Are there any benefits to investing with a group of friends vs. by myself?
In most markets, there are fixed fees known as commissions. For instance, with a retail broker in the stock market, you can expect every trade to cost you $7.00 as an example, it is $7.00 regardless of if you place a trade for $25 or $25,000. You will see that just opening the trade, with a smaller amount, will eat up all of your profits and a majority of your capital, but if you opened the trade with more capital through the investment group, then the $7.00 commission will be much less of a tax on your trade. Basically, the only advantage is that the tax of commissions will be less if you have a larger account, if the commission is a fixed dollar value, which is not always true either. regardless, at $25 per month, not many markets will be accessible. There is also the possible educational aspect of investing with a group of people, or it can simply be clashing ideals. The benefits of pooling your money with others: The drawbacks of pooling your money with others: Practically Speaking - I say go for it. You stand to gain a lot of knowledge about how money works without having too much on the line. Good luck!
When you are starting out using a balanced fund can be quite advantageous. A balanced fund is represents a diversified portfolio in single fund. The primary advantage of using a balanced fund is that with it being a single fund it is easier to meet the initial investment minimum.  Later once you have enough to transition to a portfolio of diversified funds you would sell the fund and buy the portfolio. With a custom portfolio, you will be better able to target your risk level and you might also be able to use lower cost funds.  The other item to check is do any of the funds that you might be interested in for the diversified portfolio have lower initial investment option if you can commit to adding money on a specified basis (assuming that you are able to). Also there might be an ETF version of a mutual fund and for those the initial investment amount is just the share price. The one thing to be aware of is make sure that you can buy enough shares that you can rebalance (holding a single share makes it hard to sell some gain when rebalancing). I would stay away from individual stocks until you have a much larger portfolio, assuming that you want to invest with a diversified portfolio. The reason being that it takes a lot more money to create a diversified portfolio out of individual stocks since you have to buy whole shares. With a mutual fund or ETF, your underlying ownership of can be fractional with no issue as each fund share is going to map into a fraction of the various companies held and with mutual funds you can buy fractional shares of the fund itself. The other example I'd offer is the case for diversification. If one buys 10 well chosen stocks, i.e. stocks spread across different industries so their correlation to one another is low, they will have lower risk than each of the 10 folk who own one of those stocks per person. Same stocks, but lower risk when combined. You can try paper trading to sharpen your investing skills(identifying stocks to invest, how much money to allocate and stuff) but nothing compares to getting beaten black and blue in the real world. When virtual money is involved you mayn't care, because you don't loose anything, but when your hard earned money disappears or grows, no paper trading can incite those feelings in you. So there is no guarantee that doing paper trading will make you a better investor, but can help you a lot in terms of learning. Secondly educate yourself on the ways of investing. It is hard work and realize that there is no substitute for hard work. India is a growing economy and your friends maybe safe in the short term but take it from any INVESTOR, not in the long run. And moreover as all economies are recovering from the recession there are ample opportunities to invest money in India both good and bad. Calculate your returns and compare it with your friends maybe a year or two down the lane to compare the returns generated from both sides. Maybe they would come trumps but remember selecting a good investment from a bad investment will surely pay out in the long run.  Not sure what you do not understand what Buffet says. It cannot get more simpler than that. If you can drill those rules into your blood, you mayn't become a billionaire but surely you will make a killing, but in the long run. Read and read as much as you can. Buy books, browse the net. This might help. One more guy like you. I looked a bit at the first 3, .24% expense.  There's a direction to not discuss individual investments here, so the rest of my answer will need to lean generic. I see you have 5 funds. I'm surmising it's an attempt at 'diversifying'. I'll ask you - what do these five, when combined, offer that a straight S&P 500 index (or some flavor of extended market) doesn't?  I've gone through the exercise of looking at portfolios with a dozen funds and found overlap so great that 2 or 3 funds would have been sufficient.  There are S&P funds that are as low as .05%. this difference may not seem like much, but it adds over time.  To your last point, I'd consider a Solo 401(k) as you're self employed. One that offers the Roth option if you are in the marginal 15% bracket. "I don't think the advice to take lots more risk when young makes so much sense. The additional returns from loading up on stocks are overblown; and the rocky road from owning 75-100% stocks will almost certainly mess you up and make you lose money. Everyone thinks they're different, but none of us are. One big advantage of stocks over bonds is tax efficiency only if you buy index funds and don't ever sell them. But this does not matter in a retirement account, and outside a retirement account you can use tax-exempt bonds. Stocks have higher returns in theory but to have a reasonable guarantee of higher returns from them, you need around a 30-year horizon. That is a long, long time. Psychologically, a 60/40 stocks/bonds portfolio, or something with similar risk mixing in a few more alternative assets like Swenson's, is SO MUCH better. With 100% stocks you can spend 10 or 15 years saving money and your investment returns may get you nowhere. Think what that does to your motivation to save. (And how much you save is way more important than what you invest in.) The same doesn't happen with a balanced portfolio. With a balanced portfolio you get reasonably steady progress. You can still have a down year, but you're a lot less likely to have a down decade or even a down few years. You save steadily and your