Is it better to buy individual stocks or ETFs?
If you have enough money to invest, are willing to accept the risk and want a high degree of involvement, individual stocks may be a good choice. Potential Growth of Principal – Stocks have a long track record of providing higher returns than bonds or cash-alternative investments.
ETFs can be a great investment for long-term investors and those with shorter-term time horizons. They can be especially valuable to beginning investors. That's because they won't require the time, effort, and experience needed to research individual stocks.
The 4 most prominent advantages are trading flexibility, portfolio diversification and risk management, lower costs, and tax benefits.
An investor may have difficulties selling when the ETF is thinly traded, which means it trades at low volume and often high volatility. This can be seen in the difference between what an investor will pay for an ETF (the bid) and the price it can be sold for (the ask).
Cons include more difficulty diversifying your portfolio, a potential need for more time invested in your portfolio, and a greater responsibility to avoid emotional buying and selling as the market fluctuates.
If your stock gains more than 20% from the ideal buy point within three weeks of a proper breakout, hold it for at least eight weeks. (The week of the breakout counts as week 1.) If a stock has the power to jump more than 20% so quickly out of a proper chart pattern, it could have what it takes to become a huge winner.
Disadvantages of ETF investing
Since ETF fund managers cannot use their discretion to choose portfolio securities or deviate from the index weightage, investors cannot expect an outperformance or alpha generation from their ETF investments.
Assuming you do go down the road of picking individual stocks, you'll also want to make sure you hold enough of them so as not to concentrate too much of your wealth in any one company or industry. Usually this means holding somewhere between 20 and 30 stocks unless your portfolio is very small.
The one time it's okay to choose a single investment
That's because your investment gives you access to the broad stock market. Meanwhile, if you only invest in S&P 500 ETFs, you won't beat the broad market. Rather, you can expect your portfolio's performance to be in line with that of the broad market.
Is it smart to just invest in ETFs?
Should you invest in ETFs? Since ETFs offer built-in diversification and don't require large amounts of capital in order to invest in a range of stocks, they are a good way to get started. You can trade them like stocks while also enjoying a diversified portfolio.
Holding too many ETFs in your portfolio introduces inefficiencies that in the long term will have a detrimental impact on the risk/reward profile of your portfolio. For most personal investors, an optimal number of ETFs to hold would be 5 to 10 across asset classes, geographies, and other characteristics.
Lack of diversification
We say, no. Buying your own employer's stock is almost never a good idea because it's too risky from a diversification standpoint. You already get your paycheck there… Don't increase your risk level by also investing in their stock.
ETFs are less risky than individual stocks because they are diversified funds. Their investors also benefit from very low fees. Still, there are unique risks to some ETFs, including a lack of diversification and tax exposure.
The low investment threshold for most ETFs makes it easy for a beginner to implement a basic asset allocation strategy that matches their investment time horizon and risk tolerance. For example, young investors might be 100% invested in equity ETFs when they are in their 20s.
ETFs may close due to lack of investor interest or poor returns. For investors, the easiest way to exit an ETF investment is to sell it on the open market. Liquidation of ETFs is strictly regulated; when an ETF closes, any remaining shareholders will receive a payout based on what they had invested in the ETF.
Investors looking to weather a recession can use exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as one way to reduce risk through diversification. ETFs that specialize in consumer staples and non-cyclicals outperformed the broader market during the Great Recession and are likely to persevere in future downturns.
In fact, 47% of all such funds have closed down, compared with a closure rate of 28% for nonleveraged, noninverse ETFs. "Leveraged and inverse funds generally aren't meant to be held for longer than a day, and some types of leveraged and inverse ETFs tend to lose the majority of their value over time," Emily says.
The risks are too great with individual stocks
Financial pros like Benz urge investors to build broadly diversified portfolios for a reason: While the overall historical trajectory of the stock market has trended upward, any individual stock has a chance to decline sharply in price and destroy your portfolio's returns.
One of the easiest ways is to open an online brokerage account and buy stocks or stock funds. If you're not comfortable with that, you can work with a professional to manage your portfolio, often for a reasonable fee. Either way, you can invest in stock online at little cost.
What percentage of portfolio should be individual stocks?
To help mitigate that risk, many investors invest in stocks through funds — such as index funds, mutual funds or ETFs — that hold a collection of stocks from a wide variety of companies. If you do opt for individual stocks, it's usually wise to allocate only 5% to 10% of your portfolio to them.
The strategy is very simple: count how many days, hours, or bars a run-up or a sell-off has transpired. Then on the third, fifth, or seventh bar, look for a bounce in the opposite direction. Too easy? Perhaps, but it's uncanny how often it happens.
Traders that follow the 10 a.m. rule think a stock's price trajectory is relatively set for the day by the end of that half-hour. For example, if a stock closed at $40 the previous day, opened at $42 the next, and reached $43 by 10 a.m., this would indicate that the stock is likely to remain above $42 by market close.
In short, the 3-day rule dictates that following a substantial drop in a stock's share price — typically high single digits or more in terms of percent change — investors should wait 3 days to buy.
Interest rate changes are the primary culprit when bond exchange-traded funds (ETFs) lose value. As interest rates rise, the prices of existing bonds fall, which impacts the value of the ETFs holding these assets.
