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They shouldn’t. Pick a Vanfuard fund, put your money in it, and check back in a couple decades.

davidw 7y ago
That's what I've done, but I still idly (this is not really in the top 100 things I'm concerned about right now) wonder where this ends up if things sort themselves out so much.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  If this discussion is still narrowly tailored to the securities market, since this discussion was also about "insider trading", which is a unique prohibition to the securities market and not any other capital market then: Retail has no business in the securities market. thats where it ends up. stop playing. retail investors flocking to the stock market is a 40 year old meme that is built upon non-objective thought and gullibility. It is built on laziness. Retail doesn't meme commodities because there is almost no lazy investing approach to it. But the reality is that there are other capital markets. Retail isn't helping the stock market, they aren't helping the companies they like by buying stocks they "recognize", they are MAYBE lowering borrowing costs for the company, its executives and employees, but retail's trading has nothing to do with anything.
  - ebiester 7y ago
    Laziness? It's built on desperation. There were some solid ways to develop retirement strategies with lifelong careers, pensions, and other older retirement vehicles. However, pensions are largely irrelevant outside the public sector now, the older retirement vehicles have stagnated/become poor investments (like annuities, which have become a landmine for terrible fees), and what was left was 401ks and individual retail stocks. Mutual funds are a similar landmine, where transparency is lost and they're often built for the tax particularities of retirement accounts. That leaves retail and... ETFs, which we can only wait for someone to find an angle to extract more value at the expense of small investors' returns.
    - rolltiide 7y ago
      Yes, 401ks were hoisted on the public and threw the most responsible one's money into the stock market. Creating reliable liquidity for other institutional firms. It is pretty amazing and ingenious. No, it doesn't undermine the observation that retail shouldn't be playing.
deleted 7y ago
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gvhst 7y ago
In this case there still is the discussion of which Vanguard fund to pick. Putting your money into the SP500 is not the “market portfolio” so to speak. In that case you are overweight large-cap and overweight US. In short, picking an index fund is different (and in many cases leas complex) than picking individual stocks, but it’s still not a trivial exercise.
- nightski 7y ago
  If you want trivial just use a target date fund. Otherwise you are basically just going with a blend of 4-5 index funds and updating the allocation once a year. You can even copy the allocation used by their target date funds. It's not that complicated.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
There are still good reasons to buy-and-hold on single stocks as an individual investor, though doing so increases risk significantly over index and Vanguard-style funds.

That's what I've done, but I still idly (this is not really in the top 100 things I'm concerned about right now) wonder where this ends up if things sort themselves out so much.

rolltiide 7y ago
If this discussion is still narrowly tailored to the securities market, since this discussion was also about "insider trading", which is a unique prohibition to the securities market and not any other capital market then: Retail has no business in the securities market. thats where it ends up. stop playing. retail investors flocking to the stock market is a 40 year old meme that is built upon non-objective thought and gullibility. It is built on laziness. Retail doesn't meme commodities because there is almost no lazy investing approach to it. But the reality is that there are other capital markets. Retail isn't helping the stock market, they aren't helping the companies they like by buying stocks they "recognize", they are MAYBE lowering borrowing costs for the company, its executives and employees, but retail's trading has nothing to do with anything.
- ebiester 7y ago
  Laziness? It's built on desperation. There were some solid ways to develop retirement strategies with lifelong careers, pensions, and other older retirement vehicles. However, pensions are largely irrelevant outside the public sector now, the older retirement vehicles have stagnated/become poor investments (like annuities, which have become a landmine for terrible fees), and what was left was 401ks and individual retail stocks. Mutual funds are a similar landmine, where transparency is lost and they're often built for the tax particularities of retirement accounts. That leaves retail and... ETFs, which we can only wait for someone to find an angle to extract more value at the expense of small investors' returns.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    Yes, 401ks were hoisted on the public and threw the most responsible one's money into the stock market. Creating reliable liquidity for other institutional firms. It is pretty amazing and ingenious. No, it doesn't undermine the observation that retail shouldn't be playing.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

gvhst 7y ago

In this case there still is the discussion of which Vanguard fund to pick. Putting your money into the SP500 is not the “market portfolio” so to speak. In that case you are overweight large-cap and overweight US. In short, picking an index fund is different (and in many cases leas complex) than picking individual stocks, but it’s still not a trivial exercise.

nightski 7y ago
If you want trivial just use a target date fund. Otherwise you are basically just going with a blend of 4-5 index funds and updating the allocation once a year. You can even copy the allocation used by their target date funds. It's not that complicated.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

There are still good reasons to buy-and-hold on single stocks as an individual investor, though doing so increases risk significantly over index and Vanguard-style funds.