[JohnN]

I've heard about "investing in a mutual fund" a million times and I am surprised these seasoned professionals advised googlers to do that. With enough humility, hard work and emotional control you have a better chance of beating the market. I've never been satisfied with investing in mutual funds because the average returns will be lowish - 5-7%.

So I studied Buffett, Peter Lynch and few other well known investors strategies. It took me about 4-6 months tracking their histories and the reasons behind their decisions. From this I developed my own strategy based largely on Buffett's and its worked a treat. Generally getting about 15% growth a year.

But then I spend weekends looking at annual statements, reading investment forums and have even gone to the Annual General Meetings. For me its all fun.

I guess the Googlers may not have time for that but I believe it makes no sense buying stock of companies you can reasonably assume will perform badly for the next 5years or so (e.g. mortage companies!). Thats what you do when you buy an index fund. You get the good with the very bad.

[mlinsey]

The advice is to invest in an index fund, not a mutual fund. Most mutual funds are exactly the wrong things to invest in, because they eat up much more of your investment in management fees and they also have a history of usually not beating simple index funds.