move into a post scarcity society.
So play the game as much and as well as you can, and build up wealth for your family and future family. That's the only move left, unless you want to sacrifice yourself and your family's financial well-being for a cause that you nor your children will benefit from.
The "G" is also there mostly because it's the only thing that can be quantified across every company. For that reason it dominates the sampling, even though most values-driven investors care much more about the E and S.