this is serious BS.
if i have that big amount of money, i will probably put 90 to 100% in FD. i can just live from the interests earned. and at most punt up to 10% into risky assets. why take higher risks to earn higher returns? unless you are greedy or ambitious enough to join the Forbes Asia Top 10 richest man club.
little money x small trades can equal to losing trades also. not just profitable trades.
if you have just 20k and if you choose to put in the banks, your money is guaranteed to lose out to inflation. at least if you put 20k into stocks with decent returns for the long term, this 20k can potentially generate more returns than the bank interests.
if you grab the statistics of all the bluchips (index stocks), you realise that most of them have gone up at least 2 or 3x times since IPO or the last 10 years (plus many yearly dividends). and if you happen to pick the bad ones (ie Cosco, Chartered, etc) your losses are limited to 1x only (without leverage). so your 2 or 3x profits outweigh the 1x risks in the longer term.
of course if you are really sucky at stock pickings, you will probably pick a basket of rotten stocks. then the failure in long term investing is not due to the strategy. its the person that is the failure.
as a long term investors, your objective is to pick potential and future bluechips. these stocks are most probably from the smaller and mid cap categories. because logically all the bluechips are unlikely to continue to outperform the index by so much as they are more stable and matured companies. then hold the stocks with discipline and patience.