balance goes up fairly steadily. The way humans really work, this is so important. For the same kind of reason, I think it's great to buy one fund that has both stocks and bonds in there. This forces you to view the thing as a whole instead of wrongly looking at the individual asset class ""buckets."" And it also means rebalancing will happen automatically, without having to remember to do it, which you won't. Or if you remember you won't do it when you should, because stocks are doing so well, or some other rationalization. Speaking of rebalancing, that's where a lot of the steady, predictable returns come from if you have a nice balanced portfolio. You can make money over time even if both asset classes end up going nowhere, as long as they bounce around somewhat independently, so you'll buy low and sell high when you rebalance. To me the ideal is an all-in-one fund that aims for about 60/40 stocks/bonds level of risk, somewhat more diversified than stocks/bonds is great (international stock, commodities, high yield, REIT, etc.). You can just buy that at age 20 and keep it until you retire. In beautiful ideal-world economic theory, buy 90% stocks when young. Real world with human brain involved: I love balanced funds. The steady gains are such a mental win. The ""target retirement"" funds are not a bad option, but if you buy the matching year for your age, I personally wish they had less in stocks. If you want to read more on the ""equity premium"" (how much more you make from owning stocks) here are a couple of posts on it from a blog I like: Update: I wrote this up more comprehensively on my blog," The best way I know of is to join an investment club.  They club will act like a mutual fund, investing in stocks researched and selected by the group.  Taking part in research and presenting results to the group for peer review is an excellent way to learn.  You'll learn what is a good reason to invest and what isn't. You'll probably pick both winners and losers. The goal of participation is education.  Some people learn how to invest and continue happily doing so. Others learn how to invest in single stocks and learn it is not for them. If it's money you can lose, and you're young, why not?  Another would be motifinvesting where you can invest in ideas as opposed to picking companies. However, blindly following other investors is not a good idea.  Big investors strategies might not be similar to yours, they might be looking for something different than you.  If you're going to do that, find someone with similar goals. Having investments, and a strategy, that you believe in and understand is paramount to investing.  It's that belief, strategy, and understanding that will give you direction.  Otherwise you're just going to follow the herd and as they say, sheep get slaughtered. "You should only invest in individual stocks if you truly understand the company's business model and follow its financial reports closely.  Even then, individual stocks should represent only the tiniest, most ""adventurous"" part of your portfolio, as they are a huge risk. A basic investing principle is diversification.  If you invest in a variety of financial instruments, then: (a) when some components of your portfolio are doing poorly, others will be doing well.  Even in the case of significant economic downturns, when it seems like everything is doing poorly, there will be some investment sectors that are doing relatively better (such as bonds, physical real estate, precious metals). (b) over time, some components of your portfolio will gain more money than others, so every 6 or 12 months you can ""rebalance"" such that all components once again have the same % of money invested in them as when you began.  You can do this either by selling off some of your well-performing assets to purchase more of your poorly-performing assets or (if you don't want to incur a taxable event) by introducing additional money from outside your portfolio.  This essentially forces you to ""buy (relatively) low, sell (relatively) high"". Now, if you accept the above argument for diversification, then you should recognize that owning a handful (or even several handfuls) of individual stocks will not help you achieve diversification.  Even if you buy one stock in the energy sector, one in consumer discretionary, one in financials, etc., then you're still massively exposed to the day-to-day fates of those individual companies.  And if you invest solely in the US stock market, then when the US has a decline, your whole portfolio will decline.  And if you don't buy any bonds, then again when the world has a downturn, your portfolio will decline.  And so on ... That's why index mutual funds are so helpful.  Someone else has already gone to the trouble of grouping together all the stocks or bonds of a certain ""type"" (small-cap/large-cap, domestic/foreign, value/growth) so all you have to do is pick the types you want until you feel you have the diversity you need.  No more worrying about whether you've picked the ""right"" company to represent a particular sector.  The fewer knobs there are to turn in your portfolio, the less chance there is for mistakes!" "An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest, as Ben Franklin said. However, this is not a question I can answer for you, as it depends on the opportunities that are specifically available to you as an individual. Sometimes opportunities will knock on your door and you can take advantage, other times you have to create that door to allow opportunities to knock. Maybe you have a friend that is opening a side business, maybe there is a class you can get into at a trivial cost. What I suggest is to start investing just to get into the habit of it, not so much for the returns. Before you do, however, any financial advisor will advise you to begin with a emergency fund, worth about 3-6 months of your expenses for that time. I wanted to hit the ground running and start investing in stocks, but first things first I guess. ""Millionaire Next Door"" will help you get into a saving mindset, ""I will teach you to be rich"" is ok, plenty of other books. My advice is keep doing what you're doing, learn to start saving, and once you have obtained an emergency fund of the amount of your choosing, start looking to invest in Index Funds or ETFs through any platform that has LOW FEES!! I use Betterment, but Vanguard is good too, as they allow you to get your feet wet and it's passive. Hope this helps." If you're worried about investing all at once, you can deploy your starting chunk of cash gradually by investing a bit of it each month, quarter, etc. (dollar-cost averaging).  