If things are simple, everyone would be doing it, and then with near perfect information, no one would have an advantage and therefore rewards wouldn’t be there.
Sometimes “difficulty” is the perfect barrier to entry for just about everyone else which means a greater opportunity for someone who takes the time to understand to take advantage of the opportunity. The key is understanding and objectively deciding if the risk/reward is there and at your tolerance level and/or the purpose. There is a place for using different financial instruments, otherwise they wouldn’t exist. Stock options are a good example. Put options are a good “insurance” policy if you work at a company that gives you stock options that are in-the-money but haven’t fully vested..You would “insure” your unvested in-the-money company given stock options with low cost slightly out of money put options that costs you very little. That way if your company stock tanks, you capture your gain from the put options as your company’s stock tanks.
If the company stock holds it’s current price or goes higher, your purchased put option expires useless but your company issued options are worth something meaningful. Having the patience and time to understand complex things is a good thing. I can think of many people that lost their company benefit because they didn’t bother to understand hedging strategies when they worked at volatile companies, because frankly “it was too difficult to understand”…You just have more tools that you know are available, more so than people that don’t bother to take the time/patience/etc to understand.
Part of the reason why I think a lot of americans are in the big financial messes they are in is because they don’t bother to take the time to understand what they are signing up to. Either the shutoff completely trying to understand and “use the the force” or they listen to someone else says and trust what they say..And then when the crap hits the fan, they blame everyone else. Case in point… Look at all the alt-a, stated income loans…Sure blame it on the banks. But really, did any of these people bother to try to understand anything or did they kinda just pleaded ignorance and now pushed the responsibility to someone else?
I don’t know… But the mentality of what some called “learned helplessness” that is prevalent is really astonishing to me. Learned helplessness eventually leads to “getting screwed” and if that wasn’t bad enough, inevitably leads to “blame someone else for it”…at least that’s what’s been happening.
