I don't know who you are "fung derf" but you couldn't be more wrong. For those of us who worked for wages our entire lives, putting whatever you can afford to into a mutual fund and leaving it there is actually the WORST thing you can do. 28% last year was far less than 1/2 of what I made trading micro cap and pink sheet stocks, and so far this year, I'm up over 35%. No reasonably safe mutual fund can do that without taking the same kind of risks that we take in micro caps, unless they're into gold or some other speculative investment, in which they have great years and lots of very bad years. Even the best mutual funds are fortunate if they can average 10-15% over a 20-30 year period. How did your mutual fund do during 1973-1975, 1987-1989, 2000-2002 and 2008?
I'm just a dumb old country boy with a HS education who worked for "the man" all my life, yet I retired at 55 with no pension and live quite well solely by trading stocks. You very seldom make BIG money with safe investing, risk=reward, but by doing very good DD, spreading your risks between 20-25 stocks, letting those winners RUN and not taking profits too soon, and by getting out of losers before they hurt you - most anyone can make great money in the market.
I simply use the logic that I'm not nearly as smart as the combined knowledge of all those Wall Street wizards, so I simply play in the arena most of them avoid - micro caps and penny land. All I need is ONE big winner each year to live comfortably and increase my net worth, which is now 40% more than when I retired 13 years ago.
Why on earth would you post such negative comments about someone's investing abilities, when the main benefit of MBs like this is to share ideas, DD, and opinions. I want everyone to be a successful investor, but you seem to think you are more qualified than someone else, and I highly doubt that you are.
