[jwheeler79]

If you're interested in actively managing your own portfolio, for some reason this isn't mentioned much places, but you need to have a deep understanding of financial accounting. That will allow you to read and make sense of financial statements. There is no other way, if you're an active, vs. passive, investor. Then one easy strategy is to do what Charlie Munger calls, "sit on your ass investing". That's where you wait for bargains in strong companies to come along and you swing real big. Diversification is not as important if you know what you're doing. And you don't have to sit around if the market is fairly priced, just when it's high. During that time, when you're not doing much investing, you should be reading, studying, and aspire to get into more special situations (arbitrage) and look for Ben Graham style net nets with micro to small cap companies that aren't as popular. Even OTC market value investing with your own scuttlebutt. There aren't much of those so you have to see what ratios people substitute for those nowadays. For example, you're not going to find decent insurance companies selling at less than their working capital minus total debt. Those used to exist after the Great Depression. Now you have to find companies say, selling at some higher ratio than what would have made a decent margin of safety in those days. It can take a long time and a lot of watching the market, looking at different stats to know what you should be looking for.