A relative is going through a class in school where they are picking stocks to see who can make the most play money over the course of the class. On the surface, I think it’s a fine idea, but if this is the only exposure that the students have to the stock market, it might do more harm than good. Picking individual stocks is risky at best and pure gambling at worst. It can be a fun hobby but it should almost never be used as a real investment strategy. So what to do? I sent them some thoughts and figured I would post it here as well.
John Bogle, the visionary behind Vanguard, shares his wisdom in the book “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” which I’ve written about before. It’s concise, backed by research, and a must-read for anyone thinking of investing their money. Bogle’s book dispels common myths about investing. Here’s the bottom line: picking individual stocks or relying on mutual funds managed by others is a losing game over the long haul. Sure, there might be temporary hot streaks, but consistently beating the market over decades is effectively impossible. The market wouldn’t work if it was possible to consistently beat it.
So, what’s the winning strategy? Low-cost, total market index funds.
- Total Market Index Funds: These funds bundle everything in the stock market. When you invest in them, you’re effectively buying a slice of the entire economy. It’s the ultimate diversification.
- Low-Cost: The fees associated with these funds are ridiculously low—around 0.03%. Why? Because there’s no human actively managing them. It’s all math, ensuring that the fund mirrors the composition of the entire US market. If a company represents 3% of the total US market, its stock will constitute 3% of the fund.
The only thing left at that point is to figure out which actual funds to buy. This is where strategies can vary a bit, but they’re generaly fairly similar. Here are two popular strategies:
- VTSAX and chill. This is the simplest version of investing. VTSAX is as low cost fund that covers the entire US economy. Buy this one fund, don’t touch it, and reap the benefits when you need the money.
- Split between US, international, and bonds. You can vary the percentages based on your stage in life, but here’s a good starting point:
- 70% VTI – Low cost, total US market index ETF.
- 10% VXUS – Low cost, total international market index ETF
- 20% BND – Low cost, total bond market index ETF
Of course it’s important to remeember that all of this investing has a bigger tax burden than tax-advantaged accounts like a 401k or IRA. Investing directly in the market is generally only something to consider after you’ve maxed out your better options. Financial health can feel overwhelming but as I’ve written about before, this flow chart does a great job of breaking it down. Or if that’s too much, start with Dave Ramsey’s 7 Steps.
I’m no expert and you shouldn’t blindly follow anything I’ve written here, but you should have your own opinions about this. If you’re going to rely on individual stocks, you should read Bogle’s book and be able to explain why you think he’s wrong. It’s so easy to get sucked into thinking this has to be complicated, but the complicated route will almost always lose you huge amounts of money down the road.
Social Media Pause
About a month ago, I pulled the trigger and removed a bunch of “habit” apps from my phone. Instagram, Reddit, and my news app all got uninstalled. I decided I’d go for at least a week and see what happened. The result scared me enough that I’m still on a break from them.
I found that I would unconsciously pull out my phone and tap the screen where Instagram used to be. I purposely left that spot blank just to make the point to myself and I wish I had a way to track how many times I clicked that empty space!
It’s been a month now. Reddit is still uninstalled and so is my news app of choice. I can still access both of those on the web if I choose to, but that one extra step is enough that I rarely go there. (This isn’t going to be a fun 6 months of US news reading anyway so I’m fine skipping that mess.) Instagram did get reinstalled, but I limit myself to viewing it about once per week and I use the obscure UI menus to only look at posts from people I follow and skip all the suggested posts. Doing that in bulk helps me realize which accounts I’m interested in and which ones were just there to keep my feed populated with new stuff so I’ve been able to cut down on what I subscribe to.
This pause also helped me realize that I do like using Instagram stories to throw random content out into the ether to be consumed by anyone who chooses to use it. It feels more friendly than spamming text threads with too much content (which I probably do anyway.) That’s one of the same reasons that I like keeping this blog up too.
For now, I feel better reining things in a bit so that the phone is mostly just a utility that helps me in my life instead of a dopamine producer that I open out of habit. This isn’t the first time I’ve done stuff like this so I know it will creep back in, but at least there are periods of sanity.