Should I Bother with Individual Stocks?

Filed in archive Investing on June 9, 2006

I've been buying individual stocks through a discount online broker for a while, but I'm seriously considering taking the money out and just putting it in a mutual fund, for a few reasons.

I like buying and selling stocks, but I've done no better than the indexes, and it takes a lot of time to research stocks, and then I find myself checking them 15 times a day. I don't check my mutual fund performance 15 times a day, in fact I wouldn't even know how--I don't know the symbols for my mutual funds, and anyway, it's not the same to watch a fund's daily fluctuations versus individual stocks. I'm beginning to think that's a good thing.

The other problem with buying individual stocks is that you sort of live and die with them as they go up and down--it becomes personal, because you picked those stocks. When they do well, you feel like a genius and you love them. When they do poorly, you get angryy or depressed. (Lately I've been angry and depressed, along with most investors.) Why do I need this emotional roller coaster?

My mutual funds send me a statement every three months. I glance at it, say, "That's cool" or "That sucks" and then don't think much more about it.

Picking individual stocks is interesting, but what is it really doing for me? Not much. I think it's time to remove it from my intellectual space, stop it from sucking up more of my time and energy for gains that are the same as an index fund could pull.

Well, maybe I'll keep a few. I don't know if I can go cold turkey.

But the time has come to start moving this out of my control and put it in the lap of people who get paid to know what the heck the numbers on a balance sheet mean (as well as what's not being shown on the balance sheet).