For those who are just starting out, I cannot recommend the bogleheads.org wiki enough. It provides an excellent education in why a simple three or four fund portfolio is the most efficient way to accumulate wealth. I do not know if I would have done better following such an approach, but I am perfectly comfortable migrating to it as I become older, wiser, and am substantially richer than I was.

Do what you are always reading about in the trashy financial magazines and websites. Max out on those 401(k) contributions if at all possible. Max out on your Roth IRA whether through “back door conversions” or direct contributions. And, if possible, take a portion of your take-home pay and invest it in a broad index such as SCHB or VTI, every paycheck. If you must buy individual stocks, I recommend checking out a good newsletter (I have always liked the Fool Advisor) so you at least have the benefit of someone’s deep thinking. If it meshes with your own, make the investment with a bit more confidence than you might otherwise have done.

My investments as of today total $2.7 million. About half of that is in retirement accounts. About $200,000 is in 529 accounts, and the rest are in non-sheltered accounts. I have sold calls on most of my apple position, so come the end of January I will be a lot lighter on tech, and a lot more diversified. Though, there is a lot of time between then and now, so who knows how I will be positioned.

ETA: (At the request of someone, I am pasting my introductory post from Slickdeals here:
I’ve been a member of the FatWallet community for a long time, and one of the most popular threads, though not necessarily the most useful, was the Individual Stock Discussion thread. I figured, it couldn’t hurt to start one here.

Keep in mind that some people buy and sell a lot of stocks while others invest for the long term.
Some people do no research and others do lots of research.
Some people have good luck, and some people have bad luck.
Some people can afford to take a lot of risk while others cannot.
Some people lie about their investments; some post only their successes.

All of this is a warning to you – nobody cares more about your money than you do (with the possible exception of a financial advisor, who may want to take your money and therefore cares a great deal about it).

The vast majority of my investments are in very low cost ETFs, but I currently have a handful of individual stocks that I am invested in.

Apple 3.3% of my portfolio. (With options to sell most of it come January, at 155)
Googl 1.7%
MA: 0.8%
NYT: 0.3%
ROL: 0.3%
TMUS: 0.3%

I am happy to share my entire portfolio, and occasionally do so. I’ve been investing for a long time and have no idea how I am doing in comparison to how I would have done had I kept it simple and invested in a broad index fund and simply added to it as the years rolled by. What I do know is that for many years the returns in my 401(k) were essentially zero. That had something to do with market crashes. But my individual portfolio did much better. So, I THINK I’ve done better than I would have had I stayed with fund investments, but it is by no means a scientifically arrived at conclusion.

During the financial crisis, I made a lot of money by investing when others were selling. I recall promising myself that I would be more careful with my money once the markets recovered. For the most part, I ignored my promise, or at least delayed its implementation. This year, I changed my asset allocation so that I am investing nearly 20% of my portfolio in fixed income (5.5% of which is earning 7% under NYC teacher’s fixed income fund). Previously, I was essentially 100% invested in equities.

Additional advice to people interested in growing a nest egg is to head on over to bogleheads.org and review their investment wiki. It is very well done and may convince you to forgo individual stock picks altogether. If you need the thrill of stock picking, then I also suggest heading over to Fool.com and trying out their Stock Advisor service. You can try it and cancel for a refund, particularly if your portfolio is under $10,000 (I would not pay a penny in fees with such a small portfolio).)

@david-scubadiver Hi David – a little OT but I’ve always wanted to ask, are you the same Scubadiver who was active in the old Motley Fool forums? I was active there in the last century and learned a lot about early retirement before MF started charging. That led to a great exodus and I ended up on FWF, maybe you too?

Ha! I remember using MF before they started charging. I was in grad school, and was only allowed to work 10 hours a week for $10.50 an hour. I had more debt than I could bear to think about, was eating a potato with butter for every meal for weeks at a time, and had a credit score in the 500s. I was bummed that they started charging because I couldn’t afford to pay and was desperate to improve my finances. I loved it up until then… great humor and great advice.

Besides the investment/financial forums, MF had some great discussions about art, politics, and religion. It was a lot of fun.

And @david-scubadiver, I went back to MF a few years ago after it was free again but it just didn’t seem the same. Either they had changed, or I had.

@fivetalents said in Individual Stocks/Investments:
… I was bummed that they started charging because I couldn’t afford to pay and was desperate to improve my finances. I loved it up until then… great humor and great advice.

