There are good fund managers. The problem is by the time you have enough data to know whether a fund manager is capable of generating alpha, he's probably getting ready to retire and/or hiking his fees.

So it looks like I’ll just keep investing in the target date funds.

Passive investors should still learn what a covered call is

This x's infinity.

LOL, @sshat. I actually made one long post and reformatted for readability.

That my friend would be the trick.

I would suggest reading up on most everything that Taleb has written. Fooled by Randomness and Antifragile are great books.

As for picking winners, I mean thats hard right. TS will range at this...But I would suggest with starting with what you know.

For instance, why did Bezos quit a cushy job at DE Shaw in the 90s? He was a CS major and knew the internet was going to be big and that he wanted to participate.

The problem is, if you just have a thesis, markets are perfectly efficient, but they more or less do a good job of pricing things. You have be patient, things to do go on sale. Markets approximate a fair / mean price through overbought and oversold conditions on all time frames.

The extremes inform the mean. For example, the '07 / '08 bottom was oversold on the monthly time frame. This is the timeframe the long term investor wants to be looking at. So you were patient and now (eg '08) you have an opportunity. Whats your thesis?

You like tech, OK what AAPL BA, GOOGL? Sounds good to me.

That is an over simplification, but the point is, and this is just common sense, it is not always a good time to buy. Most people, especially in the industry (bc that is how they make money), will take the safe position and tell you that I am wrong.

But pause, step back and ask yourself. What does common sense have to say about this?

Also, some of Robert Kiyosaki's books are pretty good, I really like Cash Flow Quadrant for example.

This is all you need to do: https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual.../overview/0306

It gives you the appropriate allocation of US stocks, international stocks, US bonds, international bonds, and slowly becomes less risky the closer you get to retirement. You can play with the slider to see how it works. Anyone recommending individual stock picks, sector rotations, dividend strategies, etc, is not giving you good advice.

If you want to learn why this is a good strategy, get a book like Bogleheads guide to investing or a random walk down wall street. They make a very compelling case as to why the vast majority of people should stick to indexing through low cost index funds like Vanguard, Fidelity, of Schwab provides and not use money managers. There's a lot of data and studies to back this idea up. I follow stocks for a couple hours a day how many people follow sports teams. 90% of my money is in index funds just like the target date fund, and I set aside about 10% of my money for basically gambling on some stock picks. I limit myself to 10%, because even though I spend hours a day following news, reading balance sheets, I'm not sure I have an edge on the market, so I try to limit my losses.

I wouldn't pay anybody to actively or passively run your money. Do it yourself passively with index funds or a target date fund. Set it up and contribute to it regularly and forget it. You don't want the stress of checking individual stock prices daily. You'll burnout or blow up your account or both.

After maxing out my Roth, would you suggest buying index funds with my regular account as well?

THIS.

Why did you choose a Roth vs a SEP?

Just wondering, would you guys give the same advice to a canadian? If not what is the canadian equivalent?

Is the primary goal for this money retirement? Assuming yes, I would first look at possible other tax sheltered options first, so it would depend on your life situation. Are you married? Does your work offer a 401k, 403b, TSP (civil service, uniformed service), or HSA? Are you self-employed? Assuming you have no other tax sheltered investment options available, I would then buy index funds in your normal account.

I am sorry about the lack of clarity. If you would like to be more specific I will try and rephrase.

Basically yes. Here's a good starting resource: https://canadiancouchpotato.com/model-portfolios/

The fundamental principles for why index funds are good is the same if you're American or Canadian. Americans have equivalents of TFSA (IRA?) and RRSP (401k) but they work a bit differently so some advice there applies and some doesn't.

Edit: Just saw this: https://canadiancouchpotato.com/2018...fund-solution/ . If you really want something simple these seem likely to be a good way to do it [But I haven't read too much about them - so do your research].

Thanks man!

Put your money in S&P 500 and the other vanguard things that other people have mentioned on here. Don't try and select stocks on your own unless you know what you are doing.

I did not listen to people on here and was stupid and lost a lot of money investing in ****ty companies that I thought I understood. I did not know what I was doing and paid the price. Don't make my mistake. I use to believe for some reason that stocks on average go up in price over time. It seems that this is not the case. Most companies end up failing in the long run.

This year was a bull market right? I did not make money this year even in the bull because of my mistakes.