[filoleg]

> To get wealthy, you cannot get diversified

Sure, but not diversifying is also one of the most efficient ways to go broke. Which is something that diversifying will make much more difficult.

Also, full baloney. I was not diversifying for many years and it indeed made me great money (thanks MSFT). But when I started getting spooked and diversified, guess what?

I still ended up doing pretty well, even if it wasn’t on the same level as before (look up MSFT share price change between the start of 2017 and 2021). But it was so much safer and reliable, going broke wasn’t as much of a concern, and I knew I was much more secure in case of a downturn. Winning on risky triple digit percentage gains feel great, but I would rather take much safer diversified 50-60% gains over a 3 year period instead.

Not saying that those 50-60% gains are even close to what I would expect from truly safe plays. But safety and risk is a spectrum, and you have more choices than just “fully diversified super safe index funds” and “all-in on one single ticker.” You can adjust and make things diversified and safer than all-inning on a single ticker, while still maintaining some amount of risk that would allow for outsized gains.

[bdangubic]

I am not saying anything that you are attempting to dispute here... Your logic is sound and you can get rich doing it. But you won't get wealthy. And getting wealthy does carry higher level of risk, I would think that is common sense.

To me diversification goes against all logic because the rule #1 of investing should be that you as a investor KNOW what you are investing in. You can't tell me anyone investing in say S&P 500 has done extensive research on each every of the 500 companies. All they are hoping for is "hey, these are 500 biggest companies in the World, imma just put my chips here and hope for the best - history tells me that is probably safe bet."

On the other hand, you can do full-on research into a single or handful of companies and then put your chips there. You can't tell me that putting money in Magnificent-7 say 5 years ago was any riskier than putting money into S&P 500... and yet you could have gotten REALLY wealthy with the former and quite rich with the latter...

[filoleg]

> To me diversification goes against all logic because the rule #1 of investing should be that you as a investor KNOW what you are investing in.

I largely agree with what you say. However, diversification has degrees, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you gotta spray and pray across the whole range of S&P500 to be more diversified than the “all-in on a single stock ticker” strategy. Examples:

* All in one single stock ticker - no diversification

* All in a few different stock tickers that are in the same industry sector (that you are knowledgeable about) - diversified businesses, but not diversified across industries

* S&P500 spray and pray - largely diversified

Option #2 is imo the solid middle ground, and it gels perfectly fine with your idea that you gotta know what you invest in. Yes, it is riskier than option #3, because it doesn’t account for the scenario where the entire industry sector experiences a downturn. But it is still diversified, still has the potential to make you wealthy, and is not nearly as risky as option #1 (but also not as capped as option #3).