Avoid expensive fees and you are far ahead no matter what your strategy.
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Agreed. However, even unsophisticated investors (like me) can make a lot more money by owning their own stocks. The key is to buy stocks that have raised their dividends for decades. If a stock always raises its dividend, its value must go up, b/c investors will buy the stock for the higher dividend payment and also b/c the company must be fairly consistently raising its profits. I bought Exxon at around $30/share (with a 10% yield) during COVID, when everybody was telling us it was the end of Big Oil. I’ve made an annual 10% return for 3 plus years in the form of dividend checks, and the stock is sitting around $115/share now. A mutual fund manager would not have taken this risk, b/c they need short-term gains.
The only way we see the end of Big Oil is is somebody makes it against the law. Not in our lifetimes anyway.
At $30 XOM was like printing money. Dang near the same for CVX. Both boards would sell their own children to keep paying a dividend. I used to tell the kids at CVX that the board would empty the office before they missed a dividend.