I take a slightly more aggressive approach to saving for retirement than most. For now, 100% of my retirement contributions are invested in various mutual funds. These mutual funds give me partial ownership of thousands of different domestic and foreign companies. At this stage in my life, I don’t see much of a reason to not focus exclusively on stocks. As I hit my 30’s, in a few short years, I’ll probably begin dabbling in the world of bonds.
Seeing that I have some kind of affinity for the stock market, you’d think I’d be pretty market savvy. I’m not. I picked a few solid performing mutual funds and never looked back. So far this seems to have worked out for me.
What scares the crap out of me is investing in individual stocks.
It’s like going to Vegas and betting it all on black. Okay, not really. One can chart, look at P/E ratios, and spend hours on Morningstar to get a better idea of what is going on with a specific company. But I still feel like this…
Since I know nothing about how to properly build a portfolio of individual stocks, I’m going to turn the soap box over and give you an opportunity to educate me by answering the following questions.
1. Do you own any individual stocks? (If no, why not)
2. Which ones (or how many)?
3, What’s a good source to learn the basics of dabbling in the stock market?
4. Have ya made a bad buy before? (WaMu, Blockbuster, etc?)
