It’s hard to beat the market. Ok, but what is “the market”?

Common advice you get everywhere: “Don't try to beat the market, just invest in X”. The irony is that X always seems to be something else.

In this sub, it usually VOO or SPY. But this sub is mostly used by people from the US. If you visit a European investing sub and tell them you are “100% in SPY/VOO”, they will tell you that's it's hard to beat the market and that's it's better to invest in the MSCI World.

Then you do that and next time people will tell you “it's hard to beat the market, you better also invest into the MSCI EM.” Alright, so you throw some emerging markets into the mix.

Then you come back here and everybody points out that SPY has, in fact, consistently beat the MSCI World. Ok, you think, that's actually true. Maybe you should mix in 50% SPY as a compromise? Only to realize that the Nasdaq 100 in turn has beaten SPY consistently as well. And Apple outperformed the Nasdaq 100. So all in Apple? Because it's hard to beat the market?