You are waving around a winning lottery ticket as evidence of your strategy being better. What is your strategy? First of all, was this put even good? How much of your portfolio did you cover and how much as a fraction did it cost? But much more importantly, how many times have you hedged your portfolio in the last eleven years?
Hedges cost money. Market goes up long term. You will lose money long-term by hedging. That's the steady state of your strategy. That's the obvious reason why people don't hedge. I'm puzzled as to why you didn't acknowledge this. Instead, you offer an outlier where hedging performed better. Seems deeply disingenuous.
You don't have to do it constantly, and it would only lower your gains, not cause you to lose money unless you're over insuring.
All-time highs, inflated money supply, dropping interest rates, trade wars, overbought stocks, overloaded repo markets, bond yield inflection, and more signs over the last few months are a pretty clear signal to engage in hedging.
Hedges cost money. Market goes up long term. You will lose money long-term by hedging. That's the steady state of your strategy. That's the obvious reason why people don't hedge. I'm puzzled as to why you didn't acknowledge this. Instead, you offer an outlier where hedging performed better. Seems deeply disingenuous.