The “stock picker’s market” narrative.

I’m sure most of you have seen or heard the suggestion that ‘22 was, and ‘23 will be, “a stock picker’s market.” The idea here seems to be that with popular expectation of below average returns, stock picking is a better strategy than indexing or ETFs.
I’m putting this up for the sake of friendly conversation.
My own thoughts on that take are:
1.It seems to assume a near term time horizon for determining relative success or failure. Rather than “accumulate for the future”, it seems to suggest, “find delta during this market”. I don’t have a problem with that. I respect that we don’t all have the same current state, goals, or time horizon. However, this narrative seems less sensible than accumulating for the long term, for most investors here.
2.This far into market decline, a lot of defensive stocks have been bought into relatively high valuations. Opting to take a momentum strategy now means many are likely to miss opportunities to load up on stocks which will perform poorly in down markets, but rip on market recovery. I can see an argument for “lose less, gain less” for people with wealth preservation priorities vs wealth growth priorities.
3.It seems to ignore alternative strategies like using ETFs with covered calls and cash secured puts to be diversified while also generating relative upside. Since I don’t have a crystal ball, this strategy seems to make sense by allowing accumulation for the long term, while also beating a flat or down index. The risk here is obviously reduced potential upside in the near term. Relative to the difficulty of reliably picking winners this far into a down market, that risk seems favorable if the goal is greatest likelihood of positive outcome, as opposed to greatest potential positive outcome, in the near term.
Wrapping up— I’m not married to the thoughts I’ve put up here. I respect and appreciate that I don’t know it all.
All friendly conversation is welcome. Thank you in advance for your thoughts. $Apple(AAPL.US)$ $Nasdaq Composite Index(.IXIC.US)$ $Invesco QQQ Trust(QQQ.US)$ $ProShares UltraPro Short QQQ ETF(SQQQ.US)$ $Tesla(TSLA.US)$ $Tuttle Capital Short Innovation ETF(SARK.US)$ $ARK Innovation ETF(ARKK.US)$