There are masses of information available on companies / stock market. Assuming roulette wheel is fair, there is none other than 1/32 chance known.
Nobody can. Over a 20 year timeline, it’s essentially the same as a roulette wheel.
You seriously can't fathom that knowing financials, track record, ceo, products, pending deals, etc. etc. gives you more information than random chance? How do you make any informed choice about anything at all then?
But 20 years out, the hypothetical "I wish I had bought AAPL in 1996" is just as useless as the "I wish I had bet on green" comparison. In this scenario, it's an apt comparison.
Anyone making an informed choice in 1996, knowing financials, track record, ceo, products, pending deals, etc. etc. would have stayed the hell away from AAPL
The basic idea is the market is efficient (the Efficient Market Theory) and all information about the stock is alreay priced into the stock. Picking a stock to beat the market average is basically a random chance.
Real life markets are very clearly not perfectly efficient. Nor is stock price a perfect reflection of available information. Many/most/all? stock is prices on expectation i.e. guesses, not facts. Then there are all sorts of shenanigans like astroturfing and illegal manipulations/trading.