The financial merits and demerits of this have been debated, but it is unlikely to lose you a lot of money, and if it has the psychological benefit of inducing you to invest, it can be worth it even if it results in slightly less-than-optimal gains. More generally, you are right with what you say at the end of your question: in the long run, when you start won't matter, as long as you continue to invest regularly.  The Boglehead-style index-fund-based theory is basically that, yes, you might save money by investing at certain times, but in practice it's almost impossible to know when those times are, so the better choice is to just keep investing no matter what.  If you do this, you will eventually invest at high and low points, so the ups and downs will be moderated. Also, note that from this perspective, your example of investing in 2007 is incorrect.  It's true that a person who put money in 2007, and then sat back and did nothing, would have barely broken even by now.  But a person who started to invest in 2007, and continued to invest throughout the economic downturn, would in fact reap substantial rewards due to continued investing throughout the post-2007 lows.  (Happily, I speak from experience on this point!) "The high frequency trading you reference has no adverse impact on individual investors - at least not in the ""going to take advantage of you"" way that many articles imply. If anything, high-frequency trading is generally more helpful than harmful, adding liquidity to the system, although it can cause some volatility and ""noise"" in volume and other data, and the sudden entrance or exit of this type of trading can drive some abnormal market movements. As to research and time needed for trading, most data suggests that the less you try to ""beat the market"", the better you'll do.   Trade activity tends to be inversely related to returns, particularly for individuals.   Your best bet is likely to learn enough about investment risks to ensure you're comfortable with them, and invest in broadly diversified asset classes, regions, and sectors, and then mostly leave them alone, or rebalance annually.   You'll almost surely do a lot better that way than you will if you spend countless hours researching the ""right"" stocks to buy." The only sensible reason to invest in individual stocks is if you have reason to think that they will perform better than the market as a whole. How are you to come to that conclusion other than by doing in-depth research into the stock and the company behind it?   If you can't, or don't want to, reach that conclusion about particular stocks then you're better off putting your money into cheap index trackers. Over a period of time most mutual funds do not perform better that an index fund.  Picking and buying individual stock can be a great learning experience. If you have money and may need to access it at any time, you should put it in a savings account.  It won't return much interest, but it will return some and it is easily accessible.   If you have all your emergency savings that you need (at least six months of income), buy index-based mutual funds.  These should invest in a broad range of securities including both stocks and bonds (three dollars in stocks for every dollar in bonds) so as to be robust in the face of market shifts.   You should not buy individual stocks unless you have enough money to buy a lot of them in different industries.  Thirty different stocks is a minimum for a diversified portfolio, and you really should be looking at more like a hundred.  There's also considerable research effort required to verify that the stocks are good buys.  For most people, this is too much work.  For most people, broad-based index funds are better purchases.  You don't have as much upside, but you also are much less likely to find yourself holding worthless paper.   If you do buy stocks, look for ones where you know something about them.  For example, if you've been to a restaurant chain with a recent IPO that really wowed you with their food and service, consider investing.  But do your research, so that you don't get caught buying after everyone else has already overbid the price.  The time to buy is right before everyone else notices how great they are, not after.   Some people benefit from joining investment clubs with others with similar incomes and goals.  That way you can share some of the research duties.  Also, you can get other opinions before buying, which can restrain risky impulse buys.   Just to reiterate, I would recommend sticking to mutual funds and saving accounts for most investors.  Only make the move into individual stocks if you're willing to be serious about it.  There's considerable work involved.  And don't forget diversification.  You want to have stocks that benefit regardless of what the overall economy does.  Some stocks should benefit from lower oil prices while others benefit from higher prices.  You want to have both types so as not to be caught flat-footed when prices move.   There are much more experienced people trying to guess market directions.  If your strategy relies on outperforming them, it has a high chance of failure.  Index-based mutual funds allow you to share the diversification burden with others.  Since the market almost always goes up in the long term, a fund that mimics the market is much safer than any individual security can be.  Maintaining a three to one balance in stocks to bonds also helps as they tend to move in opposite directions.  I.e. stocks tend to be good when bonds are weak and vice versa. The biggest benefit to having a larger portfolio is relatively reduced transaction costs. If you buy a $830 share of Google at a broker with a $10 commission, the commission is 1.2% of your buy price.  If you then sell it for $860, that's another 1.1% gone to commission.  Another way to look at it is, of your $30 ($860 - $830) gain you've given up $20 to transaction costs, or 66.67% of the proceeds of your trade went to transaction costs. Now assume you traded 10 shares of Google. Your buy was $8,300 and you sold for $8,600.  Your gain is $300 and you spent the same $20 to transact the buy and sell.  Now you've only given up 6% of your proceeds ($20 divided by your $300 gain). You could also scale this up to 100 shares or even 1,000 shares. Generally, dividend reinvestment are done with no transaction cost.  So you periodically get to bolster your position without losing more to transaction costs.  For retail investors transaction costs can be meaningful.  When you're wielding a $5,000,000 pot of money you can make your trades on a larger scale giving up relatively less to transaction costs.