Stocks have no correlation with reality in the short-term. They are all gamed by the pig-men. Any news you read about any company or commodity has been pre-filtered and time-released to get you to either buy, sell, or short. The pig-men wait in the wings for you to make your move and then they take advantage of it. You can never beat them, they have access to huge amounts of capital and far more information than you ever will.

Over the long-term you can best inflation in index funds.

This is not financial advice, just an observation gained from painful personal experience.