> If you don't know enough to stock pick, buy the index.
While I am in general agreement with your position, I see statements like this frequently when stock trading comes up. References to the market or the index. There isn't one, monolithic tradable "market". Rather there are dozens of different index views of the broader market, some of which are better than others. If you know so little about stock trading that you think a service like Robinhood is a good idea you probably don't know enough to choose a good index either.
Yes, that was an oversimplification. I had typed it as 'buy indices' but decided that would require explaining which indices, and I didn't want to get into that rabbit hole. And I didn't want to look like a shill for some particular vendor's fund. In any case, some concrete examples are VTI, VXUS, and BND/VTEB.
By simplicity I was talking about the fact that I don't need to fill out paperwork. Filling out paperwork is unrelated to the forecasting which companies will succeed. The point is, if it were 2005 and I wanted to buy Apple stock, without Robinhood I probably wouldn't have bothered.
While I am in general agreement with your position, I see statements like this frequently when stock trading comes up. References to the market or the index. There isn't one, monolithic tradable "market". Rather there are dozens of different index views of the broader market, some of which are better than others. If you know so little about stock trading that you think a service like Robinhood is a good idea you probably don't know enough to choose a good index either.