1986 Microsoft certainly had plenty of cash flow and was already nearly a decade old company at that point. You can go back in time to 1960s McDonald's or whatever corporate success story you want. It was still a risk to invest in MS in the 80s. Its still a risk today. But retail investors had the chance to bet that desktop computing was the next big thing...or that fast food was the next big thing...

Absent corruption, higher returns are correlated with higher risks. If everyone knew MSFT in 1986 or McD in 1960s was what it would be today, then everyone would have jumped in and brought the returns down.

Similarly, people are free to jump into GOOG or FB or AMZN, and if they want to accept the risk of paying sky high prices for the equity, then they might be rewarded with "life changing" returns.

There's never a free lunch. And most people don't have enough set aside where they can gamble it on large returns. If they did, they would have access to VC, PE, or HF.

It wasn't exactly a secret that desktop computing and computing in general was going to go big. Microsoft and computers were hyped up in the 80s, and Microsoft stock did pop right after the IPO. It continued to pop all through the 90s. And a savvy retail investor could have predicted the same with McD's in the 60s. McD's was a viral success.

If capital markets existed then as they do today, both of those companies probably would have waited until hitting $10B-$100B market caps before going public (although, McD being a non-tech company might be more difficult for them to raise money through VCs), totally squeezing average joe out.

100-1000x returns are life-changing even with as little as $500-$1000 invested. Plenty of retail investors with sub-million net worth have more than a few thousand dollars in disposable income.

There's college educated, six figure a year producers out there who don't qualify for "accredited investor" status because they didn't happen to be born into the lucky sperm club with a paid-for free ride to an ivy league school and a trust fund to boot. The regulations, as they are, are excessive and total bull shit.

Not only that, mechanisms exist for you to leverage the hell out of yourself and you'll be able to see your life changing 1000x return.