Should I buy individual stocks or mutual funds?
Individual stocks are for traders. If you are an investor for the long run you should just buy an indexed mutual fund like S&P 500 (ETF ticker SPY) or Total Stock Market mutual fund and add to it when you have money to invest, then sit back and enjoy life.
SPY will never go to zero unless the entire world economy is destroyed for ever (which will never happen). If it goes down in a crash it mey go down 50% not 100%. In any case it will come back up in a few years like it did in 2008 when SPY went down to about $80 and back up to $180 in 2013. But individual stock like Washington mutual went to zero, and never recovered.
Do not buy individual stoks if are not monitoring your stock all the time, since at any time you stock could crash and if you are not monitering it at that second you might be too late to sell. |