Besides the investment/financial forums, MF had some great discussions about art, politics, and religion. It was a lot of fun.

And @david-scubadiver, I went back to MF a few years ago after it was free again but it just didn’t seem the same. Either they had changed, or I had.

Thanks, I didn’t know about any of their their forums before this thread. I too checked it out when it became free again and also found it wasn’t what it used to be so I left/forgot about it.

@jaytrader Yes…but sometime i prefer seeing them in monitor but firewall blocking…

If you’re only blocked and not monitored, there’s always the possibility of proxies…

In that light, did you ever share how old you are? (if you don’t mind me asking). I’m not sure if you’ve said it in the past but it could put some of your posts into context.

PS - This was one of my favorite threads at FWF (when rationale for trades was shared too)… so thanks for bringing it here.

@David-Scubadiver I really liked your OP in the new thread at SD but I’m not a fan of their site and community… can you combine what you said in both OPs here?

In that light, did you ever share how old you are? (if you don’t mind me asking). I’m not sure if you’ve said it in the past but it could put some of your posts into context.

PS - This was one of my favorite threads at FWF (when rationale for trades was shared too)… so thanks for bringing it here.

I just added the SD post to the OP here. I am nearing 50 years old, with a wife and two young kids. I have had the benefit of high income, allowing me to take substantial risks in the markets, and this has helped me build up a very nice portfolio over the years.

If I like the service it might just encourage me to sell my individual stocks. I’ll likely start a new thread on this if I have anything useful to say after my experiment.

@David-Scubadiver Please do! I’d definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts/experiences.

I’ve finally funded at Schwab Intelligent Portfolio, Wisebanyan and Wealthfront. Wisebanyan is the least expensive and generates a portfolio that is pretty close to where I’d come out on. My only hesitancy with them is their longevity as well as the fact that they use e-mail to communicate rather than requiring you to log in and view/respond to a “secure message” like very other financial account I’ve had for the past ten years.

With a 68/32 split of stocks/fixed income, Wisebanyan invested me as follows, at an expense ratio of .09%

VTI 40.5%
VEA 21.9%
VWO 5.1%

LQD 8.5%
VCSH 3.2%
SJNK 3.1%
VGIT 7.6%
TIP 6.1%
VNQ 3%

Wealthfront invested me in the following at an expense ratio of 0.08%
VTI 35% (US Stocks)
VEA 26% (Foreign Stocks)
VWO 22% (Emerging Markets)
VIG 7% (Dividend Growth)
VTEB 5% (Municipal Bonds)
XLE 5% (Natural Resources)
But you have to tag on their .25% management fee, bringing it up to 0.33%

Schwab invested me in a plethora of funds at an expense ratio of 0.21%

Stocks (77.42%)
FNDX : SCHWAB FUNDAMENTAL US LARGE CO ETF 15.02%
SCHX : SCHWAB US LARGE CAP ETF 11.33%
FNDF : SCHWAB FUNDAMENTAL INL LARGE COM ETF 10.05%
FNDA : SCHWAB FUNDAMENTAL US SMALL COM ETF 7.76%
SCHF : SCHWAB INTERNATIONAL EQUITY ETF 7.11%
SCHA : SCHWAB US SMALL CAP ETF 5.10%
FNDE : SCHWAB FUNDA EMG MKTS LARGE COM ETF 5.07%
FNDC : SCHWAB FUNDAMENTAL INTL SMAL COM ETF 4.78%
SCHC : SCHWAB INTERNATNAL SMALLCAP EQY ETF 3.14%
SCHH : CHARLES SCHWAB US REIT ETF 3.09%
SCHE : SCHWAB EMERGING MARKETS EQUITY ETF 2.73%
VNQI : VANGUARD GLBAL EX US REAL ESTATE ETF 2.24%
Fixed Income (10.7%)
EMLC : VANECK VECTORS J P MORGAN EMERGING MKTS LOCCURRENCY BD ETF 5.95%
SHYG : ISHARES HIGH YIELD CORPORAT BOND ETF 4.75%
Commodities (4.74%)
IAU : ISHARES GOLD ETF 4.74%
Cash (7.14%)

Now I’m going to spend a few hours translating/researching…but this is good stuff!

Surprising about Wisebanyan communications in plain email, I wouldn’t be comfortable with that either.