re: Best online stock market classes & resources?

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Most professionals don't aim to beat the index - their aims are often completely different to ours and their benchmarks are different to ours.

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Now if we’re talking about wealth management, and far more than just investments/asset management (tax planning, estate planning, etc.), then that’s something completely different altogether and likely worth it for those who are extremely wealthy.

But if we’re talking about asset/investment management, then this is seems like a lot of nonsense, although it’s probably what the asset managers try to argue to sell their services.

So they can pretend that they have different benchmarks than the S&P 500 or the total stock market, but the reality is those are the benchmarks that they should be compared to. Or at the best least a benchmark based on risk-tolerance that people couldn’t easily target on their own passively after a little research and/or from some free advice on here, Reddit, boggleheads, and that many of the free investment applications and funds will do for them.

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As you get wealthier, you want uncorrelated returns with lower volatility.

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And this is a prime example. You’re describing a more conservative portfolio, with less allocation to equities and more allocation to fixed income-type assets, and therefore lower risk but a lower expected return.

There is no need to pay someone high fees for that. But I don’t even know if it’s true that people with high net worth are more risk averse than they would otherwise if it was far less. At least I think that that is secondary to their overall risk-tolerance regardless of wealth. In fact, I think I would likely have more risk-tolerance if I was wealthy, as my livelihood is less dependent on the losses, and wealth gives access to cheap borrowing to weather the losses before they rebound.

And I see from another post you might be referring to private equity (PE), but data are showing that those excess returns have shrunk significantly, and haven’t outperformed much in recent years. Furthermore, I think one of the most understated risks in investing is liquidity risk, which is far more of a risk in private equity. In addition, due to the difficulty in comparing private to public markets, I think there is a good chance the risk-adjusted returns, are overstated, and there is evidence to suggest that as well.

So one might get better returns (nothing near the >20% you’re hoping for, especially if the public markers aren’t getting a unusually high return as well) but I think the advantage, especially with the liquidity risk, is not high enough where one would be a sign isn’t portion into it.

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It's much harder to beat an index fund while reducing the risk.

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Which is why save for the few actively managed funds that have outperformed, many of which people don’t have access to even if they are extremely wealthy as some of the best performing funds are not open to outside investors (Renaissance Technology’s Medallion
Fund), are not worth it.

In fact, they’re not worth it because they largely take on more risk (leverage, short-selling, etc.), which is not only why the tend to underperform most of the time, but they often fail altogether. And this creates a survivorship bias, that makes actively managed fund performance look better better than they’re dismal record.

What’s even worse, is because of their strategies, many of the “best” asset managers and their funds, only outperform in the rare bear market and crashes, IF that were lucky, so they built their reputation on doing well once in a while, some dating back to the housing even dot-com crashes, despite severely underperforming long after and many failed predictions about similar crashes.

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For the average person, yes, indexing is pretty much the extent of what you should be doing. But if you're a wealthier individual, there are other asset classes open to you that do provide very good returns.

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There are many advantages to being wealthy, specially the ability to “buy, borrow, and die.” And of course there are certain investments that are exclusive to having a certain level of wealth, but those don’t typically require a significant amount of wealth, and they usually aren’t (if ever) completely different asset classes themselves (e.g., certain real estate investments requiring one to be a “qualified” investor). So maybe they have access to better investments theoretically (more opportunity can’t hurt), but I’m skeptical that they have access to some unique asset classes that are “better.” I’m even more skeptical than those are accessed through some active management by someone else, that requires significant fees that they couldn’t largely do themselves without the fees.

In other words, besides far broader wealth management services, I’m skeptical that there is a need for high fee asset management that is worth the costs that couldn’t be done on their own without much effort to achieve the same goals, regardless of one’s level of wealth from an average joe to Uber wealthy.

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I feel like this is spread around a lot but it's a bit more complex than that.

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I don’t disagree with you, but if you’re looking for less volatility, you are not going to get a return as good as a SP 500 index or a Total Market Index. Plus, most people who are substantially wealthy are looking for ways to avoid the taxman, not maximize their retirement.