I invest and do well with it. However, that came with a high price of "learning". I do not recommend that the average joe just buy into random stocks hoping for

I invest and do well with it. However, that came with a high price of "learning". I do not recommend that the average joe just buy into random stocks hoping for the best. Yes, people have made a lot of money doing that - however, far more people have lost a lot of money doing it. Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a great read. If you want entertainment value to invest in something like activision blizzard with disposable income, go for it. All in all, I'd invest in bond-funds in about 1 year from now for the long haul. FTBAX, for example, has a tax-free annualized yield of about 7%. If you are really looking for aggressive growth, go jump into an equity position in a promising startup that doesn't know their value. Watching companies like Microsoft and Amazon IPO and grow 100x just doesn't happen as VCs are getting all their returns from that actual IPO and not the growth post-IPO.