Good luck finding the best fund and best strategy
Play in range of outcomes, focus on goals and be happy if you are able to ride growth assets to make your life better (financially)
Even if someone does manage to find a winning strategy, they rarely stick around to reap the rewards. Every active strategy, even the best ones, will experience periods of brutal underperformance relative to the index.
Human psychology is hardwired for loss aversion. When an investor sees their "differentiated strategy" losing money while the boring Nifty 500 or S&P 500 is chugging along, cognitive dissonance sets in.
They capitulate.
They abandon the strategy at the exact moment of maximum pain (the bottom of the drawdown) and switch to whatever else is currently winning. They end up constantly buying high and selling low, paying a heavy behavioral tax.