I think a few stock pickers are really good at their jobs while a lot of others are mediocre to plain bad. The problem is that the ones that are consistently good are usually boutique hedge funds not open for normal people, some of them like Renaissance Tech only invest their own money and take no external funds anymore. Part of this is that their edge only works if their moves don't alter the market too much and for that there's a limit to how much money they can manage. But at the end of the day if you are not a rich investor with access to stuff like that I wouldn't be surprised if chances are an index fund is going to outperform most stuff Wall Street might try to sell you.