Think of buying a mining rig as buying a business.
Now think of buying coins directly as investing in a business (stock market).
If you have a business it really doesn't matter if your sales fall a little, if you are still generating a profit then you are making money.
If you invest in the stock market and the price of your stocks fall then you have lost money, no if's buts or maybe's.
The only way to make money through investing is if coins go up, if you invest in hardware then you can mine until you feel you have enough profit and then sell the harware. By buying hardware you are not gambling on price volotility of coins, you have invested in a physical ASSET that will retain value no matter what crypto does.
You can certainly grow your investment heavily through direct investment but you can just as easily lose a LOT. Invest 50k into coins, the price drops 10% (which is does a lot!) and you just threw away 5k.
Investing directly gives you no safety net - prices go down and you lose. It works EXACTLY the same as stock market investing, most wealthy investors buy businesses as their main income and have the stock market as a smaller piece of their portfolio (for good reason).
Yes actually you were right to the point my friend, but as for me, it depends on the situation, because sometimes when we say buying hardware in order to begin mining, there are still a lot of stuffs to do, as for example some countries have really high cost of electricity, which is also why some of them just surrendered there mining rigs and just go to trading or investing, aside from that if you don't have enough resources to begin with mining or hardware it could also be hard for you when you're still beginning, while on the other hand investing into stock market that could also lead you to lose instantly can be used as an initial move to start positioning yourself and build your own business when the time comes, but this doesn't mean that investing into stock market and crypto has the upper hand compared to building rigs or businesses.