I didn't know what stocks were until my first job out of college as a junior civil engineer. It was 1999, everyone in the office was talking about stocks, all

I didn't know what stocks were until my first job out of college as a junior civil engineer. It was 1999, everyone in the office was talking about stocks, all the time. There were magazines laying around like "Money", one I remember had a photo on the cover of a guy and the jet skis he bought with his smart stock investments. Lucky for me I didn't have any savings to 'invest', because it turned out all the stocks people talked about (Juniper Networks? comes to mind) weren't really worth anything, and led to permanent losses on a significant fraction of my colleagues savings. So...I think it's important to consider fundamental value. A diversified low cost US fund makes sense. I've also learned about bonds, I think medium grade US corporate is a good trade off, when it comes to bond funds you want fixed maturity date 'bullets'. Municipal bonds are good as well. Yada yada, AAPL.