Are you wanting to play the stock market for fun? To get rich quick? Or to build wealth in the long term? You need to decide on your motives.
Since you're still young, this is the best time to get a solid long-term strategy in place, but you need to look at your finances holistically. First, if you have any debt other than a mortgage, get it paid off. If you don't have enough savings to cover 6-12 months of living expenses in case your income dries up, get that in place. After that, whatever is left over after covering your living expenses month to month, just put it in the S&P.
In that case, you should follow my advice and do exactly the thing you dismissed in your question: buy and hold for years. Don't be flipping stocks every few months, trying to time the market, and guess where the tech trends are going (even if you are in that industry -- you don't have as much time to follow what's going on as analysts who do it as their full time job). It's well established that broad market indices outperform these other strategies for passive investors.
If you want to diversify, diversify into fixed-income investments or dividend funds. Things like S&P and Nasdaq are generally biased towards high-growth sectors like tech.
Comments
Are you wanting to play the stock market for fun? To get rich quick? Or to build wealth in the long term? You need to decide on your motives.
Since you're still young, this is the best time to get a solid long-term strategy in place, but you need to look at your finances holistically. First, if you have any debt other than a mortgage, get it paid off. If you don't have enough savings to cover 6-12 months of living expenses in case your income dries up, get that in place. After that, whatever is left over after covering your living expenses month to month, just put it in the S&P.
I guess my main motivation is building weath in the long term, but thanks for the advice!
In that case, you should follow my advice and do exactly the thing you dismissed in your question: buy and hold for years. Don't be flipping stocks every few months, trying to time the market, and guess where the tech trends are going (even if you are in that industry -- you don't have as much time to follow what's going on as analysts who do it as their full time job). It's well established that broad market indices outperform these other strategies for passive investors.
If you want to diversify, diversify into fixed-income investments or dividend funds. Things like S&P and Nasdaq are generally biased towards high-growth sectors like tech.